Page 16 of Puck Struck
I shove the thought down deep.
Dammit, don’t let him get under your skin.
But the words press harder, taking the breath right out of me, hitting way too close to the person I used to be, the identity I tried so hard to eradicate from my mind and heart. Suddenly, everything I thought I left behind rushes back at me fast and I don’t know if I can avoid the collision.
I crank up the music. An angry riff reverberates between my temples, but it can’t rip through the other noise. It’s there, constant, refusing to be ignored.
“You don’t care who bleeds.”
It echoes with something dangerously close to the truth. A long-buried memory snaps into place like a puzzle piece, a mirror image of what Logan said. I push my palms into my eyes, shoving the thought back down into the dark recesses of my soul.
I’ve changed, dammit. I’ve left that part behind. But it hangs over me, ominous as a deadly storm.
And I’m right in the eye of it.
I crack each of my knuckles. All the years I worked to be free of this, and here it is again, coming at me, relentless, gutting me raw.
The car stops, rolling up to the hotel entrance. My heart slams hard against my ribcage when I stop the music and the rage-filled notes cut out. I grab my things, push open the car door, and head into the hotel.
My lungs tighten like they’re caught in a vise. I can barely suck in air, my brain hazy and clouded by the toxic thoughts plaguing me. I’ve got to get out of here, find somewhere I can fucking breathe. I take the elevator up, making a point of keeping my eyes focused on the carpet, like that can keep me from being seen. Like it can keep me from seeing myself.
Inside the room, I slam the door so hard it makes the walls shake. I throw my bag onto the floor and tear open the zipper. Clothes and tape rolls spill out. Not what I need right now. Not even close.
My hand finally hits my sketchpad, and I grab it like a lifeline. I always carry it in my bag, no matter where I’m going. It’s the one thing that brings me comfort even if I can’t actually use it. Just knowing it’s there is enough for me.
I sink down to the carpet, letting everything else fall away as I focus on the blank page. The pen moves fast, my lines dark and hard. The goalie mask is the first thing I draw, cracked down the middle, a taped-up heart closing up the break. Theimage is brutal and messy, but not messy enough to capture how I really feel.
I flip the page. Clean slate. My breaths settle, heart no longer feeling like it’s about to stab a hole through my chest. New lines quickly form a dinosaur with a hockey stick. It’s dumb. It’s comforting. It doesn’t mean anything.
Or does it?
I press the pen to the paper, my teeth gritted. My mind keeps tripping back to the mask, to the heart, to Logan’s voice tearing through everything.
“You don’t care.”
Memories pop between my ears, bringing me back to that frigid night in Oneonta, New York. The bar was dark, packed with people. The lounge music was quietly seductive but to my ears, it was sharp and piercing. A well-dressed man sat across from me at the table in the private corner. The table somehow both felt like a mile wide and like there was no space between us at all.
I can still feel the way my heart thrashed in my chest, the shame of appearing in that place, the knot of panic that festered in my gut at my reality. I needed the money, but more than that, I needed to run from everything I’d left behind.
He slid a hotel room key toward me. “Connor,” he said with a smile that made my insides churn and bile shoot up the back of my throat. “Nice to meet you.”
I hated myself for weeks afterward. But I did what I had to do to survive.
Logan’s words pull me back into the spiral, tethering me to my past, and it’s a fucking joke that they can rattle me like this. I want to fight against them, break them apart, shatter them until there’s nothing left but dust I can just sweep sway. But instead, I pace the room, back and forth, the old pain bubbling up to constrict me.
I don’t want to be this. I can’t let myself be this.
I rose above it all. I escaped it all. I got out, just like I always promised myself I would.
I draw until my hand cramps. Until the lines start to blur and my chest starts to unclench. Until I’m so tired I can’t see straight. And still, his voice is there. Pushing me toward everything about the past I’ve tried to snuff out. Pushing me to remember the person I swore I’d never be again.
Hours later, I’m back at the arena for the game against the Wildcats, façade firmly in place. I catch Carter’s curious looks but he doesn’t ask me any questions about my rapid exit from the locker room earlier today. Logan never showed back up at the hotel after our morning practice and now can’t stay far enough away from me. His avoidance only drives me harder on my quest for glitz and glory because I can’t let anyone see past the sparkle to the darkness it hides.
The third period of the game is brutal.
Colorado’s bench is running hot. They’re fast with the skates, heavy with the hits, and huge into the shit talk.
But I thrive in chaos. Always have.
