Page 18 of Cold Comeback (Richmond Reapers #1)

Chapter twelve

Gideon

I burned the coffee.

In three years of living in the team house, using the same machine, and following the same morning routine, I'd never burned coffee. The bitter smell filled the kitchen while I stared at the pot, wondering when I'd lost control of the simplest tasks.

My hands shook as I dumped the ruined brew and started over. It was not a tremor anyone else would notice, but I felt it in my fingers as I measured grounds twice because I'd lost count the first time. The digital clock on the microwave read 7:12 AM. I was forty-three minutes behind schedule.

Get it together, Sawyer.

I couldn't get it together. Whenever I attempted to focus on something normal—coffee, breakfast, checking my phone for team updates—my mind drifted back to the storage room. I couldn't get the taste of Thatcher out of my mouth. I heard the sounds he made when I touched him.

Then there was the panic that followed. My instinct was to erase what happened and pretend it was a brief lapse in judgment instead of the most real thing I'd felt in years.

My reflection in the bathroom mirror showed the damage. Dark circles under my eyes from three nights of restless sleep since the community center. Jaw tight from grinding my teeth.

I drove to the rink nearly on autopilot—same route, same coffee shop, and same parking spot. Coach doubled up on us—a rare morning practice before an evening game.

"Morning, Cap," Linc called out as I entered the locker room. He was already working on his pre-practice routine.

"Morning." The word came out flat—overly professional.

I settled into my stall and pulled out my stick tape, the blue and white striped roll. My fingers fumbled with the end, unable to find the clean start I needed. I tried again. It still didn't work.

"Here." Knox appeared beside me, wordless, and peeled back the tape end with his thumbnail. "Bad night?"

"Slept fine." That was a lie.

He studied me momentarily, then returned to his own preparation without comment.

Practice was a disaster disguised as routine.

During warm-up laps, I found myself skating behind Thatcher, watching the efficient stroke of his legs and how his shoulders moved. When I realized what I was doing, I accelerated past him so quickly that Pluto called, "Fire drill?"

During passing drills, it got worse. I missed a simple tape-to-tape pass to Linc—something I could do blindfolded on my worst day. The puck skipped wide, and he had to reach to corral it.

"You good?" he asked, skating closer.

"Focus on your own game," I snapped in a ridiculously harsh tone.

Linc's eyebrows rose, but he backed off. Around us, everyone went silent.

During the scrimmage, the wheels came off.

I was playing too tight, second-guessing instincts that had kept me alive on ice for twenty years. When Thatcher made a perfect pass to start a rush, I froze—for a heartbeat—stuck between supporting the play and maintaining the distance I thought I needed.

That heartbeat cost us. The opposing forward read the gap, intercepted my delayed reaction, and buried a wraparound while I was still deciding whether to commit.

"Fuck," Knox muttered from the bench.

Coach's whistle shrieked. "Again!"

The next round wasn't better. I overcompensated, playing too aggressively and taking a risky pinch that left us short-handed when I couldn't get back—another goal against.

Thatcher skated past me during the line change, close enough that our shoulders brushed. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

The concern in his voice nearly broke me. "I'm fine."

By the time practice ended, the locker room felt like a crypt. The Reapers had somehow turned into the victims. The guys packed their gear in silence, the usual post-practice chirping replaced by careful glances and whispered conversations.

I sat in my stall, mechanically folding towels with mathematical precision, trying to project normalcy. "Team meeting in three hours," I announced to the room. "Game prep."

Nods all around. No questions. No jokes. They filed out one by one until only Thatcher remained, sitting across from me with his gear bag half-packed.

"Gideon—"

"See you at the meeting," I cut him off, not looking up from my towel.

He sat there for another moment, then left without another word.

On game days at home, I had a routine I could execute in my sleep. Same pre-game meal. Same arrival time. Same warm-up playlist in my headphones.

When I stood to deliver my pre-game speech—the captain's address that was supposed to fire up the team and set the tone—the words sounded like they came from someone else's mouth.

"Play our system and support each other. Sixty minutes of our best hockey."

Generic captain-speak. Safe, boring, and uninspiring. The kind of speech that gets polite nods and blank stares.

Knox caught my eye and frowned. Linc shifted uncomfortably. Even Bricks, who usually hung on every word from leadership, looked confused.

I floundered before we even took the ice.

The game was everything I'd feared it would be.

In the first period, I played like I was thinking three moves ahead and two moves behind simultaneously. Every decision carried the weight of my captaincy, my reputation, and my efforts to keep my personal life from destroying my professional one.

The opening faceoff set the tone. I won the draw clean, but instead of immediately moving the puck up to Linc like we'd practiced a thousand times, I held it for a beat too long—caught between the play I should make and the fear of making any play at all.

Norfolk's center stripped it from my stick and sent it behind our net.

"Move it, Cap!" Knox barked from the blue line.

When Thatcher carried the puck up the left side on a clean breakout, my instincts screamed at me to support the rush and get open for the trailer pass. Instead, I hesitated, wary of what it would look like if I helped him succeed.

By the ten-minute mark, I'd missed two simple outlet passes and fumbled a routine poke check at our blue line. The home crowd grew restless. On the bench, Coach kept glancing at me.

The second period brought a different kind of disaster.

I overcompensated for my tentative first period by playing like I had something to prove to everyone in the building. Started throwing hits at everything that moved, chasing their skill players into corners like I was twenty years old and trying to make the team.

