Page 22

Twenty Two

Logan

I leaned back against the locker, my mind not on the game, but on Ava. It was the fire in her eyes, the sharp way she could cut through my bullshit, the way her voice softened when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.

Damn it.

My body stirred with thoughts I had no business entertaining in the middle of a locker room, surrounded by sweaty teammates and the smell of stale equipment. Shit. I shifted in my seat, pretending to adjust the laces on my skates to cover the sudden heat crawling up my neck.

Focus, Bennett.

I exhaled slowly, forcing myself to look around the room. The pre-game hum was in full swing—guys hyping each other up, last-minute gear checks, and Coach’s usual gruff pep talk lingering in the air. It should’ve been comforting, grounding.

Across the room, Darren Rivers sat in his stall, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here. His shoulders were hunched, his head down, and his hands fidgeted endlessly with the tape on his stick.

It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed him acting off. Over the past few games, Darren had been quieter than usual, shrinking into the background as much as someone could on a professional hockey team. At first, I chalked it up to rookie nerves. That pressure to perform, to show you belong. It’s easy to mistake silence for focus, especially in this league—hell, half the guys on our roster wear their intensity like armor. But this? This felt different.

He should be lit up with adrenaline. We were on the road, in a tough barn, playing high-stakes hockey—and Darren had earned his spot on this line. This was what we’d trained for, fought for. The kind of moment you dream about when you’re young and the rink lights buzz above your head and your gear still doesn’t fit right. He should’ve been alive out there.

But instead, he looked… dulled. Muted. Like someone had dimmed him from the inside out.

I watched him now, shoulders curved inward as he sat at the end of the bench, helmet still on like he didn’t want to be seen. He didn’t look at the scoreboard. Didn’t say a word between shifts. Not even a chirp or a nod. The spark that used to light in his eyes the second his skates hit the ice—it was gone.

The flicker of unease that had been trailing me all week started to tighten in my chest.

Something was wrong.

And it was starting to bleed into his game—hesitation in his passes, a half-second delay in his zone entries, a kind of tentative energy that made him feel like a stranger in his own body. You don’t always need a stat sheet to tell you when something’s off. Sometimes, it’s a feeling in your gut. An instinct.

I knew that feeling well.

It reminded me of those long hours on the ice when I was younger, long before scouts and contracts and televised games. When it was just me, a net, and the sound of my blade carving into the ice. I used to stay late, until the rink lights went dim and the cold started to bite through my gloves. I’d line up puck after puck, chasing some version of perfect I couldn’t name yet. Most of the time, I missed. Wild shots. Over the crossbar. Wide of the post. But every now and then, I’d hit it just right. That crisp snap, the clean arc of the puck, the sharp ping of iron—it would all line up.

That’s when I learned to feel the difference. When you’ve spent enough time in the quiet, repeating the same motion over and over, you start to notice the smallest shifts. A change in grip. The angle of your shoulders. Where your weight sits on your skates. It becomes muscle memory, sure—but it also becomes something deeper. You start to recognize the moments when something isn’t right , even if you can’t explain it.

That’s what watching Darren felt like.

Like a shot you know should have gone in—but didn’t. Something off in the mechanics. A hitch that didn’t used to be there. It wasn’t physical—his stride still looked good, his hands still moved. But the energy was wrong. The rhythm.

I’d seen players crack before. Not just under pressure, but under something heavier. Stuff you couldn’t see on the stat line. Family shit. Mental load. Personal storms that no amount of tape review could fix.

I didn’t know what Darren was carrying. But I knew this wasn’t about hockey anymore.

And I hated the way it pulled at me—this urge to fix it. To say something. To do something. But I also knew what it felt like to be watched too closely when you were trying to hold your pieces together. Push too hard, and people retreat. Call it out too soon, and you risk making them fold altogether.

Coach barked out a call to the ice. I pushed to my feet, shaking off the distraction. Darren didn’t move, still staring down at his skates like they might offer answers to whatever was eating him alive.

“Rivers,” I called, my voice sharp enough to catch his attention. He flinched, looking up at me with wide eyes.

“Yeah?”

“You coming, or what?” I asked, nodding toward the tunnel.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m coming.” He fumbled with his gear, his movements jerky as he grabbed his helmet and followed the rest of us out.

The unease in my gut didn’t fade, but there wasn’t time to deal with it. We had a game to win.

***

We hit the ice, and the roar of the crowd crashed over me like a tidal wave. The energy was electric, the opposing team’s fans trying to drown us out with boos while our small pocket of traveling supporters shouted our names. This was the part I lived for—the adrenaline, the noise, the focus.

The puck dropped, and the game started fast, both teams skating hard, sticks slashing at the ice with precision. The other team, the Colorado Colts, was known for their aggressive forechecking, and they weren’t holding back tonight. Every time we got the puck out of our zone, one of their forwards was right there, pressing, hounding, forcing mistakes.

I won my first faceoff against Hanley, their captain, and chipped the puck back to Connor, who sent it around the boards. The Colts crashed the net, trying to jam it in during a chaotic scramble, but our goalie, Trotter, smothered it just in time. The whistle blew, and we reset for another faceoff.

