Chapter 36 I need to see her
Hayes
The ice was a blur of white and red. The puck felt like a foreign object on my stick. The roar of the crowd was just static, a dull buzz in my ears.
I was in the middle of a fucking playoff game, and I couldn’t get my head straight. My mind kept wandering back to her.
Tegan.
Fainting. In my arms. Fuck.
One second she was kissing me back like she wanted to devour me, her nails digging into my shoulders, the next… her eyes rolled back and she just went limp. Dead weight. No warning.
I’d caught her. Of course I’d fucking caught her. Carried her out, got her water, she was still breathing thank goodness. Just unconscious.
I called my doctor to meet us at the hockey house,he confirmed that she was okay after asking me some questions. I just had to get her to the hockey house.
But immediately we stepped out of the rink, a friend of hers. Cassy I think was her name. Came running towards me. She took her from me despite my protests with that fucking Lino.
That kid makes my blood boil. They fucking took her from me. Saying they know what's wrong and a lot of bullshit. I didn't want to leave her with them but I just had to. Her friend was really persistent and I trusted her for some reason. I took one last look at her pale face, she looked so fragile, like a broken doll.
And now I was here. On the ice. Where I was supposed to be a goddamn king.
“Hayes! What the fuck man, get your head in the game” Jaxon’s voice cut through the fog a second before one of those Rhino defenseman slammed me into the boards. The impact rattled my teeth, a welcome burst of pain that didn’t clear a damn thing.
I shoved back, earning a two-minute minor for roughing. Worth it.
As I sat in the box, seething, Jax skated over during the next whistle. He leaned on the penalty box door, his helmet off, that infuriatingly cheerful grin plastered on his face.
“You playing hockey or auditioning for a sleepwalking documentary, Cap? You’re slower than my grandma, and she’s dead.”
“Fuck off, Jax.”
“Ooh, testy.” He took a swig from his water bottle, his eyes scanning me.
“What’s eating you? And don’t say nothing. You’ve been staring into the middle distance like you’re trying to remember where you left your soul.”
“I said fuck off.” I grit out.
“It’s a girl.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“It’s always a girl. Which one finally got past the ‘I-don’t-give-a-shit’ forcefield?”
“No one.”
“Bullshit.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice.
“You were off the grid last night. And now you look like you wrestled a bear and lost.”
My head snapped toward him. As I glared daggers into his soul
He raised his hands in surrender.
“Well, whatever, or whoever, has you this twisted, you need to sort it. We’re down by one, and you’re playing like a corpse. Coach is gonna bench your ass, Captain or not.”
Like I fucking cared about Coach, or being benched.
The buzzer sounded. My penalty was over. I shoved the door open, shoulder-checking him lightly as I passed.
“Worry about your own game”
I skated back onto the ice, the cold air doing nothing to cool the sick, churning worry in my gut. Jax was right. I was a liability out here.
Every time I went for a hit, I saw her crumpling. Every time I heard a stick slam against the boards, I heard the soft thud of her body hitting the closet floor.
That Rookie Noah skated up next to me during a line change.
“You good, Hayes? You seem… off.”
“Fuck off rookie” I growled.
Whatever made him think he has the right to talk to me? I still remember he has a stupid crush on Tegan.
He flinched, a flicker of hurt in his eyes before he masked it with a nod. Good. Let him be scared. Let them all be scared. That’s how it worked.
But the fear was mine tonight. A cold, clawing thing in my chest.
Was she okay? Well she better be because I'm not done with her yet.
The puck came to me on a breakout pass. I had a clear lane. I should have shot. Instead, I hesitated, looking for a pass that wasn't there. A Rhino player stole it right off my tape and took it the other way for a breakaway goal.
The crowd groaned. My own bench went quiet.
Coach was screaming, red-faced, from behind the bench. I skated to the box for the change, my head down.
Jax was waiting, his smile gone. “Dude. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared past him, through the plexiglass, at nothing.
Everything was wrong. The game felt trivial. The rivalry felt stupid. The cup felt like a piece of cheap metal.
All I could see was her. Pale. Unconscious. Vulnerable.
