A few guys laughed. I did too, a beat late.
Lowell skated up beside me while we reset. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You look tense.”
“I’m not tense.”
“You snapped your tape off with your teeth.”
I looked down. There was tape in my glove. I had no memory of putting it there.
“Just thinking,” I said.
Lowell nodded like that made sense. “About the drill?”
“Sure.”
He brightened. “Because I think if I pull F1 lower, you’ll have more space to delay. But only if Milo doesn’t curl too early.”
“Hey,” Milo called from ten feet away. “I can hear slander.”
“Then stop curling early,” Lowell said, and immediately looked shocked by his own courage.
Roman made a low approving sound from the crease. “There he is.”
Practice moved on.
Coach kept giving me less.
Less explanation. Less reinforcement. Less attention than I had become used to, which was insane because it had only been a few weeks and most of that attention had felt like being dragged through a hedge backward.
Still, I felt the absence like an itch under my skin.
I hated waiting for correction. I hated wanting it. I hated that every time I completed a rep and got nothing, my brain started chewing through possibilities until I couldn’t tell if I’d done well or barely gotten away with something.
Then, during a basic low support drill, I screwed up.
Minor. Stupid. Not worth a benching. I rotated too high on the breakout because I was half-listening to Milo complain about his skate edge and half-tracking Coach’s position at the boards. The puck came around, Lowell expected me lower, and we had to reset.
I knew it the second it happened.
“Again,” Coach called.
My skin tightened. There it was.
We ran it again. I corrected the route. Clean. Efficient.
At the whistle, Coach pointed his stick toward the near boards. “Holloway.”
Not loud.
Not for the room.
Still, I felt every player not looking.
I skated over, stopping a few feet away. Close enough to hear him without anyone else catching every word. Far enough that no one could say anything about it.
