Page 35 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“Then finish practice. Whatever the number is, it’ll still be there when thehorn blows.”
He skated onto the ice without waiting for a response.
Samantha was along the far boards, camera raised, steady in the middle of the chaos.
For one reckless second, I wanted to cross the ice and tell her about the offer and the number that should have thrilled me.
Instead, I stepped back onto the ice, joined the drill at the position I had left, and spent the remaining forty minutes of practice performing the role of a man who had everything under control.
Brick coasted up beside me during a water break and looked at me three seconds longer than casual.
“You good?” he asked.
“Fine.”
He did not believe me. I did not need him to. I just needed the next forty minutes to pass without anyone seeing the cracks.
Across the ice, Samantha lowered her camera and held my eyes.
Not assessing. Just looking.
I looked away.
If I held her gaze, she would see exactly how much trouble I was in.
Evan
Icame to practice the next morning carrying eighty-nine-point-six million dollars in my chest like shrapnel.
Mark had called twice more the previous night. Seattle’s front office had followed up with a formal framework. San Antonio’s GM had requested a meeting for the end of the week. The machine was moving, and I was inside it, and the gears did not care whether I had decided what I wanted.
I had slept for three hours. Skated my warm-up like I was trying to punish the ice for existing. Every drill went at a tempo two clicks above necessary, because intensity was the only tool I had for processing an emotion I refused to name.
The team noticed.
The team noticed that the energy was wrong: too sharp, too hot, charged in a way nobody had approved.
Brick gave me space. Colt, Mack, and Ryan did too. Finn kept about forty feet away, which proved his rookie instincts were improving.
Samantha was at the boards, camera up and professionally cool, and the absence of her warmth was one more thing I could not put down.
We broke for water. Players drifted to the bench, grabbing bottles, chirping about nothing. Routine sounds of a team at work. Fine. Manageable.
Then Brick leaned against the boards near Samantha and said, loudenough for the group to hear, “How’s Mr. Sunshine today? Looks like someone put extra storm in his clouds.”
The guys laughed. Brick meant it with warmth. The nickname had spread the way all good nicknames did: affectionately, without malice.
I stopped skating. The blades scraped to a halt, spraying ice. The sound cut through the ambient noise of practice like a blade through tape.
I looked at Samantha.
She was standing beside Brick, camera at her side, a half-smile still on her face from the joke. Warm. Open in the way she was with everyone who was not me, the version of her that existed before Silas’s warning had installed a pane of glass between us.
The words came out before I could stop them.
“Maybe focus on your job instead of giving me nicknames.”
Sharp and cold. Loud enough that the rink went quiet. Not gradually. Instantly.The way sound dies when something wrong enters a room.
