Todos os capítulos de Behind the Ice Wall : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

SKY’S POV The first headline ran on a Tuesday morning: Ice Wall Cracking? Wilson’s Numbers Slip as Playoff Push Intensifies. My numbers hadn’t slipped. I checked, twice, comparing this month to last, and found exactly what I expected — save percentage steady, a couple of soft goals mixed in with a stretch of games against stronger offenses than usual. Nothing that would have made a headline on its own, before this season, before any of this started. It made one now. By Thursday, three more outlets had run some version of the same story, each one building slightly on the last. One brought up the panic attack from months ago like it had happened last week. Another quoted an anonymous source calling my recent play “inconsistent, especially compared to his numbers before the incident.” A third ran a photo from practice, one where I happened to be resetting between drills with my head down, captioned like it proved something it didn’t. I told myself I didn’t read that kind of thing

SKY’S POV We won Tuesday’s game by three, a clean one, no drama — the kind of win that should have felt like exactly what it was. Instead it sat in my chest like something unfinished, already fading before I’d even left the ice. I stopped twenty-nine shots. Marchetti scored twice. The locker room afterward had the kind of noise that used to follow every win before this season turned into whatever it had turned into — guys laughing, music too loud, somebody spraying somebody else with a water bottle over some joke I’d missed the setup for. I sat at my stall through most of it, gear half off, and realized I wasn’t actually part of the noise. I was watching it, the way you’d watch something through glass. Someone called my name from the other end of the room. I heard it, registered it, and still didn’t turn my head. The laughter kept going without me. “You good?” Marchetti dropped down next to me, still catching his breath. “We just won.” “We did.” “You look like we lost.” I di

SKY’S POV Three games left, and something about the compressed schedule finally easing back to normal made the whole season feel survivable again, at least for an afternoon. Thursday’s session started the way most of them did by then — small talk first, real conversation somewhere in the middle. Except this time the small talk went somewhere neither of us expected. “You’ve got a rookie defenseman who tripped over the blue line during warm-ups yesterday,” Amira said. “I heard about it from three different people before noon.” “Garrison. Yeah.” I almost laughed just thinking about it. “Full face-plant. In front of the whole arena, during warm-ups, no pressure on him at all. Just tripped over his own skate.” “What happened after?” “He got up, looked around like he was hoping nobody saw, and then Marchetti skated past him and said, real loud, ‘Add that to the highlight reel, kid,’ and the whole team lost it. Garrison turned the color of a stop sign.” “That’s cruel.” “That’s hock

SKY’S POV One game left before the final stretch, and I walked into Thursday’s session carrying more than I’d let myself admit on the drive over. The clinical-notes leak had done something to me that the other leaks hadn’t managed. Those had felt like violations from outside, information stolen and handed off. This one felt like somebody had gotten close enough to watch the actual work happening and decided to weaponize the work itself. “You’re somewhere else today,” Amira said, a few minutes in. “Just tired.” “That’s not the same thing.” I didn’t answer that right away. My chest had started doing something I recognized from months back, a tightness building slow enough that I almost convinced myself it wasn’t happening at all. “Sky.” “I’m fine.” “You’ve gone pale in the last thirty seconds.” Her voice stayed even, but she’d leaned forward slightly, watching me the way she used to watch me during our very first sessions, before either of us had learned to relax around each

SKY’S POV We won game one of the playoffs. I stopped thirty shots, we celebrated in the locker room the way you’re supposed to celebrate a playoff win, and none of it prepared me for what waited in Amira’s office the next morning. Something was off in the room before either of us said a word. She sat further back in her chair than usual. Her notepad stayed closed on her lap instead of set aside the way it usually was by now. Small things. The kind of small things I’d learned to read the way I read a shooter’s shoulders before a shot. “You’re different today,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about some things.” “What things?” She set the notepad down finally, folding her hands over it instead of picking up a pen. “You’ve become emotionally attached to this process, Sky. To me, specifically. That’s not a criticism. It’s an observation I should have named sooner instead of letting it keep building without comment.” “We’ve talked about the dependency thing. Last week.” “This isn’t t