Page 194 of Wild Card 13

Lucy, who had sat beside my family at Matt’s and laughed like she had not been missing from that table for eight years.

Lucy, who had said no to me in the snow and trusted me to hear it.

My hand tightened around the shaft of my stick.

Words crowded behind my teeth.

Don’t talk about her.

Don’t say her name like that.

Don’t fucking look in her direction unless you understand she is not something you get to turn into a joke.

I swallowed all of them. Hard enough it hurt. Because the second I said any of it, the room would hear too much.

Not the words. The voice underneath them. The old history. The raw place in me that had no business showing itself under fluorescent lights in a visiting locker room thirty minutes before puck drop.

I did not have a clean claim to anger.

She had made that perfectly clear under the red awning while snow melted in her hair and her eyes told the truth her mouth was smart enough to protect.

And still, my body had already stepped toward Victor like the past eight years meant nothing, like the whole room would not put it together if I crossed one more inch.

A hand closed around my shoulder. Heavy. Firm. Silent.

Alois did not yank me back. Did not make a scene. Did not even look like he had moved fast, though he must have, because one second there had been empty air behind me and the next his grip was locked over the top of my shoulder pad with enough pressure to stop my forward motion completely.

My pulse hammered in my throat. For one insane second, I wanted to shrug him off. Not because it was Alois. Because anger needed somewhere to go and his hand had become the door it could not get through.

Then his fingers tightened once.

I breathed in through my nose. Thin air scraped my lungs.

Across the room, Victor was still smirking faintly, unaware he had almost become a very expensive problem. The laughter around him had already started to die, not because anyone understood me, but because locker rooms were animals. They sensed shifts before they named them.

Alois released my shoulder. Then he looked at Victor. The room quieted in pieces. Alois did not raise his voice. He did not need to. “Petrov,” he said.

Victor’s smirk twitched. “What?”

“You talk a lot for someone dressed for watching.”

Marco made a sound like he had been punched directly in the joy.

Zee’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God.”

Victor straightened, face flushing. “I’m ready if they need me.”

“No,” Alois said flatly. “You are available if everyone better gets too injured.”

The room erupted.

The laugh that hit Victor came from everywhere at once, loud and brutal and relieved. Marco bent forward, one hand clapped over his mouth like that could contain anything. Zee nearly folded in half. Even Milo looked down, smiling at the floor. Someone on the other side of the room muttered, “Holy shit,” with reverence.

Victor swore under his breath and shoved off the wall. “Screw all of you.”

“You cannot,” Alois replied, turning back toward his stall. “You are scratched.”

The room went off again, the whole ugly moment shifting shape before anyone could hold it still long enough to understand what had almost happened. Victor became the joke. The comment disappeared under the noise. Dylan escaped through the door like a man fleeing a building collapse. Coach shouted from the hallway for us to wrap it up.