Page 98 of Crash Out
Dylan scored while I was still getting my bearings at the bench. Wrist shot from the circle, clean and fast, no assist. The Wardens bench came alive, and I was on my feet with everyone else.
Dylan didn't look at me.
He didn't have to.
Wardens won.
The locker room was loud.
Road win energy, contained and private, the celebration belonging only to the people in the room. Chappell somewhere doing his post-win cry. Knox in the corner being Knox, which tonight had a slightly sharper edge to it because Knox had spent the third period being physically restrained and had opinions about that.
I was at the center of it.
I was good at that. I could give the room what it needs, absorb the contact, send the energy back at a markup. I could do it unconscious at this point, which was almost what this was, my head at an eight and climbing and the lights in the locker room too bright and the noise doing the thing.
I performed it anyway.
Foster appeared at my elbow.
"You look cooked," he said.
"I'm fine," I said.
He looked at me with the flat assessment of someone who had seen a lot of shit. "Like, genuinely. You look like you got hit by something."
"I did get hit by something," I said. "That's hockey."
"Right." He looked at me for another second. "They giving you the good drugs or the bad drugs?"
"Nobody's giving me any drugs."
"Huh." He considered this. "Might want to fix that."
He moved away with an unhurried energy.
Then Dylan was there.
He didn't say anything. Just stood next to me the way Dylan stood next to things, solid and quiet and completely certain about his location. After a moment his hand came to the back of my neck and held it there. The way you did with someone who needed steadying. Steady and warm and not making a thing of it.
I closed my eyes.
Just for a second.
"Idiot," Dylan said. Very quiet. Not angry anymore.
"Yeah," I said.
"Complete idiot."
"I know."
His hand didn't move.
We stood there in the loud locker room, and Dylan's hand was on the back of my neck. My head was an eight and Rob and Linda were somewhere in this building. I had played the shift and the Wardens had won and I didn't have the words right then for what any of that meant.
Then my stomach made a decision.
I found the nearest bin.
