Page 107 of The Price of Ice

“Yeah...”

“Well, this will be hard work too. For you.”

SHE’D MEANT IT. AFTERthe session, Kallen had left her office and crossed the road to sit down for a cup of coffee he’d let grow cold as he looked out the window, not really thinking about much. Tooexhaustedto think, all he’d wanted was a bit of silence.

He hadn’t been planning on it, but the next morning when his dad spotted him while he lifted, he actually had to catch the barbell before Kallen broke his own nose with it.

“Fuck,” he panted as he sat up, shaken.

His dad’s hand landed heavy on his shoulder. “Breathe through it,” he instructed. Kallen did, and his dad actually had the decency to wait until he’d calmed down before saying, “Your head’s not in the game.”

The temptation to snap that therewasn’ta game was nearly irresistible. “No.”

The bench wobbled worryingly as his father took a seat next to him. “So where is it at?”

“Just... You know what I told you? About my captain?”

His father did not speak or move, but the air grew sharp around him, as if lightning was about to strike. “Yes,” the word was low and constrained, his dad was making a real effort there.

Kallen still couldn’t look at him. “He’ll go to prison. Or it’s likely, my lawyer says we have good evidence.” He paused, forcing himself not to run away from the idea of the tape.

His parents weren’t going to see it, he decided right then and there.

He’d screamed his head off last time in his anger and despair. His dad had not only failed to protect him but hadpushedhim to put himself in danger. But he didn’t want to subject someone he loved to that. Someone who loved him, because he knew his father loved him, as well as his own limitations allowed him to.

“That’s good,” his dad told him, voice still tight. He was angry, which was both good and pointless.

Kallen shook himself. “It doesn’t feel like enough. Like, he gets put away, that’s good. But what about the team? They just get away with everything? Then nothing’s changed. I just—” He lifted a hand, fisting it. “I need todosomething.”

“How can I help?” his dad asked, and Kallen’s head whipped towards him without his conscious control. His father looked startled. “Or not. But I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

“Really?” Kallen asked and had to cover his mouth, curling up as his eyes filled with tears, shock and grief and sheer disbelief mixing up inside him until he thought he’d throw up.

He stumbled to his feet, turning away as the tears spilled down his cheeks. He didn’t think he could bear it if his dad told him...

“Kallen,” his father’s voice was soft behind him. Kallen stopped cold. As a child, his father hadn’t exactly welcomed tears, trying to make a joke of whatever situation had caused it or even ordering the pain away. And now, alone as they were in the basement, half of him wanted to turn around and check the words were in fact coming out of his father’s mouth. “I’m here. I swear. I—”

He twisted around, swallowing around the lump in his throat, and suddenly he wasn’t falling to pieces anymore, he was cracking instead, shattering.

“Youswear?” he demanded, shrill and cutting. Fists clenched so hard they hurt. “When I— When I told you they’d called me a come dump, you told meit didn’t matter. You— You told me none of it mattered, nothing but fuckinghockey!”

His father’s face was stony, unmoving, and his eyes were lost somewhere in the distance behind Kallen. “I’m sorry. Itshouldn’tmatter. None of it should—”

“What?” His voice came out so thin he thought it would snap.

It was only his father’s raised palms that stopped him, his brown eyes were wide and scared and meeting Kallen’s own. He couldn’t remember ever seeing his father scared before, it was strange to discover he was capable of it at all. That what was scaring him wasn’t the terrifying world out there, butKallen.

“Not your suffering,” his dad explained, almost tripping over his own words. “Or what they did to you. Of course that matters, but not the... the requirements! Those are absurd and have nothing to do with good hockey. They are just excuses to holdyou back. And I thought... No, Itold myselfthat if you just didn’t believe in them, then they couldn’t hold you back.” He looked to the side, as if he couldn’t even bear to see Kallen out of the corner of his eye while he asked, “How could you have been given suchtalentif you weren’t meant to use it?”

That was a question he’d often asked himself in these last few months. What was the point of all the work he’d done and all he could do on the ice if he wasn’t going to be allowed to use it? If he had to choose between the joy he got from playing and living a life outside the rink that he wasn’t profoundly ashamed of?

He swallowed, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve, the fight going out of him so quickly he felt a little woozy. He didn’t want to fight with his dad. Maybe once upon a time he could have blamed it all on him pushing his own dream on Kallen, but it had always been Kallen’s own dream, too. And he’d clung to it with tooth and nail despite every betrayal, pretending away the very real danger he’d been in from the alphas in the team even after several of them had proven willing to openly hurt him and the rest had kept quiet about it. His father had led him to slaughter, but Kallen had stayed still for the falling sword, hadn’t he?

It made no sense to try to blame it on someone else. Or he could, but then he’d always be stuck because it meant they’d had the power, and he hadn’t.

And it just wasn’t true. He’d had the power to walk away and he’d stayed, and now he had to admit that he’d been complicit in his own abuse. That was the part he couldn’t get over, shame much worse than the humiliations he’d been subjected to.

It was precisely what Suri had said. What he didn’t want anyone else to know or see about him: that he’d been so desperate to play, that he’d given up his self-respect for it.

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