Page 19
Story: Off-Limits as Puck
Jealousy tastes like copper and skates like violence, so I channel both into the ice until my edges could cut glass.
Five a.m. practice isn’t mandatory, but I’m here anyway, running drills in the empty rink like I can outskate the image of Chelsea smiling at that trainer.
Jake. Even his name sounds like underwear model bullshit.
Jake with his easy smile and normal job and ability to take her for coffee without it being a federal fucking incident.
I slam puck after puck into the net, each shot harder than the last. The sound echoes in the empty arena—rubber on ice, on steel, on boards. A rhythm that almost drowns out my thoughts.
Almost.
“Trying to murder the net?”
I turn to find Dez Lawrence hovering at the rink entrance, gear bag in hand. The rookie I knocked around in practice last week, looking uncertain but determined.
“Just warming up,” I say, firing another shot that rings the crossbar.
“At five in the morning?”
“You’re here too.”
“Yeah, but I suck. What’s your excuse?”
Despite everything, I almost smile. The kid’s got balls, showing up after I used him as a tackling dummy.
“Get dressed,” I tell him. “If you’re gonna be here, might as well work.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re running passing drills, and the kid’s worse than I thought. His hand-eye coordination is decent, but his positioning is garbage, and he telegraphs every move like he’s sending smoke signals.
“Stop thinking so hard,” I call after his fifth failed attempt at a simple give-and-go. “You’re playing chess when this is checkers.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve been doing this since birth.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was four. There’s a difference.” I skate over, demonstrating the proper stance. “Look, you’re overthinking. Hockey’s instinct. The second you start analyzing, you’re already behind.”
“So what, just... feel it?”
“Yeah. Feel it.” Like I felt Chelsea come apart in my arms. Like I feel her absence now. “Trust your body to know what to do.”
We run it again. This time, Dez receives the pass cleanly, pivots without hesitation, and sends it back tape-to-tape.
“Holy shit,” he breathes.
“There you go. Again.”
We work for another hour, and something shifts. Not just in his playing—though that improves dramatically—but in the air between us. The wariness fades, replaced by focus and maybe trust. By the time the rest of the team starts filtering in, Dez is moving like a different player.
“Thanks,” he says as we head to the locker room. “For this. After last week, I thought—”
“Last week I was an asshole. This week I’m trying to be less of one.”
Chelsea walks past the locker room entrance, coffee in hand, not looking our way. My chest tightens.
“Work in progress,” I admit.
Coach finds me after official practice, pulling me aside with an expression I can’t read.
“That was good work with Lawrence this morning.”
“You saw that?”
“I see everything.” He crosses his arms. “The kid’s been struggling. Confidence shot. What you did out there—that’s leadership.”
The word sits strange in my chest. Leadership. Not exactly what I’m known for.
“Just helping out,” I mumble.
“No, you were teaching. Mentoring. That’s what this team needs—veterans who give a damn about development.” He pauses. “It’s what you could be, Hendrix. If you get out of your own way.”
He leaves me standing there, processing. Through the window, I spot Chelsea in her office, and our eyes meet across the distance. Something flickers across her face—surprise? approval? —before she looks away.
The rest of the day is a careful dance of avoidance. I skip my session, sending a text about a phantom injury that she definitely doesn’t believe. She spends lunch with Jake in the cafeteria, laughing at something on his phone while I pretend not to watch from across the room.
“You’re pathetic,” Weston informs me, sliding into the seat beside me. “Just talk to her.”
“Who?”
“Don’t insult my intuition or my intelligence.” He steals a fry from my plate. “Whatever happened at the retreat—”
“Nothing happened.”
“Right. Nothing happened so hard that you’re mentoring rookies and she’s fake-dating the trainer.” He gives me a look. “Fix it before it affects the team.”
“It won’t affect the team.”
“It already is. You played like shit last night after seeing them together. Nearly took off Thompson’s head with that check.”
“That was a legal hit.”
“Legal and necessary are different things.” He stands, clapping my shoulder. “Talk to her, Nic. Or move on. But this angry pining bullshit? It’s beneath you.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But knowing and doing are different animals, and I’m too fucked up to figure out which one to chase.
That night, I stay late reviewing game tape, trying to lose myself in strategy and statistics. The facility empties out slowly—staff heading home, players to whatever lives they’ve built outside these walls. By ten, it’s just me and the ghosts of bad decisions.
I’m heading to my car when I see Chelsea’s at her vehicle in the nearly empty parking garage, struggling with two bags of…
paperwork? Maybe? And she’s fumbling for her keys.
Every instinct in me screams to help her, but she got me out of her system and now she has Jake who’s probably waiting at her apartment with wine and good intentions.
Fuck it.
I jog over, reaching for the bags. “Let me—”
“I’ve got it.” She jerks back, sending binders flat onto the concrete.
We both freeze, then drop to gather the scattered papers. Our hands brush reaching for the same binder, and the contact burns.
“Reed—”
“How’s Jake?”
“He’s fine.” She stands, arms full of unorganized papers. “Not that it’s your business.”
“Right. Nothing’s my business. Not who you date, not who you—”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll throw these bags at your head.”
Despite everything, I almost laugh. “Violence? From the team therapist? What would management think?”
“Management would think you drove me to it.” She shifts the bags, keys jangling. “Why do you care anyway? About Jake?”
“I don’t.”
“Could’ve fooled me with the death glare you gave him.”
“That was just my face.”
“Your face when you’re jealous.”
The word hangs between us, too honest for the echo of this garage.
“I’m not—” But I can’t finish the lie. “Fine. He’s not right for you.”
“And you are?” She laughs, but it sounds like breaking. “Reed, you’re not right for anyone. You’re chaos in skates. You’re every bad decision I’ve ever wanted to make wrapped in game misconduct penalties.”
“And Jake’s what? Safe? Boring? Everything I’m not?”
“Yes!” The word explodes from her. “He’s safe and boring and doesn’t make me want to throw away everything I’ve worked for. He doesn’t keep me up at night. He doesn’t make me feel like I’m drowning every time he looks at me.”
“But does he make you feel alive?”
She goes still. “That’s not—”
“Does he make you laugh until you can’t breathe? Does he know you bite your lip when you’re thinking? Does he know about the freckle?”
“Stop.”
“Does he know you’re just using him to prove something? To me, to yourself, to—”
“At least I’m trying!” Her voice cracks. “At least I’m attempting normal instead of whatever this is. This... this violent orbit where we destroy each other a little more each time we collide.”
The words are accurate and devastating. Because she’s right. We are destroying each other. Have been since Vegas.
“You’re right,” I say quietly. “We should stay away from each other.”
Something shifts in her expression—surprise, maybe hurt. Like she expected me to fight harder.
“Yes,” she agrees. “We should.”
I help her load the bags of paperwork into her car in silence. When she drives away, I head inside instead of home. Back to my tape review, my strategies, my carefully constructed hockey life that makes sense.
This hurts more than anger. More than jealousy. This quiet acceptance that we’re wrong for each other, that Jake with his normal smile and appropriate boundaries is what she needs.
My phone buzzes. A text from Dez thanking me again for the morning session, saying he’s never played better. At least something good came from this disaster of a day.
Table of Contents
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- Page 19 (Reading here)
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