Page 29 of Offensive Edge
It was a welcome evacuation. The longer Theo was nice to him like this, the harder it would be when they reached equilibrium again, and Theo remembered he hated him.
Rowan hopped onto the ice a few minutes before the other guys to skate a couple laps in the Honda Center alone. He breathed in refrigerated air. He wasn’t back to full strength yet, but he was about eighty percent there, and he was always ready to get back on the ice.
* * *
For a back-to-back, with travel, the Anaheim Tigers were a good team to play on the second night. They were bottom in the league, and had won so few games that season that it was clear they had lost their belief in themselves. It was a little hard to watch, and coming from a team much like the Tigers himself, Rowan had sympathy for them.
Being consistently terrible can mean a few things, but for the Tigers, it meant they ramped up their physical game. They had a third liner who had been accused of hurting players on purpose, and that night before they stepped out onto the ice, their coach reminded them to keep an eye out for Erik Jones, a big, blond linebacker of a hockey player who didn’t have any reservations when it came to the PIM he racked up.
By the third period, the Tigers were clearly frustrated. The Serpents were up 6–1, and Rowan naively thought they had outrun the risk of things getting scrappy. He was back on Theo’s line, and playing next to him gave Rowan the energy he needed to get his recovering body through the game.
Rowan caught the puck on the toe of his stick off a slick pass from Vic in their D-zone, and sent it across the ice to Theo, who was in the slot. The second Theo got the puck on his stick, though, Jones slammed into him in open ice. Theo’s body left the ice, suspended in the air for what felt like forever, before landing so hard Rowan thought he heard his helmet crack.
The refs hadn’t called the play down, but Rowan was already seeing red. He tossed his gloves off as he went after Jones, shoving him in the chest. “What the fuck was that about?” he screamed. Jones just laughed.
“I’m not hitting Rowan Foley,” he said with an eye roll.
“Well, Rowan Foley is fucking hitting you,” he said, grabbing Jones’ jersey at the neck and swinging.
Rowan had never been in a fight before. Not even in junior hockey. Sometimes he got in scuffles, but he had never thrown hands.
His fist connected with Jones’ jaw, but he wasn’t cocky enough to believe it was anything other than luck.
“Oh, kid,” Jones said, pity in his voice before he hit Rowan hard enough in the side of his head that his helmet popped off.
Distantly, he knew the officials were circling them. Rowan got another couple of punches in as Jones let him know why Rowan had never been in a fight before (getting hit in the head hurt a lot), but Rowan’s punches mostly caught helmet, not flesh.
“That’s enough,” Jones said, getting his arms around Rowan to pin Rowan’s arms to his sides and end the fight. It would have been embarrassing, but he didn’t give a shit. He could only think about Theo. The linesmen pulled them apart, and as soon as Rowan’s head stopped spinning, he saw Theo’s body on the ice, two trainers tending to him. Slowly, Theo picked himself up off the ice and Rowan was at his side as quickly as he could be.
“Hey,” a referee yelled after him, “head down the tunnel. You’re done for tonight.”
Rowan hadn’t had his penalties assessed yet, but his guess was a game misconduct for instigating, or something. He didn’t care. There were eight minutes left in the game, and Theo wasn’t playing them from the look of him. Rowan wouldn’t either.
Trainers led Theo straight to an exam room. He was unsteady on his feet, and Rowan pressed a hand to his lower back to keep him upright. His balance issues did not bode well for his concussion screening.
A trainer directed the two of them toward stations next to each other. Rowan’s knuckles were cracked and bleeding and would be bruised by tomorrow. His head hurt. But he was grateful to be injured so he could be here next to Theo. He wasn’t getting kicked out of the room.
“You’re going to have a shiner, and a fat lip, too,” the trainer, Avery, said as Rowan jumped up to sit on the exam table. He pulled his jersey off over his head, and ripped his shoulder pads off next, dropping them on the ground. He let Avery tend to his hand and his face while he tried to listen in on the SCAT5 exam Theo was going through. Standard concussion protocol.
“You did not pass that test,” Daniel, the team physician, said.
“Fuuuuuck,” Theo said. His eyes were closed, body staying still. Thinking about his head made Rowan’s head ache in sympathy. Or maybe it was because of his own head injuries.
“You next,” Daniel said, and Rowan had to prove his brain hadn’t been bruised. “Okay, well, good news for the Serpents. We aren’t out both golden boys at once. You’re good to play, Foley. We’ll want to tape up your knuckles so you don’t bleed into your glove for the next game or two, but your head is fine.”
Daniel entered the information into his iPad as Avery tended to a cut on Theo’s cheek. Rowan didn’t see where it came from, but he thought his visor could be the culprit.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Theo said, his voice quiet.
“Jones really laid you out,” Avery said. “We can check later to see if he got a penalty for it. But then your boy Foley dropped gloves to fight for your honor.”
“Rowan doesn’t fight.”
“Yeah, I learned why tonight,” Rowan said. His hand hurt and his head hurt and his face hurt, but it was worth it to see Theo laugh a little.
“You actually hit someone?”
“Not well.”
