I stayed down.
He was already checking, hands moving, and I stared up at the rink lights and did a private inventory that I wasn't going to share with anyone.
Head: doing something.
Vision: coming back online.
Everything else: functional, annoyed, embarrassed.
The reporters were definitely getting footage of this.
After a moment Cross sat back and looked at the bench, and I knew what that look meant before he even moved, because I'd been on the receiving end of it before, and the knowing landed somewhere behind my ribs and sat there hot and humiliating.
He signaled.
He was pulling me.
Right here, in front of the whole team, in front of the reporters, in front of every person on the ice who was pretending not to watch while absolutely watching. He was pulling me, and there was nothing I could do about it except decide how I wanted to handle the next thirty seconds.
I ripped my gloves off.
"I'm fine." I got up, and the world tilted again, less this time, manageable, and I grabbed it and shoved it down. "I slipped, I caught an edge, it happens to everyone—"
"Off the ice."
"Cross—"
"Hey, fuck face." Dylan was at my side, which I hadn't heard happen, his hand on my arm, and there was something in his voice that I hated, something betweenI told youand something closer to fear that he'd never admit to. "Go with doc."
"I don’t—"
"Wes." Dylan said just my name, flat, and the fear was definitely there under the flat, and I hated it. I hated being the thing that put it there.
Coach said nothing. Just stood at the bench and watched, which meant he wasn't going to intervene, which meant he'd told Cross to make these calls and was going to let him make them. Suddenly I was outnumbered in a way that felt less like being protected and more like being handled. The humiliation of it had an edge on it that was close to something else, something I didn't have a word for.
Cross turned and moved toward the gate without looking to see if I was following.
I followed.
Because what was the alternative? Standing on the ice in front of the reporters and the whole team making it worse. I followed, and I didn't say anything, the sound of the team going back to their drills behind me.
In the corridor, away from the ice, away from the eyes, I stopped walking.
"Don't." I pulled my arm from Cross's vicinity, even though he hadn't been touching me, just needing the distance. "Don't walk me through the halls like I'm a kid who got in trouble."
He kept walking.
I caught up.
We were halfway down the corridor toward the training room when I tried to veer off, some stupid idea about going to the locker room instead, about making this something I was choosing rather than something that was happening to me, and Cross's hand closed around my arm, not hard, not rough, just completely certain, that particular quality he had where his grip felt like a fact.
He didn't pull.
Just stopped me.
"If you lie to me again," he said, not looking at me, just forward, like this was a statement he was making to the hallway, "I will sit you longer."
I didn't say anything.
