ONE
FAUST
The sound of metal screeching against metal makes every tired muscle in my body go completely fucking rigid.
I feel the icy air snake through the gap from the shower curtain, the contrast of hot water along my chest uncomfortable. My fingers curl reflexively as I lift my chin and blink back the droplets in my eyes. It’s new, having a curtain, walls between stalls, and right now, I’m not certain it was a good idea.
But in the dark of the locker room, where everyone else has gone home for the night after a grueling return to practice from a day off, I can’t see anything. Staff are in another wing if any are left tonight.
My pulse races and I inhale deep, the scent of fresh spring soap and the bleach from the cleaners pricking at my nostrils. One step back, my spine grazes the shower tiles. The steam from the hot water clouds the space in front of me but a shiver involuntarily courses through my body.
In the logical part of my brain, I tell myself it’s probably one of my teammates fucking around with me, but who would? I’m not captain of the Dragons because I’mnice.If anything, it’s theopposite that forced Coach Wynon’s hand when he put the C on my black and red jersey, a rarity for a defensive player.
Volatile but controlled. Genuine but evil.
I’ve heard it all. At twenty-one, a junior at Drayton University, a guy who was in the CHL but chose to head to college—my father will never let me live it down—and one of “the most prickly, finicky players in college hockey” (yeah, printed in Toronto’s news), Coach wanted to keep me under control. The past two years I’ve been toeing that line of good and bad, and I think everyone is holding their breath waiting for me to tip into the wrong side.
Too many people will be thrilled about it.
I know why, logically. But it’s not within my control. It’s not an image, the things I do, the way I speak to the press when Coach lets me, my expression on the ice.
I’m not a fuckingbrand.
But it won’t stop the world—at least my version of it—from treating me like one.
And it rubs too many people the wrong way. And that’s why whoever it is outside my shower right now probably has really bad fucking intentions. I’m notscared,exactly, but I can’t risk an injury and I’m wet, slippery, and completely naked.
I don’t speak, though.
I blink again, clearing my eyes, the shower stream between me and the curtain, which is slightly ajar, nothing beyond it.
Half an hour ago I could’ve left, but the hot water never runs out here and being alone in the dark and the cold inside my house… well, it’s not much different than here I guess except it’s a hell of a lot warmer in the arena. And I don’t just mean the temperature.
“Castle Darling,” as everyone refers to it, is nice. Turrets and stone and an iron gate out front, a security room no one uses anymore. An inheritance from my semi-famous uncle who hada stroke last year. We were never close, but he didn’t have kids and I was the only one in the family following in his footsteps of pursuing pro.
With brand sponsorships and child support Mom forced Dad to keep paying, I can maintain it.
But it’s too silent.
There’s something abouthomebeing empty that gives me chills when I’ve got too much on my mind.
And I always have too fucking much on my mind.
Another inhale. Exhale.
Maybe I imagined the sound. Maybe I didn’t close the curtain all the way tight, knowing no one was here. Sometimes I hear things that aren’t there, wake up in the night because I could’ve sworn a person spoke aloud in my bedroom.
Maybe it was like…that.
The implications don’t go over my head. I know it’s not normal to hear voices. Unless you're my mother, who thinks it’sfine.Contact with the spirit realm, being in tune to my intuition… All of the above and everything in between.
I bow my head, the hot stream flattening my dark hair, causing it to stick to my temples.
Fuck.
I don’t think anyone is there.
Just like at home.
