Page 133 of The Off Limits Captain

---

The whistle cuts through the rink.

Colt comes off first, one glove up. “Jesus, Finn.”

Finn shoves away from the wall. “You had your head down.”

“It’s a drill.”

“Then keep your head up in the drill.”

The ice goes quiet in pieces.

I skate in.

“Enough,” I say.

Finn turns on me too fast. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“No, I heard you the first six times.” His voice cracks at the edge, angry and young and too loud. “Stay patient. Don’t cheat high. Don’t take the angle. Don’t breathe wrong. I heard you.”

A couple of heads turn away.

That is worse than staring.

“Take a lap,” I say.

Finn laughs once. Ugly. “Sure. Anything else, Dad?”

The word hits the room wrong.

Zach mutters, “Finn.”

Finn points his stick at him. “Don’t.”

Coach Sully’s whistle snaps once. “O’Sullivan. Wall.”

Finn skates to the boards, chest heaving, jaw tight.

Colt flexes his shoulder and tries to make it nothing. “I’m good.”

Nobody believes him completely.

I look at Finn.

Finn looks anywhere else.

His hands stay tight around his stick.

The power-play unit takes the next twenty minutes, and the room does what rooms do when pressure finds a crack.

Pretends the crack is not there.

I work through it on autopilot: the right corrections, the right reads, a redirect here, a tap there. Colt jokes about something to Zach that isn’t actually funny and Zach laughs anyway because Colt’s timing is lousy but his intentions are fine.

Finn pulls up after a contact rep and stands at the boards longer than a resting player should.

I grab a water break.

---