Marked by the Puck: Icebound Hearts

I don't do regret. I do calculation, and the calculation on Webb is simple: he had his head down crossing the blue line, I had a clean angle, a

han that one. I've made

n't calcul

me that suggests he thinks the rest of us were not, in fact, present for it. Somebody laughs. Somebody throws a towel. The noise is the noise

stoo

icials who give me an extra half second before they drop the gloves on a penalty call, like they're hoping I'll talk myself out of w

et and looked at me like I was an obstacle between her and a job she intended to finish. No

people ste

epped

doing the thing it's doing, which is replaying her voice. Low, even, completely unbothered by the fact that I'm six inches taller

ure your own stitches too, or s

, I don't demand anything, I just exist in a way that tend

is neck. He doesn't say anything else for a second, which is Cole's particular skill, th

't wa

" he says

hit," I

what I

od. There's

something's worth pushing on. He decides it isn't, tonight, and goes back to hi

I have something to say, I say it. If I don't, I don't fill the air with noise just to prove I'm part of the room. Danny used to fill rooms. Danny used to walk into a locker room and have every

e in longer than I want to think about, the stillness didn't feel like strategy. It fel

get, and I've learned not to waste it filling it with something else. Seattle at eleven at night is wet and orange under the streetlights

ing back t

ught, and mine did. Her pulse under my thumb. Fast. Controlled. The two things sitting on top of each other in a way that told me more about her than anything she'd said all night, because a pu

e said o

something I don't have room for. No distractions. That's not a rule somebody gave me. It's one I built myself, brick by br

't go

e, under the half lit emergency lighting that the rink uses after hours. Nobody else is there. The Zamboni's parked at the far end

ackhand. My body knows it well enough that my mind gets to go somewhere else while I do it, and tonight my mind goes to a small office that smells like antisepti

ive anyone who asked, and it's not even a lie, exactly.

t and gone anyway, and somewhere under the part of my brain that runs calculations about ice angles and penalty minutes, a quieter part of me

lly does, because every third lap or so I catch myself thinking about gray eyes that didn't blink and a voice that cut cleaner than any scalpel I've ever h

ng a documentary nobody asked for. He'd have clocked the thing with the wrist in about four seconds flat. He'd have grinned that grin, the one that used to make our father, even our father,

en right. He

ice is quiet and there's nobody around to perform steadiness for. Some doors I keep shut becaus

thout needing to think myself into it, and then I head for the bench, peel m

otifi

known, I've just never bothered to save the

a

ighlight.

way to maintain contact with a son he otherwise doesn't speak to. No mention of anything that matters. No mention of the only thing that's ever actually sat between us. Just good hit, like I'm still

for longer th

happening, and there isn't, there's just him throwing four words into a silence every so o

ne. I put it b

hing of me that I'm not equipped to give it, and right now