“Fuck,” I muttered, slamming my stick against the bench in frustration.
I shouldn’t care. I didn’t care about anybody.
The sound of the buzzer was a death knell in my ears. My own mistake. My own head, so far up my own ass I could taste yesterday’s lunch. The Rhino player celebrated his cheap breakaway goal, and something in me just… broke. Not into pieces. Into something sharper.
Fine. If my brain wouldn’t focus on the game, my body would just go to war with it.
The puck dropped for the next face-off. I didn’t wait for it to hit the ice. I charged the Rhinos center, some guy who had a mouth on him, before the ref could even blow the whistle.
A clean, brutal, borderline-late hit that slammed him into the boards so hard the plexiglass shook. The whistle shrieked. Russo was slow getting up.
“What the fuck, Captain!” the ref was in my face.
I just skated away, ignoring him, my breath fogging in ragged pants. No penalty. A warning. A fucking joke.
From that moment, I stopped playing hockey. I started hunting.
Every shift was a mission. I didn’t chase the puck, I chased bodies. I became a missile locked onto red jerseys. A hip-check near the blue line that sent a winger flying. A cross-check in front of the net that wasn’t subtle, clearing the crease by sheer, violent force. I played the puck with a vicious slash of my stick, more interested in the impact than the possession.
“Hayes, dial it back!” Coach yelled during a timeout, spraying water.
“We need goals, not a goddamn penalty parade!”
Like I cared. I took a long drink, the water doing nothing to douse the fire. I didn’t even look at him.
Jax skated up next to me, giving me a worried glance. I skated the other direction away from him. Not ready to hear whatever bullshit he was going to spill.
The next period was worse. A scrum broke out in the corner. Gloves were dropped. I didn’t wait to see who started it. I grabbed the nearest Rhino, some rookie with wide, scared eyes, and threw him into the boards, my forearm against his throat. Poor guy.
“You wanna go?” I snarled, my face inches from his cage.
“Huh? You wanna fucking go?”
He shook his head, panic clear even through the mask. The refs pulled me off. Two minutes for roughing. Again.
In the box, I paced like a caged animal. My knuckles were raw and bleeding from where I’d slammed them against someone’s helmet. The physical pain was good. It was a focus. A tiny, burning point of clarity in the hurricane of shit in my head.
Was she awake? Was she scared? Did she feel sick?
The questions were a swarm of wasps, stinging, relentless. I shouldn't be thinking about her. Fuckk.
Jax scored a goal on the power play, tying the game. He didn’t look at me as he skated past the box. The message was clear: We don’t need your chaos.
Fuck him. Fuck all of them.
When I got back on the ice, the aggression had cooled from a boil to a simmering, lethal rage. I was precise now. A surgeon with a grudge. I laid a hit so clean and devastating on their star defenseman that he had to be helped off the ice.
I stole the puck, deked through two players not with finesse, but with sheer, intimidating force, and took a slapshot from the point that rang off the crossbar so loud it silenced the crowd for a second.
I didn’t celebrate. I just stared at the spot where the puck had struck, wishing it was something else I could break.
The game went to overtime. A tense, tight affair where one mistake would lose it.
I shouldn’t have been on the ice. I was a liability, a live wire. But Coach had no choice. It was my line.
And when the puck squirted loose in the neutral zone, it was me who chased it down. Not with speed, but with a single-minded, destructive purpose. A Rhino player forward reached for it. I didn’t go for the puck. I went for him. A full-body check that lifted him off his skates and dumped him onto the ice. The puck was mine.
I saw an opening. A tiny sliver of net. I didn’t think. I just wound up and shot, putting every ounce of my frustration, my fear, my sick, twisted worry into it.
The puck screamed past the goalie’s glove.
Game over. We won.
The team mobbed me, cheering, slapping my helmet. Jax was there, yelling, his earlier disapproval forgotten in the win.
I let them hug me. But inside, I was empty. The aggression bled out of me, leaving behind only the cold, hard knot of dread.
I’d won the game by trying to destroy it.
And as I skated off the ice, the cheers of the crowd washing over me like a meaningless tide, only one thought echoed in the hollow victory.
I need to see her.