Page 65 of Holiday Interference
Everything feels wrong.
My gloves feel too tight; my stick is too heavy.
All I can think of is the scent of her still lingering in my hoodie, buried deep in the collar.
The puck hits the ice.
I go after it.
But for the first time in a long time, the ice doesn’t feel like home.
It feels like nowhere at all.
The cold of the ice hasn’t left my bones.
Even now, stripped down to just my compression shorts, sweat drying sticky across my back, the chill clings to me like failure.
Pads thud. Towels slap. The locker room’s alive with the sound of guys pretending everything’s fine.
I sit on the bench, elbows on my knees, staring at the scuffed toes of my skates. They’re untied, but I haven’t moved. The lace hangs limp, like I forgot what to do with it.
Riley’s chirping from the corner, tossing a roll of tape at Finn like they’re still in peewee.
“You see this kid out there today? Dude skated like his stick was glued to the wrong hand.”
Finn snorts. “You sayin’ he pulled a rookie ambidextrous move? Shit, at this rate, I’ll have to carry the third line on my own.”
“Third line?” Logan drawls, lounging with a water bottle in hand. “Cute that you think you’re staying on that long with those shot stats.”
Finn gives him the finger, and they keep going. Fast and loud and familiar.
The kind of razzing that usually makes me grin.
Today, it grates.
Because they’re not wrong.
I was garbage out there. My timing’s off. My head’s somewhere else. My hands feel foreign, like they’re not connected to my body.
My body still remembers her. Everything about her.
The slide of her skin and the breathless way she whispered my name like a prayer.
The way she pulled my mouth back to hers in the middle of a laugh, like she needed me to kiss her just to stay upright.
I blink hard and drag a hand down my face, jaw tight.
“Yo, Holloway,” Finn calls out. “Think Cal’s ghosted us mid-practice and forgot to tell the rest of his body?”
Beau, across the room, pulls his sweatshirt over his head and walks by, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “You good, rookie?”
I nod. Force a grunt. “Fine.”
He pauses, not convinced in the slightest, but he doesn’t push.
No one does. Not really. Not until Eli.
He’s lacing his boots slow, methodical, his gaze trained on the floor like he’s tuning out the chaos.
