"Hey," I said, somewhere around Michigan Avenue.
He glanced over. His profile against the grey lake light was so familiar. I knew exactly how his jaw looked at this angle, the line of his nose, the way his hands rested on the wheel at ten and two.
"You ever get tired of being good at something that doesn't actually get you what you want?"
He looked at me for a long second. The green traffic light turned yellow and he looked back at the road.
"What do you want?" I hadn't expected him to answer my question with his own.
I could have said a lot of things. I could have saidmore ice time, a permanent spot on the first line, a deeper playoff run.
I could have saidI don't know.
I'd have meant it, in a way, because there was something I really wanted—but it was behind a door in the back of my mind that I'd closed so gently and so long ago there were days I forgot it was there.
"Better deployment," I said. "Coach has me rotating on the third line too much. I'm a first-line player on a second-line salary and if they'd just commit to the Moretti-Hayes pairing full-time, the numbers would speak for themselves."
Abbott was quiet for a beat. "That's not what you were asking."
My chest tightened. There was a hitch in the rhythm of my breathing that I covered by taking a sip of coffee. "Sure it was."
"Okay." He let it go. He always let things go—not because he believed me, but because he understood that I wasn't ready to talk about it.
We drove the rest of the way in silence. It should have been uncomfortable after I deflected his question. But it wasn't. That was the thing about Abbott. He held silence the way other people held conversations.
He pulled into the facility lot and parked. He turned off the engine and looked at me.
"Hayes."
"Yeah."
"For what it's worth…" He paused, selecting his next words carefully. "I think you're right about the first-line thing."
That wasn't what he'd planned to say. I knew that the way I knew his coffee order and his parking habits. He'd wanted to say something else.
"Thanks, Abbott."
The suggestion of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he got out of the car.
I sat there for a few more seconds, holding a coffee he'd made exactly the way I liked it, and tried to remember what I'd wanted to say when I'd opened my mouth on Michigan Avenue.
The door in the back of my mind stayed closed—but for the first time in a long time, I was aware of it being there.
3
Abbott
Nico Varis had a tell when he was watching game film.
He leaned forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, and mouthed along with the Finnish commentary he was hearing in his head, the private running play-by-play that he'd never entirely been able to suppress. He didn't know he did it. I'd never told him.
We were in the film room, just the two of us, breaking down a power play sequence from last season's playoff run. Nico had asked for the session. He was trying to improve his positioning on the right half-wall, which was a specific enough request that I respected it immediately. Most players asked for vague things,Make me better. Show me what I'm doing wrong.Nico walked in and said, "My release point is three inches too high on half-wall entries against an umbrella PK. Show me where I'm bleeding time."
The film room was dark with theatre-seating, the big screen throwing blue light across our faces. It smelled like the airconditioning system and faint coffee residue from whoever had last used the space.
I ran the sequence at half speed and pointed.
"There. You're loading before the pass arrives. Your stick is set when the puck is still in transit, which gives the penalty killer a read on your lane."
