19. Theo

Theo

My hip was still sore the next morning, but our light practice helped. I spent some time skating before and after practice just to loosen things up, and by the time I headed back into the locker room, I was mostly good. I checked in with Dave, one of the athletic trainers, and he agreed that I'd be fine for tonight.

"If you were on the top line," Dave remarked, "I'd be worried about managing your minutes. But you'll only be playing third or fourth line minutes, so you should be good. Just let me know during the intermissions how you're doing."

I could live with that. Coach seemed relieved, too; after that tsunami of injuries had sidelined so much of the team, the last thing he needed was someone else going down.

Dave did some work to release the tension in my hip and quads, which helped. There wasn't much any of us could do for the places that were bruised; they were going to be tender for a couple of days no matter what. Getting everything moving helped a lot.

After he was done with me, I spent the day carefully encouraging my hip to unfuck itself the rest of the way. Some light work on the stationary bike helped get things moving without too much pain. Walking like I always did before games also helped. Dave suggested an ice bath after the game, but… no. I'd tried those a few times in major juniors, and all they did was make me cold and—in two super-fun instances—make me puke.

If I was sore after the game, I'd put an icepack on it, but the ice bath could go straight to hell.

By puck drop, I was as good as I was going to be, and though there was still an annoying ache in my hip, I played hard like normal.

The game was intense, too. We were neck in neck through the first and second periods, and my line was out now, trying to break the tie so we could start the third with a lead.

Foster sent me the puck, and I tore across the red line toward the offensive zone. A defenseman got on me and was trying to get the puck away. He got me up against the glass, but I still protected the puck, keeping it on my stick and away from his in the narrow space between my body and the boards.

Finally, I managed to slip past him, the puck still on my stick, and—

Someone came out of nowhere and slammed me hard into the boards. My pads offered some protection, but they could only do so much, especially for the elbow he shoved into my midsection. Pads or not, it still fucking hurt, and it stunned me bad enough I dropped to the ice while he skated away.

My hip was unimpressed, but it was fine—nothing I couldn't skate off—so I scrambled to get up, but—

Couldn't inhale.

At all.

I dropped onto one hand as panic ripped through me.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn't breathe.

Distantly, I was aware of a whistle. Of people banging on the glass. Someone nearby was shouting. There was a hand on my shoulder.

Still couldn't breathe. The air just wouldn't move.

Someone suddenly appeared beside me, crouching on the ice. "Hey. Mathis." Dave squeezed my arm through my pads. "Look at me. Look at me, Mathis."

I lifted my gaze.

"You're good." He sounded way, way too calm. "You just got the wind knocked out of you."

Easy for him to fucking say. Did he not realize I couldn't fucking breathe?

"In through your nose," he said. "In through your nose, out through your mouth."

Fuck him. Didn't he understand I couldn't breathe in at all? Christ, my vision was getting dark. I couldn't—

"Come on, kid. In through your nose. Trust me."

It didn't matter how I breathed—none of it was working. Did he not get that—

Some air finally moved.

"That's good," he said. "Out through your mouth. Then in through your nose, as deep as you can."

I closed my eyes and did as I was told. I was still panicky, still freaking the ever-loving hell out, but every breath moved a little more air than the last. The sound of myself wheezing made my skin crawl.

It also made me realize the whole arena had fallen deathly silent.

Yeah, this probably looked scary as hell to anyone watching from the stands or on TV. When someone went down and didn't get back up, it could mean anything, and I'd seen it mean something serious on multiple occasions.

I was good, though. I really had just had the goddamned wind knocked out of me, and as more and more breath flowed freely—as my lungs actually started to fill more and more with each inhalation—that awful feeling of panic subsided. Though I wanted the crowd and the players to know I was all right, I indulged in another few seconds to draw a couple of breaths, just to be sure I really was breathing all right.

"That's it," Dave said. "Think you can get up?"

I nodded. Then I opened my eyes and nodded slowly. "I'm good." My voice still sounded wheezy and taut. "Scared the fuck out of me, but… I'm good."

He clapped my shoulder. "Figured you would be. All right. Let's get you back into the locker room."

I didn't argue. I was probably fine to play on, but he'd want to check me over more thoroughly just to be sure. Besides, the period was almost over. I could come back after intermission.

With the help of Dave and Grekov, who'd been hovering nearby, I slowly got to my feet. As soon as I started to get up, the crowd cheered and all the players from both teams began tapping their sticks on the boards or the ice. I held up a gloved hand to wave at the crowd, and they cheered even louder as I skated toward the bench, still leaning on Grekov as I caught my breath. I knew that relief—seeing someone go down was scary as hell, and seeing them leave the ice more or less on their own power meant they were okay. Banged up, maybe, but okay.

