Page 128 of Almost Ours
That was how it had been for years–ever since Mom died, ever since my dad stopped looking at me like I was his son and started looking through me like I was nothing. I was just…numb. Except when I was on the ice.
When pain was the only thing that cut through the numbness, I made sure to find it.
I played angry. Picked fights. Delivered hits that toed the line between hard and reckless. The media loved to call me dirty, but I didn’t give a shit. If I wasn’t throwing punches, if I wasn’t leaving bruises, I wasn’t feeling anything.
Kyle had the puck along the boards, cutting across the blue line. He didn’t see me coming.
I lined up the hit perfectly–shoulder to shoulder, clean as hell. A textbook check. But in an instant, everything went wrong.
His skate caught a rut in the ice.
It happened so fast, still somehow, in my mind, it was always in slow motion. The way his body twisted mid-air. The way his helmet whipped back before it cracked against the boards. The way he collapsed, completely limp.
A sickening kind of stillness settled over the ice. That was the worst part. Not the hit. Not even the sound of his skull bouncing off the boards. The silence afterward.
My breath trapped somewhere between my ribs, I dropped my stick. “Kyle–”
I barely got his name out before hands grabbed at me, yanking me back. A fist slammed into the back of my helmet before I could react, but I didn’t care. I tried to push forward,back toward Kyle. I barely made it another step before another hit landed, then another.
A brawl broke out–because of course it did. Gloves flying, bodies slamming into the ice. I wasn’t fighting back, though. I barely even felt the punches.
All I could see was Kyle, lying motionless on the ice.
Trainers swarmed him, voices sharp and urgent. The medic’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. My ears were ringing. My vision tunnelled. The whole arena felt like it was tilting under me.
He wasn’t moving.
He wasn’t fucking moving.
I don’t know how I got off the ice. Maybe one of my teammates dragged me. Maybe I moved on autopilot. I don’t remember. But I do remember sitting in the dressing room afterward, everything still spinning.
My teammates tried to reassure me.
“It was a clean hit, Barzal.”
“He just fell wrong. You didn’t do anything dirty.”
“Shit like this happens sometimes.”
It didn’t fucking matter.
Coach pulled me aside before I left the rink. His expression was unreadable, his voice calm and firm.
“Ryan, listen to me. There was nothing you could’ve done differently.”
I didn’t answer. I just stared at him, waiting for the part where he told me something that would actually make me feel human again.
“Clean hit or not,” I said finally, my voice hoarse, “he’s still in the hospital isn’t he?”
Coach didn’t have an answer for that.
I didn’t go to the hospital that night.
I couldn’t.
Because I knew. I knew Kyle’scareer was over. I knew he’d wake up in a hospital bed, and I’d be the first name that came to his mind.
I didn’t think I could face that.
