Page 16 of Rookie Recovery

The way he wove, fluid and seamless, across the ice. Head up, gaze darting. Canny, aware. The way he read passes and plays, deked smoothly through players and checks aimed his way. Like water, carving through a mountain.

Aaron launched a pass cross-ice, and Bowman cut hard, stick sliding back to cradle the puck. Gaze lifted, he whipped towards Rowan, puck and stick and skates all in sync, all seamlessly a part of him. Hockey, life.

Fucking art.

Rowan went for the body, naturally, but Bowman read him like a book.

Slid the puck out to Rowan’s right, cut left, looped around to meet up with it again on the other side. Rowan swore, but Bowman didn’t so much as break stride. He sailed forward towards JJ, finesse and prowess intertwined.

I sensed the readiness in JJ’s muscles, felt the push of his blades as he dug into the ice, driving himself backwards to stay between Bowman and the goal. Steadying breath. Sizing up his competition. Tracking the net, the goalie, other forwards …

JJ’s stick shot out for a poke check—the better play against Bowman’s speed and agility—but Bowman read that too. His hands barely twitched to toe-drag the puck into his feet, out of JJ’s reach. A quick flick of his left heel nudged it back out onto his blade as he slid past without breaking stride.

JJ spun, his long defenseman’s stick reaching—but it was too late. Bowman’s weight shifted to his front foot, wrists snapped, and the little black disk sailed neatly into the corner of the net.

Fuck, he was beautiful.

It happened fast enough to leave me breathless. I swear Rainey hadn’t seen the shot, and judging by the barrage of swearing out of the goalie’s mouth, my guess was accurate.

Aaron half-pummeled in behind the kid, slapping his shoulder in celebration. I couldn’t hear their exact words, but the general vibe was, holy fuck.

Even Rowan’s normal brand of spitting-mad was tempered by awe.

At some point, my hands had curled into loose fists, like they longed to grasp a stick. My heart beat a little too fast. Like it was me out there, instead of JJ, facing down that whirlwind.

Raw. Fucking. Talent.

I’d played pro hockey for six years before my injury had ended that dream forever. A year of recovery, then three for grad school, and I’d been working in the pro arena ever since. And in all that time, I swear I’d never seen talent like this. Like it came from somewhere … else.

From love. Pure fucking love of the game. Like it was the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. Hockey, life. Or maybe I was poeticizing it because that’s how jaded, washed-up, has-beens regarded the past.

Rainbows and butterflies and silver linings.

Hockey had always been my life, though. For as long as I could remember, I’d been skating or shooting pucks with my dad, my brother, my cousins. It was a part of who I was. Childhood, high school, college, pro. That was my path.

Until, it wasn’t.

But even now, as a washed-up has-been forced to bushwhack a new trail, it was my life. I still felt it in my bones and muscles and blood. Would always. When I got my own practice going, escaped from the shadow of my hockey past, it would linger like a ghost.

I fucking loved hockey, as much as I hated it, down to my soul. Always had. But I knew for a fact, I’d never looked like Archie Bowman.

Maybe I’d never loved it like that, either.

I flexed my fingers into tight fists as the boys on the ice crouched for another faux face-off. They’d managed to gather up enough players for two full lines, had even divvied up the talent so Aaron and Zac faced off against each other. JJ left his defensive position to hold a puck over the center circle between them, a stand-in ref.

They jabbed at each other’s sticks as they waited for the drop, laughing, Aaron trying to fake Zac out with a false twitch. But my eyes drifted past them to Bowman again. He crouched. Steady. Focused. Blades rocking under him as he readied for action, adrenaline driving out any lingering stillness.

His left shoulder lifted, just a hint, in a quick roll that might have been an adjustment of his pad or the tic of a sore muscle. Quick enough, I nearly missed it.

The puck dropped.

Bowman shot forward almost before it escaped JJ’s hand. Foreseeing Aaron’s face-off win, his quick pass right. No stutter in his step, no awkward angle to his shoulder as he caught that pass.

Another thing, probably, I’d imagined. Like the hunched, uncertain boy at the door.

“You’re drooling.” Katie nudged up next to me on the glass. “Like, so hard you’re not even trying to be subtle.”

She was right. I was staring. At least this time I had a reason. “He’s really fucking good.”

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