Every shift, I tried to focus on my game, but my attention kept drifting to Darren. He was playing like he didn’t want to be noticed. Staying to the perimeter, making soft dumps into the offensive zone instead of driving the net like he usually did. His timing was off, his passes hesitant. It was like he didn’t trust himself, or worse, like he didn’t trust us.

Midway through the first period, we were down 1–0. The Colts capitalized on a defensive breakdown, cycling the puck low and catching us out of position. I skated to the bench, sucking in deep breaths as Coach barked orders behind me. My chest heaved, sweat dripping down the back of my neck.

“Bennett!” Coach shouted. “Keep the pressure up. They’re not invincible. And someone light a fire under Rivers’ ass!”

I nodded, but when I glanced down the bench at Darren, he was staring into the distance, his helmet tilted low to hide his face. The guy was unraveling right in front of me.

By the second period, we’d tied it up, thanks to a beauty of a goal from Jaymie. He cut through the slot, sniped it top-shelf, and celebrated with his usual over-the-top fist pump. The momentum shifted in our favor, and for a few minutes, it felt like we were in control. But Darren was still off. He got beat on a backcheck, missed an easy breakout pass, and took a careless tripping penalty in the neutral zone.

The Colts scored on the power play, an easy one-timer off a cross-crease pass that left Trotter no chance. Back on the bench, Darren slammed his stick against the boards, splinters flying as he cursed under his breath.

I leaned over. “Get your head in the game,” I said low enough that only he could hear. “Whatever’s going on, leave it off the ice.”

He glared at me, his jaw tightening, but he didn’t say a word. Fine. If he wanted to sulk, that was on him. But if he cost us this game, it wasn’t just going to be me he had to answer to—it was the whole team. When the third period rolled around, we were locked at 2-1. My legs burned, and my lungs felt like they were on fire, but I couldn’t let up. Every shift mattered, every battle along the boards was a chance to make a difference. I caught a clean breakout pass from Connor, flew down the wing, and cut hard to the net, trying to stuff the puck past the goalie’s pad. He made the save, and the puck rebounded into the slot, but Darren wasn’t there to bury it. Instead, he was circling back toward the blue line, completely out of position.

“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted as I skated back to the bench.

Coach benched him for the next few shifts, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. The Colts caught us in a bad line change and scored the game-winner with just over a minute left on the clock.

When the final buzzer sounded, I ripped my helmet off and slammed it onto the bench. The locker room was silent as we filed in, the sting of the loss hanging heavy in the air. Guys muttered to themselves, slamming water bottles or stripping off gear in frustrated silence.

Darren slunk in last, his head down and his face pale. He didn’t say a word, just sat in his stall, staring at the floor.

I snapped.

“Alright, Rivers,” I said, my voice cutting through the room like a blade. “What the hell’s going on with you?”

The room went still. All eyes turned to Darren, who looked like a deer caught in headlights. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Don’t give me that,” I pressed, stepping closer. “You’ve been playing like shit for weeks. You’re costing us games. If something’s going on, say it. Otherwise, you’re letting this team down.”

Darren’s hands trembled as he clutched the edge of the bench. His voice was barely above a whisper when he finally spoke.

“It’s nothing,” he said, his eyes darting around the room. “Just—just nerves. I’ll do better.”

“Nerves don’t make you miss assignments,” I shot back. “They don’t make you play scared.”

“Logan,” Connor said from his stall, his tone a quiet warning.

I ignored him.

“Logan thats enough!" barked Connor who was now making his way between where Rivers and I were.

Darren’s face crumpled for a split second before he smoothed it over, shaking his head. “I’m fine.”

"Fine, Fine," I relented, "clearly everything is fine."

***

After the team cleared out and the staff finished packing up the gear, I found Darren in the hallway, standing by himself with his bag slung over his shoulder.

“We’re not done,” I said, stepping into his path. “Talk to me.”

He hesitated, his eyes darting toward the exit like he was considering making a run for it. But then his shoulders slumped, and he nodded.

“Not here,” he muttered. “Let’s go outside.”

We walked out into the cold night air, the parking lot empty except for a few lingering cars. Darren leaned against a concrete pillar, his breath visible in the frosty air. He didn’t look at me when he started talking.

“They came to me during training camp,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Said they knew about my family’s debt. My dad’s business went under last year, and he’s still paying it off. They said they’d take care of it if I... if I helped them.”

My stomach twisted. “Helped them how?”

“Just small things at first,” he said, his voice shaking. “Missing a pass here, taking a penalty there. They said it wouldn’t hurt anyone, but... but it has. I didn’t think it would go this far.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked, my voice hard.

“I don’t know,” Darren admitted, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “It’s not like they told me their names. But they knew everything, about my family, about me. I didn’t know what else to do.”

I ran a hand through my hair, the weight of his confession settling heavily on my chest. Darren was barely more than a kid, caught in a trap he didn’t know how to escape. But that didn’t make this any easier to stomach.

“You should’ve come to us,” I said, my voice tight. “To me. To Connor. Hell, even to Coach. We could’ve helped.”

Darren shook his head. “I couldn’t. They said they’d go after my family if I told anyone.”

“Damn it, Darren,” I muttered, pacing a few steps away before turning back to him. “This isn’t just about you anymore. This is about the team. You’re dragging us down with you.”

“I know,” he said, his voice breaking. “I know I screwed up. I just... I don’t know what to do.”

Neither did I.