Sharing the Ice

Darren's Pov

The gym smelled like sweat and cleaning spray, and I liked it that way.

Nobody talked to you at eleven at night, nobody asked questions. I grabbed the cart of weights and started putting them back on the rack, one at a time, my arms already heavy even though my shift had just started. I hadn't slept much, maybe two hours if I counted the time I spent staring at the ceiling instead of actually sleeping, and my eyes felt like there was sand in them every time I blinked.

I checked my phone before I got too deep into the work. Still not enough money. Still a long way to go, no matter how many times I did the math hoping it would somehow be different. I put the phone back in my pocket and kept moving, because standing still just gave the numbers more room to sit in my head.

The door opened behind me while I was stacking the last of the plates. I didn't turn around right away, figured it was just one of the regulars who liked coming in this late to avoid the crowd. Then I heard the voice, and it wasn't a voice I expected to hear here.

"Didn't know you worked here."

I turned around and saw Cole standing just inside the door, gym bag over one shoulder, dressed like he came here all the time and just never bothered mentioning it before. He didn't look surprised to see me, which somehow made it worse. Like he already knew more than he was letting on.

"I don't advertise it," I said, going back to the rack.

He didn't smile, but he wasn't cold either. He just walked past me toward the free weights, dropped his bag on the floor, and started stretching like it was completely normal for the two of us to be standing in the same empty gym at midnight. Like we weren't supposed to hate each other on principle.

I kept working, grabbing the next set of weights, my hands a little unsteady as I lifted them. Not from fear, just exhaustion sitting deep in my muscles after a day that had already taken everything I had.

"You look wrecked," Cole said, not even glancing over.

"Thanks," I said, dry.

"I mean it. Captains aren't supposed to look like that before a camp like this one."

Something about the way he said it made me stop moving for a second. It wasn't teasing, and it wasn't mean either. It was just plain, like he was stating something obvious that he happened to notice, the way you'd point out the weather.

That was worse somehow.

If he'd said it to needle me, I would have known exactly how to shove it off. This felt like he actually saw something underneath, and I didn't like being seen, not by anyone wearing an Icebulls jacket.

"I'm fine," I said, shoving the weight onto the rack harder than I needed to.

"Didn't ask if you were fine," he said. "Just said you look wrecked. Different thing."

I didn't have an answer ready for that, so I just grabbed the next set and kept working, my arms burning, my jaw tight. Cole watched me for another second before he went back to his stretching, easy and unbothered, like he hadn't just stirred something open in me that I'd spent all night trying to keep shut. I hated that more than I would have hated an insult.

An insult I knew how to swallow.

This I didn't.

He worked through his sets while I finished restocking, and for a while neither of us said much, just the sound of weights clinking and my own breathing a little too loud in my ears. It should have felt tense, two rivals sharing a room, but it didn't, not exactly. It felt strange in a different way, like sitting next to someone you were supposed to be on guard against and forgetting to be on guard for a few minutes at a time.

"Big two weeks coming," he said eventually, setting his weights down and wiping his hands on a towel. "Camp starts soon."

"I know," I said.

"It should be interesting, all of us on the same ice."

I didn't answer that one, because I didn't trust what would come out if I opened my mouth. I just kept moving down the row of racks, stacking plates until my arms ached properly, until the burn in my muscles gave me something simpler to think about than everything waiting for me outside these walls, and now two weeks standing across the ice from the people who used to make my life feel like something to survive rather than live.

Cole left about twenty minutes later, slinging his bag back over his shoulder without making it into a moment. He didn't say goodbye, and I didn't expect him to.

Right before he reached the door, he glanced back at me one more time, like he was deciding whether to say something else, then thought better of it and just walked out into the night.

I finished my shift alone after that, working through the rest of the equipment, my mind drifting between the number on my phone and the strange, unwanted feeling of being looked at by someone I was supposed to despise on sight.

It unsettled me more than I wanted to admit, the fact that it hadn't felt like an attack. I'd spent years bracing for the Icebulls to come at me one way or another, and I didn't know what to do with one of them just standing there, plain and quiet, noticing something true.

My phone buzzed right as I clocked out for the night. It was the team manager, confirming the schedule for camp. Two days out, it read. Full two weeks, Falcons and Icebulls sharing the ice, no way around it, mandatory for anyone with scholarship or draft standing attached to their name. I read it twice in the parking lot, the cold air biting at my face, my breath showing in front of me under the flickering light.

Two days.

I put the phone away and stood there for a second longer than I needed to, feeling the ache in my arms and the tiredness behind my eyes and the number still sitting in my chest like a stone that hadn't moved an inch since the hospital. I didn't feel ready for any of it, not the camp, not the money, not whatever it meant that Cole Grant had looked at me like he saw something worth noticing instead of something worth tearing down.

I didn't think I'd ever feel ready. I just knew I didn't have a choice, so I got in the car Stella had lent me for the night and drove home in the dark, running the numbers over again in my head, hoping somewhere between the gym and my front door they'd finally start adding up.

They didn't.