Nora’s standing by the stove, her back to me, waiting for the kettle to boil.
"Can't sleep either?" I ask.
She startles slightly, turning to look at me. "Harper woke me up around eleven. False alarm; she went right back down, but now my brain won't shut off."
"Yeah. I know that feeling."
The kettle clicks off, and she pours hot water into a mug. "Want sometea?"
"Sure."
She makes two cups while I sit at the kitchen table, my body sinking into the chair as if I might never get up again. Everything hurts. My legs, my back, and my ribs, where Reaper caught me with that elbow on Tuesday. I took ibuprofen before and after practice, and sat in the ice bath long enough to go numb from the waist down, and none of it touched it. It's the kind of hurt that's less about the injury and more about the fact that nobody called it.
Nora sets a mug in front of me and sits down across the table. We drink in silence for a minute, the house quiet around us except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of old wood settling.
"Training camp's going well, I take it," she says dryly.
I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Oh yeah. Fantastic. Living the dream."
"What happened?"
I should brush it off. Should say it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine. But it's midnight, and I'm exhausted, and Nora's looking at me like she wants to know, like my answer matters.
So I tell her.
About Reaper refusing to pass during power play drills, making me look incompetent in front of the coaches. About the physical hits that are just hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to draw penalties. About skipping the locker room before games because being in there feels worse than warming up cold. About Coach watching it all happen and doing absolutely nothing to stop it.
"Today he cross-checked me into the boards so hard I saw stars," I say, my hands tight around the mug. "Right in front of Coach. And Coach just... watched. Didn't blow the whistle, didn't say anything. Just reset the drill like it didn't happen."
"That's bullshit." She leans forward, her hazel eyes intense. "You're telling me that your coach watches your captain physically assault you during practice and does nothing?"
"Coach Wilson is weak. He won't stand up to Reaper becausehe runs that locker room. If he tried to discipline the captain, he'd lose the whole team, so it’s easier to sacrifice one player than risk the team unity."
"You're not expendable."
"To them I am." I take a sip of tea, barely tasting it. "I'm the guy who got traded in for more money than the captain makes. I'm the threat. And Reaper's making damn sure everyone knows I'm not welcome."
Nora's quiet for a moment, processing. When she speaks again, her voice is calmer but no less firm. "What do the other players do?"
"Nothing. You don’t go against your captain in this league—not openly, anyway. A couple of guys nod at me when no one’s looking. It’s the most popular I’ve been since I got here.”
"That's incredibly lonely."
The words hit harder than I expect. "Yeah. It is."
"Is it getting worse?"
I think about the past week, about the escalating hits, the increasingly obvious refusal to pass to me, and the way Reaper's hostility seems to be building instead of fading.
"Yeah," I admit. "It's getting worse. Like he's testing how far he can push before someone stops him. And nobody's stopping him, so he just keeps pushing."
"What happens if you fight back?"
"Then I'm the problem. Then I'm the guy who can't handle the pressure, who's starting shit with the captain, and ruining team chemistry. I lose either way."
Nora leans back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. She's not offering empty platitudes or telling me it'll get better. She's just listening, asking questions, trying to understand the impossible situation I'm in.
Andfuck,that means more than she knows.