Page 62 of Nowhere to Hide
“That was the worst speech I’ve ever heard,” Luca says.
“Get on the ice, Luca.”
“Yes, Captain.”
I roll my eyes and think about texting my dad.
He’ll know within the hour anyway. Someone will text someone or the university will put out a statement, and my father will draft the email about What This Means. I can already hear it:Let’s discuss how to achieve maximum exposure and leverage.
So I don’t text him.
The room is already moving again around me — sticks in hands, helmets getting pulled on, Theo tripping over his own bag — and Luca is first to the tunnel, louder than he needs to be, pushing the mood up by force.
By the time the guys follow him onto the ice, only Mason is still around.
He’s half-turned into his locker, his helmet hanging from the hook above his head. Taped to the inside of the door at eye level is the photo I’ve seen since freshman year: his father, arm around a younger Mason, the two of them in worn Ravens jerseys.
Patrick Cross, class of ’88. The man who played here, who’s scouted for NHL teams in the decades since, and who still walks into the room at alumni events and fundraisers like he’s owed a chair.
Freshman year, after the Redstone loss, we were on the bus, and Mason was three swigs deep into a flask he wasn’t supposed to have. Then somebody asked him about his old man, because Mason had played badly and his old man had been in the building.
Mason laughed and told us, like it was a punchline, that when he was sixteen his father had put him through the drywall in thebasement for a missed shift. He’d had to patch it himself the next morning.
He found the story funny, but none of us laughed.
Luca had looked at me across the aisle, but we hadn’t said anything. Mason had kept drinking, the bus had kept moving, and nobody — including Mason — had brought it up since. I don’t know whether the Mason I deal with every day is the real one or the one Patrick built.
Either way, he’s here.
He’s looking at the photo the way I’ve caught him looking at it before, when he thinks no one is watching. His fingers find the corner of the tape where it’s lifted from the door, and he smooths it with his thumb. Then he catches me watching, and the easy face comes back.
“You’ll be good at it, Hale,” he says. “Donor-friendly.”
“Sure,” I say, grabbing my stick.
“That was a compliment.”
“Was it?”
“Hand to God.”
He pushes off the locker, grabs his helmet and stick, and heads for the tunnel. Then he stops at the doorway and looks back at me, weighing for a few seconds whether to say whatever is on his mind.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I wouldn’t have wanted it.”
For once, I think he means it.
“Okay.” I shrug and give a small scoff.
Then he turns to go.
I sit back on the bench for longer than I should, because practice is starting. My pads are on, my skates are laced, and I’m supposed to be on the ice in ninety seconds with the rest of the team waiting for me.
But I’m not quite ready to give it to them.
The tape rolls have moved somehow, so I take a second to straighten them. When I look up, Seb is in the doorway. He’s leaning against the frame with his helmet under his arm and his stick beside him.
He’s been doing this since freshman year — showing up next to me when things break, keeping his mouth shut, taking up space in a way that means I don’t need him to perform comfort.
