He didn't say anything. Neither did I. But the air between us was thick with something unsaid, some unfinished sentence that had started with his hands on my chest and my eyes on his face and a rooftop that hadn't happened yet.
I walked to the ice and I did not look back.
I went to sleep. I did not dream. The morning would bring practice, and practice was the only place I trusted completely.
COLE
Coach Callahan had a gift for ruining my morning.
I was two sips into my coffee, still half asleep, sitting in the locker room scrolling through my phone when he walked in with his clipboard and that look on his face. The look that said someone was about to be unhappy and he didn't particularly care who.
"Briggs. Volkov. My office. Now."
Jonah shot me a look that very clearly communicated good luck with that, and I set my coffee down and followed Coach through the corridor with Volkov a few steps behind me. I could feel him back there. The man had a gravitational pull, like a small angry planet.
Coach's office was a windowless box with a whiteboard, a desk buried under paper, and a framed photo of his daughter that was the only evidence Mike Callahan had ever experienced a human emotion. He sat down and looked at us the way you'd look at two dogs who'd gotten into the trash.
"I'm going to keep this simple," he said. "I don't care if you like each other. I don't care if you hate each other. I don't care if one of you personally insulted the other's mother. What I care about is that I have two of the most talented players on thisroster and they can't be on the ice together without it turning into a cage match."
"Coach, the hit was?—"
"I watched the hit, Briggs. It was clean. Move on." He shifted his eyes to Volkov, who stood with his hands behind his back like a soldier getting a briefing. "Volkov. You're the best defenseman I've had in twenty years of coaching. Briggs is the best offensive talent on this team. If I can get you two working as a unit, we're a playoff team. If I can't, we're fighting for a wild card and I'm in a bad mood for six months. Nobody wants me in a bad mood."
This was true. Callahan in a bad mood was like a thunderstorm with a whistle.
"Starting today, you're paired. Every drill. Every scrimmage. Every bag skate. You're going to learn each other's games until you can play together in your sleep. Questions?"
I had several. Like, how am I supposed to focus on hockey when the guy I'm paired with tried to separate my spine from my body four days ago? And, does he ever blink, or is that a Russian thing? And, why does he smell like pine trees and cold air in a building with central heating?
I did not ask any of these questions.
"No questions, Coach."
Volkov said nothing, which I was starting to understand was his version of agreement.
"Good. Get on the ice."
Practice was a warzone.
Callahan wasn't kidding about pairing us on everything. Passing drills, breakout patterns, two-on-two battles, puck retrieval. Everywhere I went, Volkov was there. And the thing about being forced to work with someone you're trying to hate is that it gets really hard to maintain the hatred when you see them up close.
Mikhail Volkov was, and I cannot stress this enough, unfairly good at hockey.
I knew he was good. Everyone knew he was good. You don't get drafted out of the KHL without being good. But there's a difference between watching a guy on film and being three feet away from him while he pivots on one edge and transitions from backward to forward skating so smoothly that it looks like the laws of physics filed a special exemption for his ankles.
His first step was explosive. His gap control was surgical. He read plays before they developed, shifting his positioning based on things I couldn't even see, and every time I thought I'd found a lane past him, he was already there. Waiting. With that blank expression that made me want to scream.
We did a one-on-one drill where I had the puck and he had to prevent me from getting a shot on net. First attempt, I tried to go wide. He sealed the boards and stripped the puck off my stick so cleanly I didn't even feel it happen. Second attempt, I cut inside. He matched me stride for stride and angled me into a dead zone where I had no play. Third attempt, I pulled up and tried a move I'd been working on all summer, a fake drop to the backhand followed by a quick release.
He bit on the fake. I got the shot off. It went wide, but I'd beaten him, and the little spark of satisfaction I felt was completely disproportionate to the moment.
"Lucky," he said. First word he'd spoken to me all practice.
"Skill," I said.
"Luck. You telegraphed the fake. I chose to let you think it worked."
"You chose to let me beat you?"