As I passed the bench, I caught Christian's eye. He'd gone white as a sheet, but he flashed a quick smile. Probably as relieved as everyone else in the building.

I gave him a little tap with my glove as I passed, and he patted my shoulder. Nothing incriminating. Nothing that telegraphed we were romantically or sexually involved. Just a staff member offering up some encouragement to a player after a scary moment on the ice.

Dave checked me over in the locker room, and he decided I was fine. I'd be sore tomorrow (what else was new?), but I wasn't showing any signs that I needed to go on concussion protocol. I had full mobility. I could draw a full breath. My chest hurt, but in that way that meant I'd been sandwiched between a large body and Plexiglas, not that I'd broken some ribs or that something was going wrong with my heart or lungs.

By the time the team came clomping in for intermission, I was cleared to return to the game. I got a lot of back slaps and chirps from my teammates.

Christian came over to my locker stall as I downed some sports drink. "How's your gear? Anything I need to fix?"

It was a perfectly valid thing for an equipment manager to check in on after a hit like that, but I still felt conspicuous. As if someone would notice if we held eye contact a little too long.

"Nah, I think I'm good." I smiled up at him, my heart fluttering when he subtly returned it. "Just had to get my lungs working again."

Christian grimaced. "Yeah. That didn't look fun. And everything's good? With your gear and with, um… With you?" His brow pinched with very real concern.

"I'm fine." I tilted my bottle toward Dave, who was talking to Coach about something. "He says I'm good to come back for the third."

"Good. Good." Christian nodded. "Just be careful out there, all right?" His eyes flicked to either side, and he tensed as if he thought Grekov or one of the other guys nearby might read between the lines. He cleared his throat and quickly added, "I don't have an extra chest protector for you, so I'll have to duct tape it together if you break it."

I laughed and rolled my eyes. "Fuck you."

He chuckled, gave me a surreptitious wink, and then left to do his job. There were extras of all of our gear, so I knew he was just talking shit. Knowing him, though, he'd make me wear one wrapped in duct tape just to troll me.

I loved that about him.

When we returned to the ice, the battle continued, but nobody on either side could put a puck into a net. Well, someone from Vancouver managed to, but Coach successfully challenged it for goaltender interference. Then Condit scored, but Vancouver's coach challenged it for offside. For fuck's sake.

Back and forth, back and forth. As I went over the boards or another shift, I glanced up at the screen to check the situation. The game was tied 3-3 with four minutes to go in regulation.

No pressure, or anything.

Vancouver managed to break away and get into our zone. I poke-checked the puck away from one of their forwards just as he got into the zone, but one of their players snagged it before Foster could get to it.

Yanni lunged for the puck, going a couple of feet out of the crease, and he passed it to me.

It landed right on my tape, and I whipped around to send it along the boards to Foster, who was waiting near the blue line.

But I miscalculated my release. Instead of flying toward the boards, the puck zipped straight toward our fucking goal.

The instant the puck left my stick, people in the crowd gasped and my heart stopped. The net was still wide open, Yanni still regaining his balance and getting back into the crease.

Grekov came out of nowhere, though. He dashed into the crease, grabbed the puck on his stick, and flew toward the neutral zone.

I wavered on my skates, our fans' collective sigh of relief echoing my own, and then I was chasing Grekov.

As soon as he was in the zone, he slapped it on goal. The goalie stopped it, but we had a faceoff in the offensive zone.

My line returned to the bench while Condit's line came out for their shift. I was relieved, too, and not just because I was tired from an intense minute out there. I was still rattled as I took my seat on the bench.

An own goal was never good. An own goal in the third period of a tied game? Against a division team that was dangerously close to edging us out of the wild card spot? Not. Fucking. Ideal.

I shakily grabbed a water bottle. As I squirted some in my mouth, I tried to will my pulse to come down. We were good. I was good. Grekov had saved our bacon, and we were still alive. Still had a chance to win in regulation if we could score in the next—I looked up—two and a half minutes. I hadn't fucked us over.

Beside me, Abrahamsson clapped my back. "Shake it off, man. Happens to the best of us."

I nodded. "Thanks. I still feel like an idiot."

"Nah." He bumped his shoulder against mine. "Remind me in the locker room and I'll show you the video of Phillips scoring an own goal during the playoffs."

I turned to him, eyebrows up. "Seriously?"

Grimacing, he nodded. "I mean it—happens to the best of us."

