Chapter 7

Ronan

I drove home with both hands on the wheel and the radio off. That was how I knew something had shifted. I always drove with music. It was the one habit I had carried from my rookie year, something about filling the space between the game and the person I had to be by morning. But tonight I needed the silence because the silence was the only place I could put what was happening inside my chest without it spilling somewhere I could not clean up.

The tunnel kiss had not felt like a victory. That was the part I had not prepared for. I had imagined, in the abstract, logical way I planned everything, that if Luca ever closed the distance between us the feeling would be something I could categorize. Relief, maybe. Or satisfaction, the way you feel when a play you designed finally works on the ice the way it worked in your head.

It was not that. It was enormous. That was the only word that fit. The moment his mouth found mine it was like something that had been compressed for three years finally had room to exist at full size, and the size of it frightened me in a way I had not been frightened by anything since I was nineteen years old and skating in my first NHL game wondering if I was enough.

I did not scare easily. I needed Luca to never know how much that moment had undone me.

++

The first time I saw him play was three years ago. October, first week of the regular season, Phantoms hosting the Bruins in Chicago.

I had watched a film on him, of course. Every captain studies the captains they will face. I knew his stats, his tendencies, the way he favored his backhand under pressure and how he read a penalty kill like a man solving a puzzle he had seen before. I thought I knew what I was preparing for. Then he stepped onto the ice for warm-ups and something in my brain went completely quiet.

He moved differently than the film captured. There was a precision to him that was almost architectural, like every shift of his weight had been designed rather than learned. He ran a drill at the far end of the ice and I stood at the near end watching him and forgot for approximately four seconds that I was a professional athlete with a job to do.

My linemate Garrett nudged me. "You good?"

"Focused," I said.

Garrett followed my eyeline to where Luca was skating and then looked back at me with an expression I did not examine too carefully.

I skated away and told myself it was professional respect, For three years I kept telling myself that. It got less convincing every time.

++

I was up at five-thirty the next morning, which was normal. I made coffee and sat at my kitchen table with my phone and my agent's number on screen for a long time before I pressed call.

Dana picked up on the third ring, which meant she had been awake already.

"Ronan. It's early."

"I have a question about my contract."

A short pause. "Okay."

"The image clauses. Section fourteen, the morality and public conduct language. How specific is the wording around personal relationships?"

The pause this time was longer.

"It's standard league language," she said carefully. "Why?"

"Routine review. I like to know where I stand."

"Ronan." Her voice shifted into the register she used when she was not accepting a deflection. "Image clause reviews happen in the offseason with the legal team. You're calling me at five-thirty in the morning during preseason camp. That is not routine."

"I'm being thorough."

"You're being evasive, which you never are, which means this isn't routine at all." She exhaled. "Is there something I need to know about?"

"Not yet," I said.

"That's not a no."

"No," I agreed. "It's not."

She was quiet for a moment and I could hear her thinking on the other end of the line, running the same kind of calculations I ran, sorting through what she knew and what she was being asked not to ask.

"I'll pull the language and send it to you today," she said finally. "But Ronan. Whatever this is. Be careful."

"I'm always careful," I said.

"That's what worries me," she said, and hung up.

Practice that afternoon was sharp and physical and exactly what I needed. I pushed the line hard through zone entries and transition drills until two of the younger forwards were visibly struggling to keep pace. I did not ease up. The ice was the one place where everything I was feeling had a legitimate outlet and I used every minute of it.

I was toweling off near the boards after the final drill when Cal appeared beside me.

Cal Briggs had been my defensive partner for four seasons and my closest friend for seven years. He was loud in the locker room and quiet when it mattered and he had the particular skill of people who grew up reading the emotional temperature of a room for survival. He said nothing for a moment. Just stood there drinking from his water bottle, watching the ice.

"You hit Dermott so hard in that last drill he's been walking weird for twenty minutes," Cal said.

"He needs to work on his gap control."

"His gap control is fine. You were just somewhere else."

I kept my eyes on the ice. "I was right here."

"Physically." He turned and looked at me directly, the way Cal looked at you when he had already decided the conversation was happening. "Where were you actually?"

I said nothing.

He nodded slowly like I had answered anyway.

"Something happened," he said. It was not a question.

"Drop it, Cal."

"When have I ever dropped anything?"

I looked at him then. His face was open and steady and without judgment, the way it always was when he was being serious. Seven years. He had seen me through a knee surgery that almost ended my career, through the ending of my relationship with Camille, through every bad loss and worse morning after.

He already knew something had changed. He was just waiting for me to decide whether to confirm it.

I picked up my stick and started toward the tunnel.

"Ronan," he said behind me.

I stopped but did not turn around.

"Whatever it is," Cal said quietly. "I've got you. You know that."

I stood there for three seconds. The arena was emptying around us, skates scraping, voices bouncing off the high ceiling.

Then I kept walking..But my grip on the stick loosened.

Just slightly..