Page 16

Chapter sixteen

Pike

T he locker room greeted me with its familiar cocktail of eucalyptus balm and stale coffee, but everything felt wrong. My clothes from yesterday clung to my skin—same jeans, same wrinkled henley that still carried the ghost of that sandalwood smell Carver loved. I'd managed maybe two hours of sleep, mostly staring at my ceiling and replaying his words on an endless loop.

We were always temporary.

The phrase continued to burrow under my skin like a splinter for two nights now, working deeper with each passing hour.

I rounded the corner to find him already at his stall, methodically threading laces through eyelets with the precision of a surgeon. His shoulders hunched forward, creating a wall of muscle and silence that screamed stay away .

My feet carried me closer before my brain could intervene. I blurted out the question that haunted me. "Was this just... exploration? A phase you're gonna forget the second I'm gone?"

Carver's hands froze. He didn't look up.

"It wasn't nothing."

The non-answer provided zero comfort. "Then what the hell was it?"

He looked up, dark circles under his eyes. "Pike..."

"No." I stepped close enough to smell the mint toothpaste on his breath. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to look at me like I'm some naive kid who doesn't understand how the world works."

His back straightened. When he spoke, each word was calculated. "The timing's shit. You've got this opportunity, and I won't be the thing that distracts you from—"

"You already let it mess with everything." A sharp, brittle laugh escaped me. "You think pretending none of this happened will make it easier? You think I can flip a switch and forget?"

Carver's knuckles went white around his skate laces. "We agreed—"

"We agreed to honesty. Remember that rule? The one about telling each other the hard stuff?" My voice cracked, showing more emotion than I wanted.

He stood then, towering over me in the narrow space between stalls. For a second, I thought he might reach for me. Instead, he grabbed his helmet and stick.

"I need to get on the ice."

He brushed past me, with his shoulder grazing mine with enough force to send me stumbling back a step. It was a brutal reminder of everything we'd built that he was determined to tear down.

I stared at the empty space where he'd been.

Coach had us running two-on-one drills, the kind Carver and I could execute blindfolded on a good day. Now, we moved like strangers forced to dance to music neither of us could hear.

He fed me a pass at the blue line—too hard, too high. It sailed over my stick and into the corner boards with a hollow clang. I retrieved it without looking at him.

"Communication!" Coach barked from the bench. "I want to hear voices out there!"

The following sequence was worse. Carver held the puck longer than I expected. When he finally released it, I'd already committed to a different path. The puck skittered harmlessly to Mercier, who gloved it with an expression that combined confusion and concern.

"What the hell was that?" TJ skated over during the brief whistle, gesturing between us. "You two having a lovers' quarrel or something?"

The blood drained from my face. TJ meant it as a joke—his usual needling—but the words were harsh. I caught Carver's reaction in my peripheral vision: a barely perceptible flinch, followed by the careful reconstruction of his public mask.

I rattled off nothing words. "Just off our timing. Happens to everyone."

TJ wasn't buying it. Neither was Mercier, who'd been watching us with those sharp goalie eyes that missed nothing. Even Monroe kept glancing our way; his brow furrowed with the particular concern of someone witnessing a car accident in slow motion.

Coach reset the drill and paired us with Lambert for a three-man rush. Simple. Basic. The kind of play we'd converted in our sleep.

Carver carried the puck up the left wing, Lambert filling the middle lane. I positioned myself on the right, timing my acceleration to create the perfect triangle. The defense bit on Carver's fake, opening a lane that should have been automatic.

He passed to Lambert instead.

The puck sailed clean. Lambert buried it, and Mercier fished it from his net with theatrical frustration, but I knew—and Carver knew I knew—that the pass should have been mine. He'd chosen the safe option that avoided a connection between us.

When we regrouped for the next rush, I cut inside earlier than planned, forcing Carver to adjust his approach. He tried to thread a pass through traffic. It deflected off a defender's skate and trickled weakly toward the corner.

"Pike!" Carver's voice cracked like a whip across the ice. "What the fuck was that?"

I spun to face him, years of practiced restraint evaporating instantly. "What was what? Me trying to create space while you're playing like we've never met?"

"You jumped the play—"

"I jumped nothing! You're the one passing like I've got the plague!"

Suddenly, the rink was silent except for the mechanical hum of refrigeration units. Twenty pairs of eyes fixed on us, watching our professional facades crumble in real time.

TJ's mouth hung open. Mercier was still. Even the assistant coaches stopped their clipboard scribbling.

Coach's whistle pierced the air with three sharp blasts. "Carver! Pike! Off the ice. Now."

I followed Carver toward the bench, each stride feeling like a march toward execution. The other players gave us a wide berth. No one wanted to witness whatever was about to happen in Coach's office.

