Page 1 of Unsteady

PROLOGUE

RHYS

Three Months Ago

I can’t breathe.

The ice feels cold against my body, seeping in through my jersey. I can feel it on my stomach—fuck,I’m on my stomach on the fucking ice.Did I pass out?

“Son, you’re doing fine—can you lift your head for me?”

Everything is black. I shut my eyes and open them again. Nothing. I keep blinking; at least, I think I am… Fuck, how long was I out?

“Koteskiy, I need you to breathe,” another voice says, before there’s a hand gripping my arm. “Don’t move him, Reiner, not yet.”

A scrape of ice against a blade, then my best friend, Bennett’s voice, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

I want to call for him, trying desperately to push his name through my mouth but it feels like my lips have been fused together.

“Back up, everyone. Back up!”

“I can’t see,” I manage to wrangle out. “I can’t see.” The second one comes out like choked sob.

“Calm down,” Ben offers, his voice soft, soothing through the fear and adrenaline coursing through me. “Take it easy, Rhys—just breathe.”

“Where’s my dad? I can’t see anything.”

My voice is like this foreign thing, echoing in a cavern. Am I speaking or is it in my head?Why can’t I see?

It all starts to echo again, and the pain throbs in my head even harder. I want to open my eyes. I want to push my tongue against my teeth to check they’re all there, and swear I’ll wear a mouth guard next time. I want to go back and pay attention, keep my fucking head up against that hit. I don’t want to be here.

I don’t want to be here.

I don’t want to be here.

The voices around me start to muddle to nothing as I slump into the thick darkness still entrapping me.

ONE

RHYS

Present

“Just try it today, and if you still feel like shit, I won’t ask you to do it again. Okay?”

Even with the volume on my phone turned so low it should be silent, my father’s voice is a booming echo through the speaker. I wince lightly, using muscle memory to pull the black joggers over my legs in the darkness of my bedroom. Shrugging a hoodie over my head gently, I swipe the phone from where it lays on the dresser.

“I’m fine,” I say. It’s not really an answer, but I know what he’s really asking beneath his command.

We’re cut from the same cloth, my father and I—both calm under pressure, both “dipped like Achilles into a pool of confidence” as my mother so often puts it. I’ve been compared to him all my life—in the way I look, the way I skate, the way I play—and unlike many of the other NHL legacies I’ve played with, I don’t mind it.

My dad has always been my hero.

Which is why knowing that he’s asked me to work with the First Line Foundation today—a charity my father started after retiring from the NHL—is purely as a way to check up on me. The foundation funds scholarship programs for kids who want to play hockey, but don’t have the means to do so. I’ve worked with the program before, I’ve even enjoyed it before, but now…

It feels daunting, like I know even now that the smiles of children won’t drive away the constant dread filling up the void of my body.

“Rhys,” he calls again, his voice still too loud and I huff a breath, sliding my shoes on and grabbing my bag before heading into the warm June air. “Just, try it today. And then, if you feel like it, take the keys tomorrow morning before the rink opens and run a few drills.”

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