Page 25 of Cold Comeback
The regret in his voice was raw, unguarded in a way I'd never heard from him.
"What happened to him?" I asked quietly.
"Transferred. Didn't say goodbye." Knox finally looked at me. "Kid did fine—AHL, a couple cups overseas. Me? You see where I'm at."
I swallowed. "I'm sorry."
He shook his head, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "Don't be sorry. Just don't be a dumbass like me. Fear'll fuck you worse than the thing you're afraid of." He started for the door, then stopped long enough to pin me with a look. "Don't run, Sawyer. That's the worst play you can make."
I sat in the empty locker room, surrounded by the ghosts of my teammates. Twenty stalls, each with its own personality and mess I helped contain. The one I couldn't handle sat in stall fourteen.
I heard the echo of Knox's words in my head.
Don't be the guy who runs.
Too late—I'd already been that guy once before.
The memory of David's face hit me in fragments: his hands around a chipped campus mug, steam curling and dying in the air. He leaned across the tiny café table, eyes burning like he was begging me to lace up for overtime.
"We could do this, Gideon. Actually do this. Together."
I remembered staring at my own coffee, watching it go cold. It was the same panic Knox described.
I threw back at David, "Other athletes don't have what I have to lose." Fuck, the words still tasted hollow.
What had I really been protecting that day? A career that wasn't even real yet? Or the illusion that hiding made me safer?
The truth gripped the back of my neck: I hadn't been protecting anything. I'd been running. And David had been offering me everything—love, partnership, a life where I didn't have to keep my head down and mouth shut.
I'd sabotaged it. Not because I was afraid of losing hockey.
I was afraid of deserving him.
You're not protecting your career, Gideon. You're hiding from your life.
Those were his final words before he walked away. Everything we'd built crumbled because I couldn't be brave enough to choose him over fear.
Was I still hiding? Still choosing the safe play over the right one?
The next day blurred into meetings and video sessions. When Thatcher stayed late to work on penalty kill footage, the video systems suddenly needed my attention. When he grabbed lunch at the protein bar across the street, hunger struck me, too.
Good captaincy, I reasoned. Player development. Perfectly normal mentoring behavior.
The justifications grew more elaborate and transparent.
On day two, I executed more of the same choreography. Our hands brushed, reaching for the same water bottle—pure coincidence, obviously. He looked at me during film sessions—meaningless eye contact, nothing more. When he said "Yes, sir" during drills, the way my stomach dropped was just... indigestion. Had to be.
By Wednesday night, after unnecessarily extending a film session focused on Thatcher's play, I was losing what remained of my mind.
"Want to grab dinner?"
Thatcher was sitting on the bench in front of his stall. He looked up from his notebook, surprised. "Dinner?"
"Yeah. I mean—" I scrambled for a reasonable explanation. "Team bonding. Captain stuff. There's this sports bar that has decent food."
His smile was devastatingly slow. "Sure, Cap. Team bonding."
We ended up at Murphy's, a quiet place with good wings and enough ambient noise to make conversation feel private. For the next two hours, I forgot to be careful.
