"Fix it."
He skated past me without waiting for a response. The name on his jersey read VEGA.
"Holy shit." Someone was behind me. "Did Vega just talk to you?"
I turned around again. The guy skating toward me was grinning, his helmet pushed back and his stick tucked under one arm.
"I'm Murphy. Murph. You're Piper, right?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "Vega talked to you. I've been his linemate for years and I've heard him say maybe two hundred words total. Half of those were 'shut up, Murphy.'"
"He told me I was dropping my shoulder."
"That's a lot coming from him."
I glanced back at Vega, who was already sitting at the far end of the bench by himself, his elbows on his knees and his eyes fixed on something in the middle distance.
Practice resumed. I stayed on the ice for another forty minutes, running drills and learning systems and trying to keep up with players who'd been doing this at the highest level for years. My hip ground with every crossover, bone scraping against bone. Murphy talked the entire time, a constant stream of commentary that made it hard to spiral about a missed pass or a slow reaction.
By the time we hit the locker room, I was shaking with exhaustion. I sat at my stall and let my body catch up with what had just happened. Everything hurt.
But I'd survived.
Vega's stall was three down from mine. He was unlacing his skates in silence while Murphy, beside him, told an elaborate story about a restaurant in Denver.
Vega didn't respond and didn't look up. His hands kept moving, like Murphy's voice was just ambient noise.
Someone's phone buzzed across the room. Briggs, one of the defensemen who'd put me on my ass during the scrimmage, checked the screen and groaned.
"My sister keeps sending me shit about that pop star. Milo something. She's obsessed with the guy."
"The one dating the figure skater?" Henderson was pulling off his pads a few stalls down. "My girlfriend won't shut up about them. Apparently it's like a whole thing online."
"Two dudes." Briggs made a face, the kind of exaggerated disgust that guys put on when they wanted everyone in the room to know exactly where they stood. "Making out on the red carpet like anyone wants to see that shit. Couple of fucking—"
He said the word.
I laughed.
The sound came out of me before I could stop it, automatic, pulled up from some deep place where I'd stored every survival instinct I'd developed since I was fourteen years old. My body knew what to do even when the rest of me had checked out. It knew how to perform, how to blend, how to be exactly the kind of guy who belonged in rooms like this one.
Henderson laughed too. So did the guy next to him. The sound rippled through the room like a wave, and I'd helped start it, and the taste in my mouth was like I'd swallowed something rotten.
Vega didn't laugh.
He was still at his stall, still unlacing his skates. His hands kept moving in that same steady rhythm.
But his jaw tightened. I saw it, just for a second, before his face went flat again.
Murphy had gone quiet too. He was looking at Briggs with an expression I couldn't quite read. Then he shrugged and started talking again, louder than before, something about the restaurant.
The moment passed. Everyone moved on.
I sat at my stall and didn't move.
The laugh was still sitting in my throat like something I'd swallowed wrong. I could feel it there, lodged behind my sternum, and I thought about my father asking me twice in one morning where he was, and I thought about Derek's voice going tight on the phone, and I thought about how I'd moved a thousand miles to play hockey and I was still the same person I'd always been. Still laughing at the same jokes. Still hiding in the same ways.
I changed out of my gear and headed for the showers without looking at anyone.
The first week passed in a blur of ice and bruises and phone calls that left me staring at the ceiling until my alarm went off.
