Chapter 13: Krauss

Krauss hit me forty-three seconds into the first period.

Jax had warned me. I'd heard him. But hearing a thing and truly believing it are two entirely different disciplines, and I had made the rookie mistake of thinking I was prepared when really I had just memorized the theory without internalizing the weight of it.

The weight of it was about two hundred and thirty pounds, leading with a shoulder, and it caught me just inside the blue line at full speed.

The boards came up fast. Stars. The roar of the crowd hollowing out to a high, singular ring. My glove hit the ice before the rest of me did, instinct getting my hands down, and I lay there for two seconds that felt considerably longer while the ringing faded and the world reassembled itself into a Detroit arena and the knowledge that every camera in the building was on me.

I got up.

I did not show them the pain. I did not show Krauss, who was already skating away with the theatrical innocence of a man who knew exactly what he'd done. I picked up my stick, checked my helmet, and skated to the bench on legs that felt like they were made of wet concrete.

"You good?" Reyes asked from beside me. He was our right wing, twenty-two years old, all reckless speed and a grin that hadn't learned consequences yet. He'd been watching.

"Fine," I said.

The shift ended. I dropped onto the bench. Jax was already back, three seats down, taking water. He didn't look at me. He was watching the ice, tracking something in the play. I watched the way his eyes moved, scanning, calculating, always two steps ahead.

Then he looked at me. Just for a second. His eyes moved from my face to my left shoulder and back up. A question without words.

I gave him the smallest shake of my head. I was fine.

Something shifted in his jaw. He looked back at the ice.

I took the next shift. And the one after that. By the second period, Krauss had moved on to someone else, the initiation ritual complete, his point made. I stopped anticipating the hit that wasn't coming anymore and started playing hockey.

And I played well.

There's a feeling, when everything clicks, when your edges are true and your hands are fast and your reads are a half-second ahead of everyone else on the ice, that is the closest I have ever come to something like peace. The noise drops away. The threat drops away. There is only the puck and the ice and the geometry of it, the angles, the beautiful mathematics of where something is versus where it's going to be.

I scored in the second period on a breakaway I shouldn't have had, stealing a bad pass in neutral ice and converting it before the defenseman could recover. I scored again in the third on a redirect that I barely touched, a lucky one, the kind that looks like skill but is mostly geometry.

We won 4-2.

The locker room afterward was loud and warm, the specific chaos of twenty men who'd won on the road. Someone had music going. Reyes was dancing badly near the showers. Even Coach Miller seemed human for five minutes, going around the room and clapping shoulders.

Jax caught me at my locker when the noise was at its peak, everyone distracted.

"Your shoulder," he said, low. Not a question.

"Sore. It'll be fine by morning."

He nodded. He reached into his bag and pressed something into my hand, a small tube of muscle rub, the kind with the sharp medicinal smell that cut through everything.

"Back left corner of the tube," he said quietly. "That's where it's going to hurt tomorrow. Not the point of impact. The muscle underneath it."

He walked away before I could respond.

I stood at my locker and held the tube and tried very hard not to feel something about it. I managed. Mostly.

In the hotel that night, I found out we were sharing rooms. The team was paired alphabetically. T for Thorne. V for Valdez.

Of course.