Unsteady

“You good, Cap?”

It’s a hard question to answer, but Freddy looks worried—hell, the entire locker room looks apprehensive. I want to say no, but the tension is thick already and I know as captain, I should be defusing it, not adding to it.

Today is our last practice before our first exhibition game, away against a small school in Vermont, whose coach is close with ours—which I anticipate being part of the reason the game is so early in our pre-season.

It is also our first practice with our new defenseman.

News spread quickly, thanks mostly to Freddy and Holden’s big mouths, which made it that much easier for me to play ignorant and drown myself in Sadie.

Nothing further has happened yet, only quick make-outs in my car, hands pressing to cloth or skin, both of us desperate for relief. Some days, we just skate. Some days we never made it to the locker room, intense and rasping into each other’s skin in the wide trunk of her Jeep over the blanket she told me was for “drive-in movie emergencies.”

When I told her that I’d never heard of such a thing, and never been to a drive-in movie, she looked so deeply hurt and I laughed louder than I had in months, a smile stretching my skin until my cheeks hurt.

Then, after class that night, she’d met me outside of her dorm and demanded we take her car. She drove, which she often asks to do and I wonder if it’s because she remembered how I blurted out my new anxiety over driving that one day.

We rolled into a drive-in theater, to my surprise, backing in and opening up her trunk again to lay there. I bought two hamburgers and a plethora of most likely expired candy from a teenager at the single concession booth, then laughed and talked and barely looked at the distorted flickering screen of the double feature, soaking every piece of her up like water to grass after a drought.

She told me at the end that it wasn’t a date.

But I didn’t care; it felt like one. And we hadn’t even kissed once.

It’s easy to pretend when it’s just us, that maybe she is completely mine. My girlfriend. That I could convince her into my arms again and again, somehow smuggle my jersey onto her body, bribe her to cheer for me and stand in the cold bleacher seats because she wants to show everyone I am hers.

And I want to be hers, almost more than I want her to be mine.

“You sure you don’t want to say something before?” Freddy asks, probing after my lack of an answer.

Bennett shrugs, shucking his leg pad on. “Why? Everyone knows he’s coming. Everyone here has Rhys’ back.”

“Damn straight.” Holden nods.

I shake my head. “He’ll be your partner, Dougherty. No reason for us not to take every advantage we have this year.”

We are going to the Frozen Four. We are winning it—one player isn’t going to change that.

The door opens, slamming closed behind the hulking figure of Toren Kane.

He doesn’t glance at anyone, eyes down as he struts to his assigned cubby beside Holden, tossing his gear bag on the floor and begins to change.

Besides last spring through my helmet cage, I’ve only seen him through photos on Elite Prospects, and the same high school composite plastered across the internet during the height of his scandal years before.

Hockey players, in general, tend to be on the taller side—most at least six feet or over. Height and size are just as much an advantage as speed and skill can be.

Still, Toren Kane is tall—not quite as hulking as broad framed Bennett, but close; probably pushing close to 6’6”. As a captain, his size and obviously honed physique should make me happy to have him on first line defense, standing in front of Bennett.

But the only thing I feel is hatred—a foreign, unwelcome well of it.

The silence of the dressing room is deafening, everyone pretending not to watch us both, their eyes flickering back and forth between us.

“Kane,” I call, gaining some grip on the tsunami within. “We should talk.”

He flickers his eyes at me quickly, before shrugging off his shirt and reaching for a Dri-Fit undershirt from his bag.

“We can’t pretend nothing happened. If you want to be part of this team, we have to talk.”

I hate this. I hate that I have to be the bigger man here, when he’s the one who ruined everything, but I’m trying. I sink into the numbness, hoping that the thing I hate most will keep me from bashing his teeth in and messing with everything.

Kane glares, pulling the shirt down over his abdomen and shaking out his damp black hair.

“Nothing to talk about, Koteskiy. Get over it already.”

My fists clench, body jerking towards him. So much for numbness.

“Are you fucking insane?”

Freddy snorts, coming to stand by me. “Certifiable, from what I’ve heard.”

There’s a slight rise in the tension on Kane’s shoulder as chuckles echo in the room. I remember the news covering the hit had called him a psychopath, that he’d shown no remorse, only kept repeating the same sentiment over and over.

“It was a clean hit,” he says.

“Bullshit.”

“He’s fucking crazy.”

“Clean hit, my ass!”

A chorus of support and disbelief rings from behind me.

The weight of the words I want to say—but can’t—feels suffocating, and for a moment I’m Atlas. Ready to drop the entire weight of the world from my shoulders if it means only a minute of relief.

Still, I refuse to drag any of them down. Refuse to see pity in their eyes or, god forbid, their laughs at my pain’s expense; their disbelief in my ability to lead them, even if I’ve lost that belief myself. How would any of them look up to a captain, and trust me to lead them, if they knew every second on the ice I’m fighting an internal war?

“Clean hit?” Freddy jumps in, crossing his arms as he steps forward. “Your own team, hell your own coach, wanted you out for that.”

“Refs said it was clean. I didn’t do anything. Grow the fuck up.”

Bennett grumbles at that, his voice still quiet, but thundering in the locker room because it’s rare that he really speaks out. “Take some responsibility for yourself.”

Kane’s tan face flushes red with anger, his eyes narrowing as he takes us all in, realizing he’s cornered.

“I’m not here to fight.” He smirks. “Off the ice, that is. I’m just here to play fucking hockey.” He shrugs again, continuing to unpack and make himself comfortable.

Something about the casualness of it, as if he didn’t end my season, could have easily ended my life, ignites me.

I shoot forward, slamming my hands into his chest, tipping him back into his cubby and knocking his head back against the top shelf.

“This is my fucking team. Show some respect.”

“Fuck off,” he sneers, smirking again like he’s daring me to really hit him.

I slam my fist in his face like a knee jerk reaction. No one will stop me or pull me back. If anything they’ll join in. This is my team.

You took everything from me.

“Enough.”

The only voice that can stop this isn’t booming; it’s soft and firm in the way only Coach Harris can be.

It takes a moment for me to realize I’m still locked on Toren Kane, hands gripped into his shirt while he only smiles with a trickle of blood sliding over white teeth, his lips and chin.

“Let him go,” Bennett says. “It’s pointless to fight like this.”

I follow Ben’s instruction, a reverse of how it was between us for so long, letting him lead me away.

Coach Harris stands in the center of the dressing room, holding our attention easily, as he always does. Even, I notice, Toren Kane’s.

“I know that there are a lot of emotions in here right now, but get it together. Let it out on the ice; not on each other.” He looks towards me and sighs. “Toren is a part of this team now, and I expect you to act right and treat him like he’s any other member of this team. Whatever you need to do to get to that point—I don’t care. Just don’t do this shit on my ice or in my dressing room. Hell, nowhere in my goddamn complex. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” we all agree.

“It’s gonna be a long practice. Get the hell out there.”