The clock bleeds away. Fuck, fuck, double triple fuck. We push hard and get nothing for it.
The final horn sounds like a door slamming shut.
The locker room after is a meat locker. No one speaks. Gear drops into piles on the floor. Showers hiss in the background.
Coach Cross stands in the doorway and looks at each of us like he's counting heads after a fire. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to.
We all heard him before the game. And then we all ignored him in a dozen small ways. Fuck, that loss smarts.
I strip out of my gear fast and get out before the media can swarm. The tunnel's cooler and quieter, just the echo of my footsteps against concrete.
Scout's at an equipment cart outside the exit. Headset around her neck, media packets in her hands. Her curly hair is in that same braid that's always coming loose. She's wearing black leggings that make her ass look amazing. I force my eyes up before I get caught staring.
I already know I'm too volatile to stop.
She looks down, her eyes on the floor until she senses me coming. Only then does she glance up.
Her eyes, normally a peaceful green, widen when she seesme. Fuck, I love the way her eyes take in my chest, my arms, my height.
"You can't take that bait," she says quietly. She's not quite looking at me, like she's talking more to herself than to me. "They set the trap every time and you keep walking into it."
The words slide under my skin sideways. It sounds so simple when she says it. It’s as though I chose to feed the machine that's eating our season alive. Like I wanted to cost us the game.
The heat in my chest flashes bright and angry. I grab at the only defense I have left. "Stay in your lane, Scout."
The words come out sharper than I mean them to. Colder. I watch her flinch like I just slapped her. Her eyes go wide for a second before she blinks hard and looks away.
"Right," she says. Her voice is flat, careful. "Sorry."
She gathers her packets and walks past me without another word.
“Shit. Sorry. Scout…” I don’t make any move to follow, though. She’s not my girl. If she were, I would let her down, again and again.
Besides, hockey comes first. It has to. It’s the only real thing that I have.
When I get there, the press corral outside the locker room is a feeding frenzy. Microphones push toward me like a tide trying to drown me.
"Are you too slow for this league now, Silas?"
"Two penalties that changed the game. Do you regret them?"
"Is the Havoc locker room lost?"
My answers come out terse. "No. We play as a unit. I take responsibility for my minutes on the ice. We'll fix it for next game."
And on and on. Juliet does her best to deflect questionswhere she can, but I deserve hard questions after that shit show I just put on out there. That was trash.
The thing is, I'm only twenty-six. The youngest Huxley brother. I should have at least four more years on the ice, maybe more. But Jett and Hunter don't have my shoulder injury. Or my groin injury. Or my knee injury that keeps coming back, season after season, slightly more painful every year.
That's why focus matters. I can't waste time on distractions. I spend every available calorie either playing my heart out, practicing to play hard, or resting. No time for anything in between, no matter how pretty or sunny my latest distraction might be.
In the parking lot, the wind cuts through my suit like the fabric doesn't exist. I sit in my car and don't turn the key right away. Instead, I just stare at my hands on the steering wheel. My knuckles are scuffed from the game. The finger tape imprint's still visible on my skin. My right shoulder burns and pulses under my jacket like it wants to remind me of every wrong angle I chose tonight.
I run the game back in my head, shift by shift. The slash. The interference. The crease clear that started everything. The hit that felt clean and perfect. All the small, jagged moments that turned the whole thing sideways.
None of it gives me what I want. A reason that doesn't sound like ego and control and fear.
Scout's voice won't leave my head.You can't take that bait.
