Chapter 146 Training Through the Noise

Chapter 146 Training Through the Noise
Levi's POV

I miss the puck by a full second.

Not a near miss. Not a bad bounce I can blame on the ice. A full, humiliating second where my stick swings through empty air and Marcus scoops the rebound past me like I'm not even standing there. The whistle screams. Skates cut hard around me as the drill resets, and I catch Coach Reyes watching from the bench with an expression I know too well, the one that means we're about to have a conversation I don't want.

"Again," he calls, and doesn't even bother softening it.

We run the drill four more times. I whiff two of them. My timing's off, my head's somewhere else, somewhere with a phone full of notifications and Anya's voice cracking on the other end of a call last night, and I hate that I can't leave it in the locker room where it belongs.

Coach blows the whistle to end practice ten minutes early, which never happens, and every guy on the ice knows exactly what that means. Nobody looks at me on their way to the tunnel. Marcus claps me on the shoulder, a small, wordless rough one, man and then it's just me and Coach Reyes and the hollow echo of the rink.

"Sit," he says, nodding at the bench.

I sit. He doesn't.

"You want to tell me what that was?" he asks.

"Off day."

"Third off day this week." He crosses his arms, and for one disorienting second I catch the resemblance, the set of his jaw, the way he holds still when he's deciding how hard to push. It's Anya's face, twenty-five years older and a lot less forgiving right now. "You're captain, Levi. You don't get off days like that without it costing the whole line."

"I know."

"Do you?" He says it evenly, not unkind, which somehow makes it worse. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like your head's been somewhere off this ice for two weeks straight. Ever since that gala."

My jaw tightens. I know where this is going, and I know exactly whose name is about to come up, and I brace for it like a hit I can see coming but can't avoid.

"This isn't about Anya," I say.

"Isn't it?"

The question lands harder than I expect, because it's not really a question. Coach Reyes has known me since I was fourteen, since before I knew how to hold a stick without overcorrecting, and he's the only adult in my life who's never once cared what my last name could buy him. He also happens to be Anya's father, which means every stumble I make out here isn't just about hockey to him anymore. It's about his daughter too.

"I'm not going to pretend I don't know what's been in your feed," he says. "Or hers. I've seen the headlines. I've seen what it's doing to her, because she's my kid, and I notice when she stops answering her phone on the first ring." His voice doesn't rise, but something underneath it does. "What I need to know is whether you can still show up here and play like the storm outside doesn't follow you onto this ice. Because right now, it's following you everywhere."

"I can handle it."

"You missed an open net today, Levi." He lets that sit. "That's not handling it."

I want to argue. I want to tell him he doesn't understand what it's like, waking up to a hundred notifications, watching the girl you care about get picked apart by strangers who've never met her, feeling responsible for every ugly comment because you're the one who said her name into a microphone. But he's not wrong, and arguing with him would just prove his point harder.

"I don't know how to leave it at the door," I admit, quieter than I mean to. "Everything with Anya, it's not separate from me anymore. I can't just switch it off because I've got a game."

Something in Coach's expression shifts, not softer exactly, but more careful, like he's choosing his next words with more weight than usual. "I'm not asking you to switch off caring about her. God knows I'd never ask that of anyone, especially not where she's concerned." A small, dry almost-smile. "I'm asking you to learn how to compartmentalize. Not erase, compartmentalize. This ice is the one place in your life where the noise can't follow you if you don't let it. You used to know how to do that."

"That was before people were dissecting my personal life for clicks."

"Then find a way to skate anyway." He steps closer, dropping the coach voice for something quieter, something that sounds almost like a father talking to a son instead of a captain.

"You think this is the last hard season either of you is going to face? Public life, private life, they're going to keep colliding, Levi. If you can't learn to separate what happens off this ice from what you do on it, you're going to lose both. The game. And eventually, if you're not careful, her too, because she doesn't need you falling apart on her behalf. She needs you steady."

That lands somewhere under my ribs, sharper than anything he's said all practice.

"She'd hate knowing this is affecting my game," I say quietly. "She already feels guilty enough."

"Then don't let it," Coach says. "Prove to her and to yourself, that you can hold both. That loving someone doesn't mean losing your footing everywhere else." He picks up the bucket of pucks at his feet, nods toward the empty ice. "Fifteen more minutes. Just you and me. No line, no drills, no cameras. Let's find your timing again."

I lace my skates back up tighter than before, feeling something steady in my chest for the first time in days, not because the noise outside has quieted, but because for the next fifteen minutes, none of it gets to follow me out here.

The first shot I take goes top shelf, clean and sure, the net rattling with a sound I didn't realize I'd missed.

"There he is," Coach says, and for once, I let myself believe it too.