I slump down onto the floor, back against the wall, aware of how exhausted I am. How scared I was. How out of my depth I still feel despite a month of practice.
Nora settles down next to me, Harper finally sleeping against her chest. The nursery is dim, just the nightlight casting soft shadows. Quiet except for Harper's breathing and the white noise machine.
"You good?" Nora asks.
"No." The word comes out before I can stop it. "Training camp starts Monday. Four days from now, and I'm dreading it so much I feel sick."
She doesn't say anything, just waits for me to continue.
"The team hates me," I say, staring at the opposite wall. "Not just dislikes.Actively hates.The captain, especially."
"What does he do?"
"He won't pass to me. Ever. During drills, during scrimmages, it doesn't matter. If I'm open, he'll skate past me and force a shitty shot rather than give me the puck." I run my hands through my hair, making it stick up worse. "And it's not subtle. Everyone cansee it. The coaches, other players. But nobody says anything because you don't question the captain."
"That's bullshit."
"That's hockey." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "He gives me the cold shoulder constantly. Won't acknowledge me in the locker room, won't look at me during team meetings. If I say something, he talks over me as if I didn't speak. And everyone else follows his lead because that's what you do; you follow your captain. So I eat lunch alone in my car. I arrive at practice last and leave first. I exist on this team like a ghost they can all see but pretend isn't there." I pause. "The fans have started noticing, too. Comments online. Why does West always look like he'd rather be anywhere else? Why doesn't he celebrate with the team?"
“Why stay?” Nora asks.
“Because where else do I go? This is my contract, my career. You don’t walk away from an NHL roster because your teammates are making it miserable. You keep your head down, and you play.”
Nora shifts, and I realize her knee is touching mine. Just barely, but the contact feels grounding.
"Why does Reaper hate you so much?”
"I don't know. I've asked myself that for a year." I lean my head back against the wall. "Maybe because I got traded here for more money than he makes. Maybe because I'm younger and he sees me as a threat. Maybe he just doesn't like my face. I have no fucking idea."
I'm quiet for a minute; the only sound is Harper's breathing against Nora's chest.
"Or maybe it's nothing he's doing," I say to the opposite wall. "Maybe it's just where I happen to be standing when the universe decides it's time to collect. Like there's a debt I haven't finished paying, and Reaper is just the current invoice."
She doesn't say anything. Just waits.
"I had a team before this," I say. "Pinewood. Drafted there, played for four years, and thought I'd retire there. And I made—"I stop. Try again. "I made a string of really bad decisions there. The kind you don't come back from. I hurt people. People who didn't deserve it. People who were good to me."
She still doesn't speak. I'm aware of how careful she's being—not pulling back, not leaning in, just there.
"And the worst part is they forgave me." I laugh, but it's not really a laugh. "Every single one of them. Looked me in the face and told me they were okay, they understood, that we were good. Which sounds like theultimatehappy ending, except it wasn't. Because I couldn't—I still can't—look at any of them without seeing what I did. Their forgiveness didn't fix anything for me. It just meant I had to live with the fact that they were better people than I was."
"Tyler—"
"The trade-out wasn't punishment. That's what I'm saying. Nobody made me leave. The team didn't push me out. Pinewood would've kept me." I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. "I asked for it. I asked my agent to get me out of there because I couldn't stand watching them be kind to me. The trade was a mercy. It just wasn't theirs. It was mine."
I drop my hands, staring at the ceiling for a second because looking at her feels like more than I can do right now.
"So when I got here, and Reaper decided I was the enemy, some part of me thought… yeah. Okay. That tracks. Of course, this is how it goes. You don't get to walk away from the people you hurt and just start over clean. The universe keeps the books." I shake my head. "Which is stupid. Reaper's an asshole on his own merits; it has nothing to do with Pinewood. I know that. But there's a part of me that hears him cross-check me into the boards and thinks, fair enough. Like I had this coming. Like a year of being treated like a ghost is the smaller version of what I actually deserve."
Nora is very still beside me.
"That's why I haven't fought back," I say quietly. "Not really. The team stuff—Coach being weak, thelocker room, all of it—that's real; that's a problem. I'm not making it up. But underneath that, there's this other thing where some piece of me looks at Reaper and thinks, he's not even wrong about me. He just doesn't know the right reasons."
The white noise machine clicks over to the next setting. Harper makes a small sleeping sound against Nora's shoulder.
"What did you do?" Nora asks. Her voice is so quiet I almost miss it. "In Pinewood?"
Something tightens in my chest. Not quite panic, but close. The question I've been waiting for since I started talking, the one I knew was coming and still wasn't ready for.