The office was always small. Today, it felt tiny as he barked at us in a gravelly voice. "I don't know what's happening with you two, but it ends now. You're off the line together until you figure it out."

I nodded, jaw clenched so tight my molars ached. Carver sat statue-still beside me, close enough that I could smell his deodorant, but he might as well have been on another planet. When Coach dismissed us, we filed out silently, careful not to brush shoulders in the narrow doorway.

Neither of us spoke. What was there to say? We'd torched our professional relationship in full view of the team, confirming every worst-case scenario we'd whispered about in dark moments.

My drive home passed in a blur of gray November streets and traffic lights that lingered too long on red. The apartment building sat like a monument to loneliness.

Inside, I dropped my gear bag by the door and shuffled to the couch, still wearing my practice clothes. The fabric clung to my skin, damp with sweat.

My phone sat on the coffee table; the screen was dark and accusatory. No messages. No missed calls. No sign that Carver was wrestling with the same demons as me.

I picked up the device, thumbs hovering over the keyboard.

Started typing:

Are you really done?

Deleted it.

We should talk.

Deleted that too.

I'm sorry for—

Gone before I could finish the thought.

What was I apologizing for? Caring too much? Wanting something real? Believing that what we'd built together was worth fighting for?

A protein shake bottle caught my eye from across the room—one of Carver's fancy chocolate peanut butter ones, sitting forgotten on my kitchen counter. He'd left it there three days ago when my apartment felt like a place where two people lived.

The sight of it made the dam break. A raw and animal sound—half sob, half growl—escaped me. My shoulders shook, and my vision blurred as the tears suddenly rained down.

I'd cried after losses before and cried when my grandfather died. I cried the night before leaving home for college, but this was different. This was the sound of something fundamental breaking.

I grabbed the nearest thing—my practice hoodie balled up on the arm of the couch—and hurled it across the room. It struck the protein shake bottle with a hollow thunk, sending it tumbling to the floor, where it rolled in a lazy circle before coming to rest against the refrigerator.

Freezing rain began pattering against my windows as evening deepened into night, each drop matching the rhythm of my unraveling. I sat in the growing darkness, surrounded by the debris of a life that had felt full only twenty-four hours ago.

My phone remained silent. The bottle stayed on the floor. And somewhere across town, Carver was probably sleeping peacefully, already moving on from whatever temporary thing we'd been.

Sleep refused to come. I tried everything—counting ceiling tiles like Carver taught me, deep breathing exercises from my college sports psych class, even scrolling mindlessly through social media until my eyes burned. Nothing worked. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw his face in Coach's office: blank, professional, and already a stranger.

At one-thirty, I gave up and pulled on yesterday's jeans and a thick hoodie. The rain had intensified, drumming against my windows with the persistence of an interrogation. Ice was gathering on the sidewalks below. It was perfect weather for bad decisions.

The streets were nearly empty. More intelligent people were staying home. When I fishtailed halfway to Carver's, I thought for a moment that perhaps I should turn around.

Then, his building rose before me like a fortress, all red brick and narrow windows. A single light glowed in what I knew was his living room. He was awake, too.

I stood on the sidewalk in the pelting rain for five minutes, considering the wisdom of what I was about to do. It wasn't some casual conversation we could laugh off later. It would define everything—whether we fought for what we'd built or let it die in the wreckage of professional expectations.

The rain intensified, driving into my face with enough force to blur my vision. My hoodie had transformed into a waterlogged anchor, dragging at my shoulders with every step, but I climbed the concrete steps anyway.

At Carver's door, I hesitated. My hand hovered inches from the painted wood, trembling from the damp cold. What if he didn't answer? What if he did answer, but his expression told me everything I needed to know before I could get a word out?

I knocked once.

Nothing.

I knocked again, harder this time. The sound echoed in the narrow hallway.

Footsteps approached from inside—heavy, cautious. A pause. Then, the soft click of a deadbolt turning.

The door swung open to reveal Carver in gray sweatpants and a worn Forge t-shirt, hair sticking up at odd angles like he'd been running his hands through it. His eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed with a kind of exhaustion that mirrored my own. He took in my soaked appearance without surprise as if he'd been expecting this moment since I'd left his apartment the night before.

"Jesus Christ, Pike." His voice was rough. "You're drowning out there."

I didn't move from the threshold, rain dripping from my hair onto his doormat. We stared at each other across the space of eighteen inches that might as well have been an ocean.

My words came out in a rush. "Was I a mistake—or were you just scared?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. No sound emerged.

His dark eyes searched my face intensely. I stood there dripping on his doorstep, heart hammering against my ribs, waiting for an answer that would either save us or destroy the last fragile thread holding us together.