Instead, I headed to the equipment room and pulled on skates and gloves, grabbed a stick, and laced up like I was getting ready for a game instead of a midnight practice session with my coach.
When I stepped back onto the ice, Coach was waiting at center, a bucket of pucks at his feet. The rink lights were still dim, just enough to see by, and the silence was so complete I could hear every scrape of his skates on the ice.
“You've been hesitating on your one-timer,” he said without preamble. “Gripping too tight. Thinking instead of reacting. We're going to fix that.”
He started feeding me pucks from center ice, hard flat passes that came at me fast and required instant decisions. Catch and release. No time to think. Just muscle memory and instinct. The first five I whiffed on, my timing off, my hands still wound too tight. The sixth one I caught clean and fired top corner, and the sound of it hitting the mesh sent a spike of satisfaction through my chest.
“Better.” Coach's voice carried across the ice. “Again.”
We ran it twenty more times, and with each rep I felt something loosen in my shoulders, in my hands, in the part of my brain that had been overthinking every movement for weeks. This was what I knew. This was what made sense. Puck on stick, eyes on net, body doing what it was trained to do.
“You're getting there,” Coach said after the twentieth rep. “But you're still in your head. Stop thinking. Just react.”
“I'm trying?—”
“Try less. React more.” He skated closer, and suddenly we were only a few feet apart. “What's got you so twisted up, Hartley?”
The question caught me off guard. “What?”
“You've been off. Distracted. Making mistakes you wouldn't normally make. So what is it? Personal shit? Contract pressure? Something else?”
I couldn't tell him. Couldn't admit that part of what had me twisted up was standing three feet away from me looking at me like he actually gave a shit. “Just... life. Stuff outside hockey.”
“Handle it.” His voice was firm but not unkind. “Whatever it is, figure it out. Because you're too good to let it interfere with your game.”
“You think I'm good?”
His eyes met mine, steady and certain. “I think you're one of the best pure snipers I've ever coached. You've got instincts most guys spend their entire careers trying to develop. But talent doesn't mean shit if you can't get out of your own way.”
I wanted to tell him it wasn't that simple. That I couldn't just handle it, couldn't just flip a switch and stop feeling everything so intensely. But he was looking at me like he believed I could, and that belief felt heavier than any criticism.
“Let's go one-on-one,” I said instead, needing to move, needing to burn off the energy building under my skin. “You and me.”
His eyebrow went up. “You sure about that?”
“Why? You think you're too old to keep up?”
His mouth twitched into something that might have been a smile. “Alright, Hartley. Let's see what you've got.”
He took the puck at center ice, and I lined up across from him, adrenaline already spiking. This was stupid. This was reckless. But I wanted it anyway—wanted to see what he could do, wanted to test myself against him, wanted the contact and competition and the excuse to be close to him.
He came at me fast, his skating still pretty good despite his age, and I met him at the blue line. We battled for the puck, stick on stick, and I felt his strength immediately. He was solid,immovable, using his body to shield the puck while I tried to strip it. I hooked his stick and he spun away, firing a shot that I barely managed to block with my body.
“Nice try,” he said, circling back.
We went again. This time I had the puck, and he came at me with the kind of defensive positioning that made it impossible to get around him. I tried to deke left, then right, but he stayed with me, his stick always in the passing lane, his body always between me and the net. I tried to go through him instead, driving forward with my shoulder, and we collided hard enough that I felt it in my ribs.
We ended up tangled together against the boards, both of us breathing hard, and for a second neither of us moved. His hand was on my shoulder, steadying me or maybe steadying himself. His face was inches from mine. I could see the grey in his stubble, the way his pupils were slightly dilated and the rise and fall of his chest.
Time slowed. The rink felt too small. Too quiet. Too charged with something neither of us was naming.
Then he pulled back, breaking the contact, and skated toward center ice like nothing had happened. “Good effort. But you're still telegraphing your moves. Work on that.”
I stayed against the boards for a second longer, catching my breath, trying to get my heart rate under control. What the fuck was that? We'd just collided during a drill. It didn't mean anything. It was hockey. Bodies hit. That was the game.
Coach headed toward the tunnel without looking back. “I'm gonna shower. Lock up when you're done.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
