I stared at the question, at the concern implicit in those two words.
5
Theo
The apartment was too quiet.
I had tried lying down. I had tried scrolling through my phone. I had tried the breathing exercises my old sports psychologist taught me. Nothing worked.
Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the impact all over again—the collision, the boards, the way my ribs compressed like they were made of balsa wood.
And the way Luca had dropped his gloves.
The way his hands had shaken in the medical room.
My chest ached, but it wasn't the bruising that kept me awake. It was the look on his face when he walked out. The text that came after I walked out the door:You okay?
Two words that meant everything and nothing.
I gave up on sleep around one in the morning. I pulled on sweats and a hoodie, grabbed my gear bag, and left. The practice facility would be empty. Maybe skating would help. Maybe exhausting myself would finally shut my brain up.
The rink was dark when I arrived, lit only by the emergency lights. The building was silent in the way empty sports venues are—vast and echoing. I used my new key card to get in, half-expecting it not to work, but the lock clicked green.
I flicked on the lights over the ice. The fluorescents hummed to life, casting everything in a flat, institutional glow. Empty rinks always felt like churches to me. They were sacred spaces where you left everything else at the door.
I laced my skates. Each pull of the laces sent a dull ache through my ribs. The doctor had said rest. But rest wasn't happening tonight, so I figured I might as well be productive with my insomnia.
The ice was fresh, unmarked. My first stride sent a sharp pain through my chest, but I pushed through it. Second stride. Third. I built speed. The cold air hit my face and finally—finally—my mind went quiet.
I skated hard laps. I worked up to full speed, testing my body’s limits. The bruising protested but I'd played through worse. I would probably play through worse again.
After twenty minutes, I grabbed a bucket of pucks. I started running shooting drills. Wrist shots from the slot. Snapshots from the circles. One-timers off the half boards. The rhythmic crack of rubber on composite, thethunkof pucks hitting the back of the net—it was meditative.
I'd been at it about forty minutes when I heard skates on ice.
My heart kicked hard against my bruised ribs.
Luca emerged from the tunnel. He was already in gear, helmet under his arm. He stopped when he saw me. For a long moment, we just stared at each other across the ice. Even from sixty feet away, I could see the tension in his shoulders.
"Couldn't sleep either?" I called out.
He didn't answer right away. He set his helmet on the bench and stepped onto the ice. He started skating laps along the boards—long, smooth strides, not looking at me.
I went back to my shots, hyperaware of him circling the rink. The whisper of his blades on the ice. The controlled power in every stride. He skated like he did everything else—with absolute precision. Nothing wasted.
We orbited each other for ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Him doing laps, me working through drills. The only sounds were skates and pucks and the hum of the lights overhead.
Finally, he drifted to center ice and stopped. He watched me.
I lined up another shot and buried it top shelf. I grabbed another puck.
"Your weight distribution is off," he said.
I looked over. "What?"
"On your one-timer. You are loading too much weight on your back leg. It is costing you power."
Something loosened in my chest. This I could do. This was safe territory.
