The ride back toward campus was too quiet, and the longer I sat and stewed, the more I realized how cruel I’d been. He’d just been asking me questions, just arguing his side of our assignment the same way I was.
But he’d triggered me, and I hadn’t known how else to react than to push him away.
“I’m sorry—”
“Hey, I’m sorry—”
We said it at the same time, our eyes snapping to each other as we both let out low chuckles.
“You shouldn’t be,” I said next. “It was me who bit your head off.”
“You had every right to. I shouldn’t have assumed I knew anything about you.” Shane paused, switching hands on the steering wheel. “But, for the record, I’d really like to change that fact.”
His eyes met mine again, and the sincerity there nearly killed me.
“I don’t think you’d like what you discover,” I whispered.
Shane frowned, and then without hesitation, his hand was reaching for mine. He curled his fingers around my own, holdingtight, as if the notion hadn’t sent those stupid butterflies into a frenzy inside me once more.
“My parents died when I was a kid.”
He said the words unflinchingly, like he was just telling me the weather report for tomorrow. Meanwhile, my jaw had unhinged, my heart stalling in my chest.
“It was an ice storm. We lived in Georgia and, well, let’s just say snowstorms really mess up the roads down there. It’s not like here where they have plows out within the hour. They had pulled over, the snow coming down too thick for them to see. And I guess it was too thick for the semi-truck that hit them, too.”
I closed my eyes, letting out a slow, pained breath.
“I grew up with my grandparents after that. They put me in hockey mostly because they didn’t know what else to do with me. I was seven, and by the time I turned ten, hockey was my whole world. The coaches, my teammates… they’re who got me through.”
He glanced at me before his eyes were on the road again, but his hand never left mine.
“So when I talk about how important community is, it’s because I lived it. It’s because, for me, a team is everything.” He paused. “And I realize that you probably feel the way you do because you didn’t have that. You fought your battle alone.” He looked at me, holding my gaze. “You may still be fighting alone.”
My throat constricted, and my gaze flicked between his eyes, my chest aching in a way I hadn’t expected. There was something in the way he looked at me — not pity, not judgment — just a quiet, unsettling understanding. It made me want to turn away, to shield the parts of myself I’d learned to keep guarded.
But another part of me felt something shift, fragile and unfamiliar, as if his words had reached into the corners of me I didn’t even know existed. It was unnerving… and somehowcomforting, too, to realize he saw the fight I’d always believed no one noticed.
“So, maybe we’re both right,” he said, looking back at the road. “Maybe resilience is born inside us, but maybe it’s fostered by the ones around us who give a shit, too.”
I squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back.
We presented our findings the next week in class.
And we got an A.
What A Pleasant Surprise
Shane
Present
“Goddamnit.” I blew the whistle after the curse left my lips, frustration boiling in my veins. Preseason was officially here, and I had the guys playing out a scrimmage in our last practice before we’d take on our opponents tomorrow night.
And as of now, we looked more like a group of giraffes on ice than a professional hockey team.
“Tanev, are you in need of contacts, or did you just blatantly refuse to pass the puck to Fabri, who was wide the fuck open?” I asked, hanging my hands on my hips.
