She didn't want to go.
That's the thing I keep coming back to. Not the call, not Cody, not the judge's voice coming through the phone while I had my mouth on her skin. Just the specific way she saidI don't want to go— not performance, not drama. Just true. Raw and honest in the way she only is when she's not thinking about being watched.
She didn't want to go back to him.
That means something.
The whistle blows, and we move into scrimmage, and that's when Theo becomes a problem.
He hits clean — always clean, Theo is too smart to take penalties that cost the team — but he hitshard.Every contact drill, every board battle, every puck battle in the corner. He's moving through practice like he has something to prove to the ice itself, controlled violence in every stride, and I can feel it from across the rink.
Something is eating him alive.
During a line rush, he cuts inside on me — faster than the drill requires, harder than practice warrants — and gets a step on me that he shouldn't get, that I don't give anyone, and fires on the goalie before I can close the gap.
He doesn't celebrate. Just turns and skates back past me.
"Gap's off," he says. Quiet. Flat.
I say nothing.
Two drills later, he does it again. Same move, different angle. Exploiting the same half-step like he's making a point he hasn't bothered to put into words yet.
I catch up to him at the line.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" I say, low enough that it doesn't carry.
He looks at me. His eyes are cold in a way that has nothing to do with the rink temperature.
"Your gap is off," he says again. "Fix it."
"I'm not talking about my gap."
He holds my gaze for a long moment.
And I realize, standing there on the ice at six in the morning, reading his face, that I was wrong.
This is personal.
"Fix your gap," he says one more time.
Then he skates away.
I stand there for a second in the cold and watch him go, and feel the specific sensation of realizing you were never as ahead of something as you thought you were.
The locker room after practice is quiet. Quieter than usual. Whatever energy Theo brought onto the ice came back in with him and settled over the room like weather.
Silas sits beside me, peeling tape from his stick. He leans in slightly.
"What's his problem?" he says under his breath.
I watch Theo across the room, already changed, already somewhere else in his head.
"Cody's awake," I say quietly.
Silas goes still.
He looks at me. Then across the room at Theo. Then back at me.
