Page 131 of Offside Angle

I stare at Elias.

This isn’t him getting pissed.

Elias gets pissed all the time. He yells, chirps, throws himself into plays he has no business surviving and occasionally says things so stupid Damian looks ten years older afterward.

This is different.

His hands are moving too much, his words coming too fast, and every time somebody comes off the ice he finds something else to tear apart.

“Stop standing around! Jesus Christ, do I have to fucking do everything?”

There it is.

He never came all the way back from the tunnel.

Damian hears it too. “Pup.” Sharp enough to cut straight through Elias’s next sentence.

Elias doesn’t look at him. He’s gripping the top of the boards now, staring down at the ice between his skates while his fingers shake inside his gloves.

“Elias.”

Nothing.

Damian shifts closer. “Kade. Look at me.”

That finally gets through. Elias lifts his head, and whatever anger was holding him together disappears the second his eyes meet Damian’s. They’re wet amd panicked.

Damian’s voice drops immediately. “Do you see me?”

Elias swallows.

“I’m right here.”

His face twists. “What if last year was just a miracle?” The words come out broken enough that half the bench goes completely still. Elias shakes his head once, hard, like he’s trying to outrun the thought even while he says it. “What if I’m just shit at this? What if I’m a shit captain and last year I only played like that because—” His breath catches. “Because your life depended on it?”

And then he’s crying. Not quietly either. His shoulders jerk with it, tears slipping down his face beneath the visor while he tries and fails to drag in a proper breath.

The game keeps moving. There are still five Reapers on the ice fighting through the shift while our captain comes apart three feet away from me.

Damian doesn’t hesitate. He reaches over, gets Elias’s helmet off, and sets it aside before taking his face between both hands. “Look at me.”

Elias does.

Barely.

“You are Elias Nathaniel Kade,” Damian says, each word calm and deliberate. “You are my captain because of everything you are, not because of what happened last year.”

Elias’s mouth trembles.

“And you do not have to play every bad game like somebody is going to die if you lose it.” Damian keeps his eyes locked on his. “I’m alive. I’m here. You already got me back.”

That breaks whatever Elias was trying to hold together.

He leans forward into Damian’s hands, crying harder now, and Damian lets him, one thumb wiping beneath his eye while the rest of us suddenly become very interested in anything that isn’t happening beside us.

I turn toward the ice.

It’s the only privacy we can give them on an open bench in the middle of a playoff game.