Page 22

“Steele! Off the ice!”

I push up, breathing hard. The world feels tilted. Coach’s expression is unreadable. Aiden’s glare is not.

“Bench. Now.”

“No chance that was—”

Aiden gives me one look, the kind that says shut up or pack your shit. I don’t fight it. I just skate off, the friction of the blades hissing like steam venting from a pipe about to burst.

I drop onto the bench and grip my stick like it’s the only thing keeping me from breaking. My heart is pounding in my throat.

What the hell is wrong with me?

This isn’t who I want to be. Not anymore. But I can’t shake this bitterness gnawing under my ribs. I’m sick of being someone else’s success story. Coach Dawson molded me into a player good enough to stand here. But the price? I had to cut away parts of myself to fit the frame he wanted.

The NHL isn’t just about talent. It’s politics. Perception. Leverage. And yeah, I’ve jumped teams for bigger contracts. Who the fuck wouldn’t, with a window this short and a body that breaks so easily?

But guys like Brody? They think it’s all handed to me. That I’m here because I was someone’s golden boy.

They don’t know the nights I iced bruises he gave me ‘for discipline.’ The meals I skipped because proving loyalty meant staying at the gym until midnight. The injuries I played through to “toughen up. Dawson raised winners. But he didn’t raise men.

I’m trying to be my own man now.But this team—this league—it doesn’t give a damn who you used to be. It only cares what you are on the ice today.

And today, I lost control. And that can’t fucking happen again.

I can’t afford it. Not with eyes watching. Not with Griffin circling like a goddamn vulture, just waiting for me to fuck up so he can sink his claws in and rip me apart.

Which is bullshit, of course.Because that’s all I am. A walking target since day one in the Reapers locker room. Griffin made sure of that. That smug bastard didn’t just make it hard—he made it hell. Elbows to the ribs in drills, ‘accidental’ slashes in scrimmage. Always in the coach’s ear. Always flashing that fake team-first bullshit like he wasn’t the one throwing elbows the second the cameras turned.

He didn’t lead. He played politics. Knew who to kiss up to, who to throw under the bus.

Me? I was easy to bury. I didn’t smile. I didn’t schmooze. I just played hard—and maybe too fucking hard when it came to him.

If I ever see him again…I’ll take the damn fine. I’ll take the suspension.I want his face against the boards and my fist breaking every smug tooth in his fucking mouth.

Because I’m done bleeding for assholes like him.

Give me a locker room, no cameras, no suits watching, and I’d pin him to the wall and crack his ribs one by one—just for sport.

But this league doesn’t run on justice. It runs on stats, silence, and reputation.

So I swallow it down and keep skating.

Even when it burns.

Even when it rots me out from the inside.

Because the second I let it slip—let him get in my head—I lose my grip. that’s cracked more than once under pressure. And when I lose control, I become the version of me they all warned about.

But that night...

Jesus.

That fucking masked night, I owned control.

Still. I wasn’t always like this.

There was one night—just one—where I didn’t feel caged. Where I didn’t feel like the guy holding it all together by a thread.