Page 7

I almost laugh.

Alec, our captain, retired midseason after injuring his knee one too many times. Coach has been giving different guys the opportunity to be captain or alternate for games. I’ve worn the C on my jersey twice. We lost both games, and I had nothing to say in the locker room.

Logan speaks up, and Felix always has something smart to say when he wants to. Van’s always running his mouth, though not in a captain kind of way. There might be a bit of a power vacuum going on, but I am not the one to fill the void.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“It’s hard to see in yourself what others see in you.”

“Maybe, but you’re wrong about this.”

Coach sighs heavily. “I don’t need you to believe it—not yet. I just need you todoit. Help out today, Cole.”

I stand. “I wish I could help out, but I can’t.”

Coach sizes me up for a moment, like he’s trying to read what is a very closed book. I haven’t talked to anyone about anything since last summer, no matter how much they’ve all pried. I’m not going to crack for Coach.

I’m not.

He keeps staring.

I’m probably not going to crack.

Thankfully, he speaks before I do. “I know we don’t need to talk about this until the summer, but are you thinking you want to stick around?”

My contract is up this summer, and my agent has been asking the same questions. I’ve been dancing around an answer for a while now.

I like it here, but … I don’t know. It’s been two years, and signing a contract to stay longer feels like such a commitment. I’m honestly surprised Coach is even asking, considering how I’ve played this year. But he doesn’t make the final decision, so he’s probably just getting a feel for where my head’s at.

Too bad my head is miles away. On the same island where it’s been since summer.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I tell him.

“Sure. You’ve got time,” Coach says, but I can see his disappointment.

Time for a topic change. “That meeting seemed pretty intense. Everything okay with the bigwigs?”

Coach’s lip lifts in the smallest of sneers. I’ve yet to meet anyone who genuinely likes the Appies’ owner, Larry Jenson. Instead of hiring a general manager to handle the business and team, he’s a control freak of the highest degree and has insisted on acting as both. Which wouldn’t be terrible ifheweren’t terrible.

The Appies’ success has very little to do with him or his decisions, though he definitely gives himself all the credit for it. And the past year or two, he’s been running the organization into the ground, insisting on all kinds of extra events to capitalize on the viral social media success the team has had.

Like this youth hockey thing, which normally would not be run by pro hockey players.

“Nothing new,” Coach says, then mutters, “And nothing good.”

As I remember the snatches of conversation—yelling, really—I heard when I walked up, the uncomfortable feeling that’s been swirling in my gut intensifies.

“Do we need to be worried?”

“Honestly,” he says with a heavy sigh, “I don’t know.”

Maybe I don’t need to worry about signing an extension after all.

Coach’s words and the defeated look in his eyes hang over me as I head through the locker room to grab my bags. Despite the urgency to get home still pounding like a drum in my head, I take the long way and pass the rink. Maybe because I’m curious or because I feel guilty about saying no.

Whatever the reason, I find myself on our bench, glancing out at the chaos. Kids from toddlers to pre-teens are skating or falling or holding onto the walls. Some have sticks and are clearly familiar with hockey while others appear to be on skates for the very first time. Cones and long black pads break the rink up into stations, though there is little order. Groups of parents watch from the stands, some pressed close to the glass, phones up and filming.

Eli, one of my teammates, catches my eye from where two little kids are whacking him on the shins with their hockey sticks.Help, he mouths.