ONE
Jari
The first thingI did when I got into the cab was check the time in Finland. It was afternoon there, which meant Mom would be awake. I didn’t call her. I never did before games, meetings, or travel days. If I heard her voice and something was wrong at her end, I wouldn’t be able to leave the room, let alone skate. Instead, I opened the care app the private facility used—the one with the neutral colors and smiling stock photos—and scanned the overnight notes for Abigail Martinson.
Stable. No falls. Fatigue markedmoderate. She had a visitor last night, but, per privacy policy, no names were included in the report. It wouldn’t be family—she had none in Finland, and it certainly wouldn’t be Aarni Lankinen, her husband in name, and the man she hated.
The manIhated.
I let out a breath and closed my eyes. Maybe she had a new friend? I’d ask her when I next called, but I was glad for it. Finland was supposed to feel like home for her—lakes and pines and silence. Instead, on mornings like this, it felt like distance measured in euros and contracts and whether I was still worth the price of keeping her comfortable.
I told myself—as I did every day—that as long as I kept playing, my asshole father would ensure she was looked after. That was the only way I could think.
The cab pulled into the Railers’ practice facility just after seven on a bright September morning.
I stayed seated longer than necessary, watching my breath fog the window, counting the seconds between inhales. The building loomed low and wide—glass, steel, banners snapping in the cold.RAILERSacross the front in block letters. Not intimidating. Not welcoming either. Just… there. Waiting.
My flight from Detroit had been last-minute, rushed, chaotic, me leaving training camp at the drop of a hat, but it spat me out at Harrisburg airport in the dead of an early morning, and I tried to tell myself I was ready. I wasn’t.
“You okay back there?” the driver asked.
Not even close. Of all the teams that could’ve wanted me—and why would they—it had to be the Railers. I apologized, paid, and thanked him, then clambered out with my gear bag dragging at my shoulder, sticks awkward and unbalanced until I cleared the curb. I waited until the cab pulled away, until there was nothing left to hide behind.
And for a split second—one sharp, terrifying heartbeat—I wondered what would happen if I just… stopped. Stopped trying. Stopped skating. Stopped existing inside this machine that never let me breathe. If I started with the Railers, then walked into the next game and coasted. I could crash headfirst into the boards. One bad hit. One mistimed stride. One skate slipping out from under me on purpose. A skate to the chest, a fall at the wrong angle—it would all look like an accident. Hockey was dangerous. Careers end every year.
A clean exit, an insurance payout.
Stopping wasn’t an option.
Stopping meant unpaid invoices and polite emails that grew less polite. It meant Finland turning colder, quieter, less forgiving. It meant my mother apologizing for things that weren’t her fault and pretending she didn’t need help because help came with conditions.
And worse—it didn’t scare me the way it should have.
Because I hated this. I hated that this was the fourth new team in four years because I didn’t fit anywhere. I hated my name. I hated waking up every day, wondering if I was playing for myself or just trying to outrun the monster who’d raised me.
The Railers bench surging to its feet. The crowd—eighteen thousand voices howling for blood. Sticks, gloves, bodies colliding in a chaotic knot at center ice. Tennant Rowe jumping in without hesitation, trying to haul one of the Raptors off a teammate. Then hands went up. Someone pawed at his helmet in the crush. Accidental, they’d say later. Frame by frame, slowed down on a thousand replays. But in the moment, all I saw was his helmet ripped free, skittering across the ice.
And my father moving.
He launched himself into the mess as if he’d been waiting for an invitation and even then, as a kid, I knew what that look meant. My father reached him, slapped a hand onto Tennant’s shoulder, and yanked him backward over his extended leg. Rowe went down hard; his head struck the ice with a sound I still hear in my sleep. He crumpled into the churning skates, bodies still shoving, fists still flying. When the pile shifted, he was still there.
Unmoving.
His head rested in a spreading pool of blood, dark against the white ice, skates dancing around him as if he were already invisible.
My father stood over him.
Not checking. Not calling for help. Just looming there, bent slightly at the waist, grinning as Tennant gasped for air. As if this was the point. As if hurting someone that badly meant he’d won at something.
The crowd had been roaring. I remembered that part too. Noise swallowing the sound of Tennant’s breath, the way officials were slow to intervene, the way my father skated off without looking back.
I swallowed hard.
EveryrealRailers fan hated Aarni Lankinen.
But none of them hated him as much as I did.
A man waited inside the door; a tablet tucked under one arm.
