But our first full-contact drill made my problem impossible to ignore, because the hesitation was still there. I felt it from the inside for the first time, and that was different. Worse, actually. She’d seen it on tape before she’d met me and pointed it out like it was an observable fact, which it was. But having it confirmed from the inside made it real in a way I hadn’t wanted to face.
A half a second before contact, I protected my left side. I retreated from hits I used to welcome.
She was right, and I was angrier about that than I was about her holding information back.
I played through it anyway, forcing myself into contact I’d been avoiding. It wasn’t elegant, but my defensive reads were still good. That part hadn’t left. I placed myself where I needed to be, cut off passing lanes, and made the plays I was supposed to make.
There was some comfort in that.
And then I was annoyed that I needed the comfort.
The coaches set things up, and we started playing seriously. I did well. Assisted two goals. Stopped three before they reached my side’s goalie. After missing the second half of last season,I was playing like myself again—the version of myself my last team had decided wasn’t worth waiting for.
Crim Lundrig hit the ice like he owned it.
Maybe he did. Star center, first line, and the team captain. The kind of player an organization built itself around, and he knew it. He had true talent, and he was accustomed to being the axis everything else rotated around. I’d played against him before.
He wasn’t dirty, but he was hard, especially with new acquisitions. Establishing hierarchy was part of the job, and Crim took his job seriously.
The scrimmage started, and I tracked him the way I did all centers, taking in the way he moved through space. He was good. No, better than good. He punished any mistake.
I was three strides into a gap close when my attention pulled toward the box.
That was all Crim needed.
The hit was hard, legal, and perfectly timed. He caught me square across the chest and followed through with the kind of nudge that came from years of professional hockey. I held my position. I didn’t go down. But the impact registered, rattling through my ribs and into my spine, and for a split second, I was just absorbing it.
I looked up at the box, giving in to the same involuntary pull.
Haley was watching, her expression neutral. But something moved underneath it. She’d seen exactly what had happened. She’d seen it in sequence.
Lapse first. Hit second.
I looked away and got back to the play.
I’d given Crim the opening. He was good enough that he didn’t need help, but I’d handed it to him anyway. This was sloppy on my part, the kind of thing that should get punished at this level.
I was already thinking about how Haley would log it. Whether she’d mark it as a positioning breakdown or read the sequence correctly. Part of me didn’t want her to read it correctly. That part wanted her to think I’d made a mistake instead of seeing the actual problem.
The other part of me knew she’d see it exactly right.
I didn’t want to care either way, but I did.
On my team, Crim was an asset, a player whose gravity pulled everything toward him. Including, presumably, the attention of the analyst in the box.
The coaches called a break.
Players milled around the bench, catching their breath. One of the assistant coaches gave me a tactical note about gap timing that I half-listened to while tracking the rest of the team.
Haley spoke to Mikael. He grinned up at her and said something I couldn’t hear. She laughed, the same one I’d heard last night. Mikael looked pleased with himself.
I told myself it didn’t matter if she laughed with someone else. I had no claim on her, though acknowledging it didn’t help. She hadn’t seemed impressed with him last night. She’d stood in the corner and been completely unaffected.
After we’d rested, they put me back on the ice for the scrimmage. I took to the ice and did my job. My control was better in the second half than the first. I was warming up to the new ice and my teammates, starting to know where they’d be. The way I’d told her I would.
The whistle blew, and the coach waved a few of us off. Time for a rotation.
I went back to the bench and sat, grabbing a towel and draping it over my head. I let the noise fade into the background. When I surfaced, she still sat above me, reviewing something on her screen.
