Chapter 103 The Break

Chapter 103 The Break


The first time Cassian walked past me without speaking, I told myself it was because he was late for practice.

The second time, I knew better.

By the third day, I stopped pretending not to notice.

He did not look at me in the hallway, he did not wait for me in the parking lot.  

The chemistry we had built all season was gone.

It was not just that he was avoiding me off the ice, it  was that he had figured out how to carry it onto the ice too. We stopped finding each other in the same way; the passes were late, the timing was off. The looks that used to tell me where he was headed were now flat and empty or gone before I could catch them. When I set up in the zone, he was somewhere else. When he drove the puck, I was one step behind.

It was obvious to everyone.

The first loss came in a game we should have won.

The second came after a slow start and a bad second period that turned into a mess by the third.

The third one was the worst because by then we had stopped looking like a team and started looking like a group of players pretending they were not missing something important.

I sat at my stall after that one with my elbows on my knees and stared at the floor while the room emptied around me. 

Something was broken.

I heard Cassian’s locker shut across the room.

I looked up once.

He was already pulling his gear into his bag without meeting my eyes. His jaw was tight, his face looked tired in the way it did when he had been carrying too much and refusing to say it out loud. He zipped the bag, swung it onto one shoulder, and walked out before anyone could stop him.

He did not even look at me.

I sat there for a second longer than I should have.

Then I stood and slammed my own stall shut harder than necessary.

Nobody stopped me.

Nobody wanted to.

The locker room had been quiet for the last three days in a way I had never liked. Now it felt worse because the silence was starting to sound like blame.

I got to the hallway outside the training room and stopped when I realized Cassian had already gone.

Again.

I leaned against the wall for a second and rubbed a hand over my face.

He had every right to be angry.

I knew that.

I still did not like the way he was doing it.

I had pushed too hard, I had tried to protect too much, I had gone to the GM alone, then stood in front of him like I could force the whole future into shape by being more stubborn than everybody else in the room. Cassian had called me on it, and I had not liked hearing it because it had been true.

Now he was paying for it with silence.

So was the team.

The next morning’s skate was worse.

We were supposed to start clean, Cassian came out of the tunnel and did not look at me. He skated to the far side of the rink and stayed there through warmups. When a drill brought us near each other, he kept his head down and moved the puck away before I could set up.

The first rep was bad.

The second one was worse.

I sent a pass into space that should have been his lane. It hit nothing; he had gone to the other side of the zone.

Danton blew the whistle and stared at both of us for half a second before barking, “Reset.”

Cassian skated past me without a word.

I caught the edge of his shoulder with my eyes and watched him disappear into the next rep.

The rest of practice went the same way. 

By the end of practice, my temper had gotten too tight to stay quiet.

I found him in the hallway outside the showers while the rest of the team was still changing.

“Cassian.”

He stopped walking but did not turn around right away.

That alone made my chest tighten.

I took one step closer. “We need to talk.”

“We do not,” he said.

“That is not true.”

His jaw flexed once. “It is for now.”

He went to keep walking.

I stepped in front of him.

“Do not do this here,” he said.

“Do what?”

“This.” He lifted one hand between us. “The standing in front of me like you can talk me into pretending nothing happened.”

I stared at him.

His expression did not move.

The heat in his face was still there, but now it was under the anger instead of beside it.

“You keep walking away from me,” I said.

He laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “You are really saying that after everything?”

“Yes.”

He folded his arms. “Do not start acting confused.”

“I am not confused.”

“No?” He tilted his head. “Because from where I am standing, it looks like you are still trying to fix things by making decisions for both of us.”

I swallowed the immediate answer I wanted to give because it would have turned into a fight neither of us could afford. 

I lowered my voice. “I was trying to protect you.”

That made his eyes flash.

“Of course,” he said.

I frowned. “What?”

“You keep saying that like it makes everything better.”

“I am telling you the truth.”

“No,” he said. “You are telling me your version of it.”

The hallway went still around us.

He looked at me and said, “You are not the only one who gets to decide what matters.”

I held his gaze. “I know that.”

“Then act like it.”

“I thought I was protecting our future,” I said.

He stared at me for a beat.

Then he looked away first.

That hurt more than if he had shouted.

The silence after that sat between us longer than I wanted it to.

“I can’t do this like this,” he said.

My throat tightened. “Cassian.”

He shook his head once. “No, I mean it. We are losing games because we are not even talking off the ice. You think nobody notices? They notice. Danton notices. The rookies notice. The other team definitely notices.”

I said nothing.

He lowered his voice. “You keep trying to save everybody, and I am telling you it is not helping.”

I looked at him hard. “I was trying to keep us together.”

His eyes flashed again.

“There are ways to do that without suffocating me,” he said.

That word again.

It hit harder the second time.

I did not answer right away.

The silence stretched until a door down the hall opened, and Raffi came out with his bag over his shoulder, took one look at us, and stopped dead. He looked from Cassian to me and then sighed like a man who had already run out of patience with both of us.

“Seriously?” he said.

Neither of us moved.

He pointed at us with his free hand. “You have lost three straight.”

I frowned. “Raffi.”

“No, I am talking now.” He walked closer, annoyed enough not to care that the whole hallway could probably hear him. “Three straight, the team is flat. Danton is about one bad practice away from throwing a whiteboard through the wall, and everybody in the room can feel that you two are not speaking unless you are fighting.”

Cassian’s jaw tightened.

Raffi kept going. “Fix this.”

I stared at him.

He looked at Cassian, then back at me. “Fix it now. This team is falling apart because of you two.”

Raffi shifted his bag higher on his shoulder and shook his head once. “I mean it, I do not care who apologizes first. I do not care who thinks they are right, just stop letting this drag the whole team down.”

Then he walked away.

That left the two of us in the hallway again.

Cassian did not look at me.

I wished he would.

Instead he turned toward the locker room door, hand on the handle, and paused there long enough to say, without facing me, “We are not fine.”

“No,” I said quietly. “We are not.”

He opened the door and disappeared inside.

I stood in the hallway for a second, listening to the noise of the room swallow him whole, and knew exactly how badly Raffi’s words had landed.

He was right.

The team was falling apart because we were.

And for the first time since the argument started, I knew I would have to be the one to go after him first.