Korvash's voice carried across the ice, half teasing, half concerned. The big defenseman skated up beside him, visor raised.
"Fine."
"You're not fine. You look like someone stole your protein powder."
"Drop it."
"The little chaos artist finally break you?"
Tarmek's stick cracked against the ice hard enough to make Korvash flinch.
"I said drop it."
Korvash raised his hands in surrender, but his eyes stayed sharp. Knowing. The whole team had noticed the change—the tension,the silence, the way Tarmek flinched whenever someone mentioned the mural.
None of them had been stupid enough to ask directly.
Until now.
"Look, man." Korvash lowered his voice. "I've been married for seven years. I know what it looks like when someone's?—"
"We're not married."
"Obviously. But you've got the same look I had when Elena and I had our first big fight. Like someone's scooped out your insides and you're just walking around pretending to be normal."
The accuracy of the description made Tarmek's jaw clench.
"There's nothing to fight about. She wanted space. I'm giving her space."
"Ah."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing." Korvash's expression suggested it meant everything. "Just... sometimes space is what people say they want when what they actually want is someone to fight for them."
"She doesn't want?—"
"How do you know?"
The question landed like a body check.
How do you know?
He didn't. He'd assumed, based on her pulling away, based on the walls he'd watched her build, based on years of watching her pattern—arrive, connect, leave. Always leave.
But he hadn't asked.
He'd just... let her go.
Like a coward.
"Morrison's calling us back." Tarmek skated away before Korvash could say anything else.
The rest of practice passed in a blur of drills and scrimmages. He forced himself to focus, to find that controlled intensity that had made him captain, but his mind kept drifting to the hair tie in his pocket and the camper in the parking lot and the woman who'd turned his carefully ordered life into beautiful chaos.
Space, he reminded himself. She needs space.
But Korvash's words echoed in his skull, persistent and unwelcome.
