The number stayed in my phone.
The Delta Center smelled like money.
Not literally, but that's what hit me when I walked through the players' entrance for the first time: the polish on the floors, the fresh paint on the walls, the filtered air that didn't carry a single trace of mildew or old sweat. Everything here was new and maintained and replaced the moment it showed wear. The hallway stretched ahead of me under lights that didn't flicker, past framed photos of players whose jerseys cost more than my truck payment.
I got lost twice trying to find the locker room.
The locker room was twice the size of the one in Rio Rancho. My stall was at the end of the row, with PIPER on a brass nameplate that looked like it had been engraved yesterday. The jersey hanging in front of me was heavier than my Ristras sweater, stiffer, with the Hive logo stitched into the fabric instead of printed. I ran my thumb over the threading and thought about how many years I'd spent imagining exactly this moment.
Through the walls, I could hear the crack of pucks on sticks and the bark of a coach's whistle. Practice had started without me.
I suited up faster than I ever had in my life, muscle memory taking over while my brain kept circling back to the phone call with Derek that morning. Dad had woken up confused, he'd said. Didn't know where he was. The nurses had gotten him calmed down eventually, but Derek's voice had that tight quality it got when he was trying not to worry me.
I'd told him I had to go. That I'd call after practice. That everything would be fine.
The tunnel to the ice stretched longer than I expected, and then I stepped out into the light and the cold and eighteen thousand empty seats rising up around me, and my lungs forgot how to work.
Coach Barrow spotted me before I made it to the bench. He was shorter than he looked on TV, compact and weathered, with the kind of eyes that had seen every excuse a rookie had ever made.
"Piper." He didn't smile. "Nice of you to join us."
"Sorry, Coach. I got turned around in the halls."
"You'll learn the building. Get out there; we're running a scrimmage. Maroon versus gold, you're maroon."
I climbed over the boards and felt every head on the ice turn toward me. I could read the math happening behind their eyes: new guy, call-up from the AHL, five-six and a hundred sixty pounds soaking wet, here to take someone's minutes. Someone's paycheck. Someone's spot on a roster that only had room for so many bodies.
The whistle blew.
The first hit came twelve seconds in. I'd taken a pass at center ice and was turning to look for options when a shoulder caught me square in the chest and drove me backward into the boards.The hit was clean and perfectly timed, the kind of check I'd absorbed a thousand times in the minors, but the speed here was different. The force was different. I went down hard enough that my teeth rattled.
I got up.
The second hit came from behind while I was digging for a puck in the corner. My helmet bounced off the glass. The check was barely legal, walking the line between hard and dirty.
I got up again.
The third hit put me on my ass in the slot. The pain that shot through my spine was so sharp I saw white. One moment I was open for a pass. The next I was staring at the ceiling lights with my lungs burning and my hip screaming.
I got up.
By the end of the first scrimmage period, I'd been hit more times than I could count. My ribs ached. My shoulder throbbed. The bruise forming on my hip sat right over the spot that had never healed properly, and every stride sent pain radiating into my lower back.
Dad would have told me to skate through it. Back when he still remembered he'd said it. Back when he still remembered I played hockey at all.
Nobody here was trying to hurt me. They were teaching me something, the same way my father had taught me to swim by throwing me into the deep end when I was six. You either figured it out or you didn't. You either belonged here or you went home.
Somewhere around the fifth hit, the checks stopped landing quite as cleanly. Guys were pulling up a half-second early, giving me just enough room to brace before contact. It wasn't mercy. It was an acknowledgment.
The scrimmage whistle blew for a line change, and a hand caught my shoulder.
"You're dropping your left side."
I turned around. The guy behind me was big, six-three and built like he'd been designed to hurt people. He had dark hair cropped close to his skull and a day's worth of stubble on a jaw that looked like it had been broken more than once.
"When you're in the corner," he said, "you drop your left shoulder before you turn. Makes it easy to time the hit."
I stared at him. "Okay."
