Marked by the Puck: Icebound Hearts

to be the one plac

almost everything except the one thing I turned out to be good at. Get on the ice, and the noise drops out. Whatever's sitting heavy in my chest, whatever conversation I h

t worki

ditation I need, body moving on pure muscle memory while the mind empties out. Except every time I come around th

wrong. Most of the medical staff watches practice the way you'd watch traffic, present, half attentive, waiting for the moment that actually requires them. She's not doing that. She's tracking the w

ng a practice. That's an a

ious balance correction that only means something if your body learned it on a blade. I've seen that exact

tter, I said, and meant it as a questio

at it does, the way certain facts settle into you

oice cuts across the ice, not unkind, ju

on the breakout instead of the boards, and mostly

ind that follows a hard skate, but I stay out, running my own sequence in the corner, the same one I've been runnin

d his back, the posture he uses when he's about

enough f

more m

much rope to give each player before it stops being useful. Morrow's never been the type to coddle me, and he's never been the type to push past what I need either. He found that line with me somewhere

was

on three breakouts. That

e the only honest answer involves a sentence I'm not prepared t

. "Get your head rig

loses things, efficiently, without residue. That's the thing about him I've come to rely on more than I'd ev

s, before I got fast, before I got mean about getting fast, before any of it mattered the way it eventually mattered. Danny neve

kates off, and then I put it away, because some doors I open on purpose and th

tell myself this even as I'm doing it, gym bag over one shoulder, hair still wet from the shower, ta

m before I

early given before, "is the trophy case nobody updates because Hartley thinks it's bad l

t be a rea

erating as a policy for six years because nobody wants to be t

lau

in either of our two clipped exchanges since. It's a real laugh, the kind that arrives before you've decided whether to let it, and something a

ady in view, Remy walking backward in front of her like a tour guide who's forgotten that walking backwa

you exactly what happens when your attention isn't where the job needs it, and I have held that rule

the way it did on the ice yesterday when she told me

ut flatter than I mean it to

rised. "There's

corridor lying to a teammate for reasons I have not allowed myse

xted the g

k it

ame instinct that makes him a decent winger, tells him not to argue with the captain's enforcer about a coac

ays, and means it, and that la

or empties out fast once he's gone, the way r

few seconds ago, like she's doing the math on how fast he disappear

a lie,"

't an

She's not asking. She alrea

n I'm willing to hand over, not to her, not to myself yet either, and the silen

own the corridor without another word, and I stand there and watch her go, and somewhere behind my ribs a rule I bui