It doesn’t.
Nothing ends just because you refuse to look at it. I should know better than anyone else.
The drive to the rink is familiar in the way a routine becomes its own kind of anesthesia. I park in my usual spot, grab my bag, and head inside.
The smell hits me the second I pass through the players’ entrance—rubber and old sweat trapped between these concrete walls. This is the part of my life that makes sense.
Hockey is simple. You do the work, or you get eaten alive by someone hungrier. You show weakness, and you pay for it.
I step into the locker room and everything looks exactly the same as it did before Switzerland, before the chalet, before her mouth on mine, before I made the stupidest decision of my life and let another person close enough to burn me.
My stall is where it always is. My skates are where I left them. My sticks stand in their rack as if I never left.
The sameness should soothe me. Instead, it makes me feel like an idiot, because nothing here has changed, and yet everything inside me has.
I strip down and start dressing, because it is easier to focus on straps, tape, and base layers than it is to think about the way she looked at me the last time she said she wouldn’t use the email, the way she swore it like she understood what that promise cost.
She said she wouldn’t use it, and I can try to make excuses for why she did it until my throat bleeds, but the truth is simpler, and it tastes like humiliation.
I trusted her with that leverage. I gave her a weapon and asked her not to use it.
My phone buzzes again.
I don’t pull it out.
I don’t need to look to know it’s her.
I don’t need to see the words to know she’s going to keep trying. Natalia Kovac isn’t the kind of woman who walks away from a mess without trying to fix it.
That’s what I liked about her.
A laugh erupts from the other side of the room, loud enough to bounce off the lockers, and the spell breaks. The room is filling in around me now—guys dropping gear bags, teasing each other, the normal chaos of practice day—like the world is determined to keep moving and that’s the way it should be. The faster I move on from this… the better.
Wolf drops onto the bench behind me and claps a hand onto my shoulder with the kind of friendly violence that would knock most men forward.
"Look who’s back from the mountains," he says. "Did you scare the tourists? Did you become one with the snow? Did you finally become the Yeti we all know you are inside?"
I don’t react the way he wants me to. I keep taping my stick, my hands steady even though my jaw wants to lock.
JP walks past in socks, hair still damp from the shower, and points at me like he’s been saving this line.
"Penelope found some interesting pictures of you holding hands with your PR agent. She shared it with all the girls. Cammy says you two looked cozy," he says, too cheerful for a man who’s engaged and should be focused on something besides my life.
Slade plops down next to me. "Penelope says congratulations, by the way. She’s already planning your wedding in her head. I’d expect to see your new PR agent in the Everett Kauffman's owner’s box standing with all the WAGs by the next home game."
I glance up slowly.
"What pictures?" I ask.
The room quiets just a little, the way it always does when the guys sense something is worth watching.
Olsen grins. "Don’t play dumb, Popeye. You looked like a man who was one snowflake away from buying matching scarves."
There’s something tight inside my chest that feels like rage, but it’s not directed at them. It’s rage at myself for letting a moment exist where a camera could catch me being anything other than cold and unavailable.
Slade, already dressed and lacing his skates, shakes his head like a disappointed older brother.
"I leave you alone for one trip and you come back with a scandal and a girlfriend," he says. "We’re going to have to put you on a leash."
