All Chapters of Behind the Ice Wall : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

83 Chapters

Chapter 1 — The Freeze

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

Last Updated : 2026-07-17

Chapter 2 — First Session

SKY’S POVThe office wasn’t what I expected.No couch. No posters about believing in yourself. Just two chairs by a window and a woman standing up when I walked in, holding her hand out like she was meeting a coworker, not a problem the team had handed her.“Sky. I’m Amira Frank.” Her handshake was quick and steady. “Sit wherever you want.”I picked the chair farthest from her desk. I’d already decided how this was going to go on the drive over. Say as little as possible. Let the hour run out. Go home.My phone buzzed once against my thigh before I sat. I checked it without meaning to — a habit I couldn’t turn off, not after the week I’d had.Reyes: Need a read on tomorrow. Lineup’s due to the front office by 6.I put the phone face-down on my knee. Six hours. That’s how long I had before this session either fixed something or cost me a spot in net.For the first ten minutes, that’s exactly what I’d planned happened — the saying-nothing part, at least.I knew this game. I’d played it

Last Updated : 2026-07-17

Chapter 3 — Practice & The First Glance

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

Last Updated : 2026-07-17

Chapter 4 — Second Session

SKY’S POVI walked into her office on Thursday with a plan.Say nothing today. Sit through it. Go home.That lasted about six minutes.Amira didn’t push straight at it. She never did, I was starting to notice, and that was somehow worse than if she had. She asked about my morning. About a paperback she’d seen me look at in the lobby, one I hadn’t even realized I’d stared at long enough for her to catch. Small stuff, easy stuff, until somehow, without me noticing the turn, we were talking about the championship game from three years back. The one everybody still brought up in interviews. The one I never talked about.“You went to double overtime,” she said, like she was talking about the weather. “Six shots in the last period alone. What’s that like, standing in the crease with that much on the line?”“It’s the job.”“That’s not what I asked.”I shifted in the chair. The leather creaked under me. “That’s what standing in a crease is like every night. You get used to it.”“Do you?” She

Last Updated : 2026-07-17

Chapter 5 — Road Trip Tension

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

Last Updated : 2026-07-17

Chapter 6 — The First Text

SKY’S POV Two weeks after my first session with Amira, the team headed out for our first road trip since the meltdown. Six sessions by then. Somehow she’d gotten me talking without ever making it feel like an interrogation. The bus ride to the airport sat quieter than road trips usually did. One of the rookies laughed at something on his phone, too loud, then glanced around and turned the volume down. The silence settled back in after that, heavier than before. Marchetti didn’t crack jokes. Petrov kept checking his phone instead of talking hockey. I knew why. Nobody had forgotten what happened. They were watching to see if it happened again, out here, away from home ice, away from anything familiar. Reyes sat two rows up, talking quietly with an assistant coach. I caught pieces of it. Something about lineup decisions. Something about “if he’s not ready.” I didn’t ask him to repeat it. I just stared out the window at the dark streets sliding past and kept my mouth shut. We lan

Last Updated : 2026-08-02

Chapter 7 — Under Evaluation

SKY’S POV The meeting was set for nine in the morning, which told me something before anyone said a word. Nobody scheduled good news for nine in the morning. Good news could wait until after lunch. I sat outside the conference room for six minutes before they called me in. Six minutes is a long time to sit in a hallway with nothing to look at but a framed photo of last year’s home opener. I’d made two saves in that photo. I remembered both of them better than I remembered most of my own life outside hockey. Reyes met me at the door. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t look like a man walking me into an execution either. Somewhere in between. “Just answer straight,” he said, low enough that only I heard it. “Don’t perform for them.” Inside, three people sat on the other side of a long table. Reyes took the fourth chair, on my side, which I noticed and was grateful for without saying so. Marcus Blackwood sat in the middle, reading glasses pushed up on his head like he hadn’t decided

Last Updated : 2026-08-02

Chapter 8 — Behind the Wall

SKY’S POV Amira’s office looked the same as it always did — two chairs, a window, a stack of books that had actual creases in the spines. I’d stopped bracing when I walked in. That should have told me something on its own. “How’d the meeting go?” she said, once I’d sat down. “You heard about that.” “Word travels in a building this size.” She didn’t ask for details, just left the door open in case I wanted to walk through it. “They’re deciding if I’m worth the risk,” I said. “Same conversation as always. Different room.” “And how do you feel about that?” “I feel like a spreadsheet.” Her mouth twitched, quick, gone before I could name it. Not quite a laugh. Close to one. “That’s a good line,” she said. “Did you use it on them?” “No.” “Smart.” We sat there a second. Outside her window, somebody was pushing a leaf blower across the parking lot, its constant hum drifting through the glass and filling the quiet between us. “I want to go back to something,” she said. “The champ

Last Updated : 2026-08-02

Chapter 9 — The Away Crowd

SKY’S POV The arena in Chicago holds twenty-two thousand people, and every single one of them seemed to know exactly what happened to me six weeks ago. I’d played road games my whole career. You learn to tune out the building, the noise, the chants that try to get inside your head before the puck ever drops. This one felt different before I even stepped on the ice. I could feel it in the tunnel, in the way the sound carried differently, in the way our own equipment guys kept glancing at me like they were waiting for something. Warm-ups went fine. Shots felt normal. My glove did what it was supposed to do, my legs moved the way they always moved. I told myself that was the whole test, and I’d passed it, and the rest was just noise. Then I skated out for the anthem and the crowd started up before the music even finished. Ice Wall’s gonna crack. Not everyone. Maybe thirty people, packed together near the visitor’s bench, loud enough to carry. The rest of the building didn’t need

Last Updated : 2026-08-03

Chapter 10 — Cracks

SKY’S POV By the time we flew home from the trip, the story had already grown legs of its own. I heard it first from Marchetti, who heard it from a guy on the equipment staff, who’d apparently heard it from someone in the front office who shouldn’t have been talking about it at all. The gist of it: management was quietly asking around about backup goalies. Not trading for one. Not calling anyone up from the farm team yet. Just asking. Making calls. Testing the market the way you’d test ice before you decided whether it could hold your weight. “Probably nothing,” Marchetti said, in the tone people use when they don’t believe what they’re saying. “Probably,” I said, in the same tone. Practice that week felt different in a way I couldn’t point to directly. Guys were still guys — still chirping each other in the room, still running the same drills, still treating me the same on the ice. But there was something underneath it now, a kind of careful politeness that hadn’t been there

Last Updated : 2026-08-03

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