All Chapters of Behind the Ice Wall : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

SKY’S POVI could hear my own heartbeat over the crowd.That never happened. Not to me. Forty thousand people were screaming, and somehow the loudest thing in the building was the blood moving through my own ears.Two minutes left. One goal in it. Win this, and we were going to the finals.I set myself in front of the net the way I always did. Watch the puck. Read the man holding it. Don’t think. Thinking was how you got scored on.The winger cut toward the middle. I saw the pass coming before he made it. I dropped down and threw my glove out and the puck smacked into it, hard enough to sting all the way up my arm. I held on. Didn’t let it bounce free. My teammate skated by and tapped his stick against my pads.“Wall’s still standing.”I didn’t answer him. I never did during a game. Talking took something out of me I needed for other things. Everyone called me that. The Ice Wall. Like nothing got through. Like I didn’t feel any of it.I felt all of it. I’d just gotten good at not show

SKY’S POVMorning practice was supposed to be the one place that still made sense.I got there early, the way I always did, lacing up in an empty locker room before the rest of the guys showed up with their coffee and their noise. I liked that hour. Quiet building, nobody around yet, just the hum of the ice machine somewhere behind the walls.By the time Coach Petrov ran us through rebound drills, that quiet had turned into something else.I squared up for a wrist shot from the circle. Read the angle right. Tracked it clean the whole way. And still, at the last half-second, a familiar voice in the back of my head asked what if you freeze again — and that was enough. My glove came down a beat late. The puck slid through my legs, a shot I hadn’t missed since my rookie year. It clacked off the boards behind me loud enough that a couple guys turned their heads.“You good?” Marchetti called out from the blue line.“Fine,” I said, and got back into my stance.I wasn’t. It wasn’t Amira in m

SKY’S POVThe bus smelled like coffee and cold plastic seats, same as it always did before a road trip. But something about it felt different this time. Heavier. Guys were talking quieter than usual, like they were being careful with the volume around somebody who’d just gotten out of surgery.I knew what they were thinking because I was thinking it too. Can he still do this on the road? No home crowd to carry him if it happens again.Reyes hadn’t said it out loud. He didn’t have to. My name was still on the lineup card for tomorrow, but the assistant coaches kept glancing over at me during warm-ups like they were checking a stock price, waiting to see which way it moved.Marchetti dropped into the seat across from me and tossed a protein bar into my lap without asking. “You good, man? You’ve got your game face on an hour early.”“I’m fine.”“Sure.” He didn’t push, which wasn’t like him. Maybe word had traveled further than I wanted to think about. “Just saying. Whatever’s going on, w