The aggression worked for eight minutes. I caught their winger with a clean check along the boards that had the crowd on its feet. Stripped the puck from their center at center ice and fed Pluto for a scoring chance. For a moment, I was the captain they needed me to be.

Then Norfolk's power play unit came out.

Their left wing—a kid who couldn't be older than twenty-two—made a move at the blue line that left me flat-footed. Instead of reading the play and adjusting my position, I panicked. Lunged for a hit that was never there. Caught him with my elbow up, two seconds after he'd released the puck.

The referee's arm went up immediately. "Number six, Richmond, two minutes for interference!"

Norfolk scored thirty-seven seconds into the power play. A simple give-and-go that I would have broken up if I'd been on the ice instead of sitting in the box, watching my blunder turn into a goal against us.

The third period was when everything truly fell apart.

Norfolk had taken a 2-1 lead early in the period, and desperation was setting in on our bench. Coach rolled the lines shorter, giving the top guys more ice time. I should have been the steadying presence, the veteran leader who calmed everyone down and organized the comeback.

Instead, I fought a war inside my head.

With six minutes left, we finally tied it. Linc scored off a scramble in front, and the crowd erupted. I thought we might pull it together. Maybe my personal crisis wouldn't completely derail the team.

Then, with three minutes remaining, Thatcher made a play that should have been highlight-reel material.

He stripped the puck from their defenseman at their blue line, a perfectly timed poke check that left two Norfolk players chasing ghosts.

He drew the remaining defenseman and their center toward him, creating space in the high slot—where I should have been.

I'd been there a hundred times before in my career.

He looked for me, his head turning slightly as he protected the puck with his body. I saw the pass developing before he made it, could visualize the puck hitting my tape, and saw myself one-timing it past their goalie for the game-winner.

Instead of following my instincts and driving hard to the net, I pulled up. Just for a second. Long enough to think about what it meant to be there for him, to trust him, and to let myself be part of something I was too scared to name.

In hockey, a second is everything. Their goalie read the hesitation and cheated toward my position. When Thatcher's pass finally came—perfectly weighted, exactly where it should have been—the shooting lane had closed.

The puck skipped off my stick and wide of the net. The crowd's anticipation died in groans of frustration.

With ninety-seven seconds left in a tied game, Norfolk scored on a simple two-on-one that developed because I was still in their zone, having balked again.

Final score: Norfolk 3, Richmond 2.

Thatcher skated past me on his way to the handshake line. He didn't say anything, but the look he gave me said everything. Not angry. Not disappointed. Just sad, like he was watching someone he cared about disappear.

The locker room afterward was like a wake.

Coach's speech was mercifully brief. "Mental mistakes cost us tonight. We're better than this, but being better means playing better. Figure it out."

He didn't look at me when he said it, but everyone else did—quick glances, then eyes on something else. The weight of their disappointment settled on my shoulders like a lead blanket.

One by one, they filed out. No post-game discussions. No team bonding. No staying late to rehash plays or talk through what went wrong.

Knox lingered by the door, clearly wanting to say something. Then, Thatcher appeared beside him, and Knox shook his head slightly. They left together.

I sat alone in the empty locker room, staring at my hands.

You're losing it, Sawyer. You're losing everything.

Twenty minutes later, I was still sitting there when Wren appeared in the doorway.

"Team's gone," she said, settling onto the bench across from me. "Want to tell me what that was?"

"Bad game. Happens."

"Bullshit." Her voice was sharp, cutting. "That wasn't a bad game. That was a captain having a nervous breakdown in slow motion while nineteen other guys tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with their leader."

I looked up, ready to defend myself, but the expression on her face stopped me cold.

"I don't know what's eating you," she continued, "but it's contagious and it's spreading to the whole team.

They're walking on eggshells around you.

During warm-ups, Linc asked me if you were sick.

Pluto wanted to know if there was family trouble.

Even Knox—Knox—pulled me aside to ask if the organization was planning changes. "

Each word was a hit I couldn't block. "I'm handling it."

"You're not handling anything. You're a ghost, Gideon. A captain's job isn't to be perfect. It's to be present. Right now, you're neither."

The truth of it hit like a punch to the solar plexus. My identity was in trouble. The team that trusted me to lead them was watching me fall apart, and I was too caught up in my own fear to see the damage I was causing.

Wren's tone turned gentle. "They look up to you, all of them. They feel it when you disappear into whatever's going on in your head. They think they did something wrong. They think you've given up on them."

"I haven't given up on them."

"Then prove it. I don't want to watch you wreck yourself. You need to start by not giving up on yourself."

She left me there with her observation echoing off the walls.

When I returned to my apartment at the team house, I watched film from the game, but seeing my misjudged plays in slow motion only made everything worse. I tried reading, but the words swam on the page.

At 2 AM, I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, when the breaking point finally arrived.

I'd failed my team, as their captain, their leader on the ice. All because I was too scared to admit what everyone could already see—that I was falling for Thatcher Drake, and not knowing how to handle it was tearing me apart.

My phone sat on the nightstand, screen dark, waiting.

I picked it up, opened our message thread, and stared at the blank text box. I typed and deleted a dozen messages. Apologies. Explanations. Excuses.

Finally, before I could stop myself again, I typed four words:

Gideon: wish you were here

I hit send before retreating into the safe, controlled distance I'd maintained.

The response came back almost instantly, like he'd been waiting.

Thatcher: I'm just down the hall

I stared at those words until they blurred. He was in the same house as me, maybe twenty steps away—close enough to touch, if I was brave enough to reach out.

Suddenly, I felt something other than fear.

I felt hope.