Well, that much was encouraging. And, like, I knew it was true. Own goals were rare, and they were embarrassing as all hell, but it wasn't like I would've been the first or the last to score one. Plus, Grekov would now be in every highlight reel imaginable after swooping in and snagging the puck about an inch before it would've crossed the goal line. I didn't even mind people prefacing it with "After dumbass Mathis forgets which goal he's aiming for…" or something.

Okay, I minded. A little. But I tried to hold on to the fact that he'd get some glory out of this, and in the end, it had been a near miss, not a catastrophe. Could've been a whole lot worse.

With ninety seconds left on the clock, one of Vancouver's players went to the box for slashing. Ooh, power play on a tied game. Nice.

Seattle called a timeout. While the power play coach talked with the players on both units, Coach leaned over beside me. "Don't let it mess with your head, kid, all right? You've been holding your own up here. One mistake isn't going to end it all."

I wanted to believe that. I really, really did. Problem was, I knew how easily one mistake or misstep could end it all. If Seattle hadn't been mercilessly plagued with injuries this season, I never would've come back to this level at all. With players steadily returning from IR and LTIR, and with some of my Everett teammates shining in the PHL, the Rainiers didn't need a reason to bump me back down. The least I could do was not hand them one.

And it got a whole lot harder to believe Coach and Abrahamsson when I was pulled aside before I even made it back to the locker room.

"You want to tell me what the fuck that was all about?" Jack Hayes shouted in my face once we were relatively alone. "Do you need to go back to major juniors? Huh? Do you not realize you're in the NAPH?"

"No, I-I do," I stammered. "I just misjudged—"

"‘I just misjudged,'" he mocked. Then his expression darkened. "I think you need to remember your situation, kid. If your head's not in the game, you let me know." He held up his phone and jiggled it in my face. "One phone call, and I can have you back in Everett with the other kids. Is that what you want?"

I gulped. "No, sir. No. I'm—my head's in the game."

"Is it, though?" Jack narrowed his eyes. "Then what the fuck was that? Huh? Tell me."

"It…" I shifted my weight, my skate blades scraping on the hard floor and giving me away. "I fucked up. It won't happen again."

His lips pulled into a snarl. "Then why the hell did it happen in the first place?"

"It…" I was having a harder time breathing than when I'd been winded on the ice. Air just wouldn't fucking move.

Jack apparently ran out of patience. He stabbed a finger at me. "Get it together, or get ready to go back to the PHL for the rest of your pathetic career."

Then he stalked away, leaving me there with his threats ringing in my ears. I pushed out a ragged breath and slumped against the cold cinder block wall. What the fuck was that all about? Had I really fucked up that bad? Yeah, I'd almost scored an own goal at the worst possible time, but…

Goddamn. Maybe he was right. Maybe I didn't belong here.

Right then, Condit stepped out of the locker room, jersey off but chest protector still on. "Hey. Kid." The captain's brow pinched as he approached. "You good?"

Well, that answered that—yes, my teammates had been able to hear Jack going off on me. Because that made it way less embarrassing.

"I, um…" I swallowed hard and ran a hand through my wet hair. "I don't know. I think?"

He glanced in the direction Jack had gone, his lips pulled tight and his eyes narrow. Facing me again, he asked, "What did he say to you?"

Okay, so maybe they hadn't heard everything. The shouting, yes, but not the specifics. And I didn't want to rehash it all. Embarrassment had me wanting to brush past him and head into the locker room. I still needed to shower, and maybe that would help rinse away all the shame that itched on my skin like dried sweat.

Condit sighed. "Listen. Don't take it to heart, okay? Jack's a—" He cut himself off, pressing his lips together as he shook his head. Looking me right in the eyes, he said, "You're killing it out there, okay? Coach sees it. We all do."

"Except I almost cost us the game."

"And Vancouver tied the game after I turned over the puck and basically handed it to one of their forwards."

I blinked.

"Watch the replay." He shrugged. "I guarantee the commentators were apoplectic over it. Especially because the shift before, Wilcox did a drop pass that one of their d-men snatched up and used to score."

"He… oh." I knew that. I'd watched both of those play out from the bench, and I'd nearly had heart failure when I'd realized our guys had given up scoring chances. Especially when those scoring chances paid off.

"You made a mistake," Condit went on, "but it wasn't a costly one. Not at all."

"Thank God Grekov was there," I muttered.

"Uh-huh. And thank God Sorenson was there when I fanned on a shot and they got a breakaway. And Yanni was there for thirty-eight out of forty-one times they were able to put a puck on goal." He chuckled and shook his head. "Man, I know how easy it is to feel like everything is your fault because you made a mistake. But when you step back and look at the whole game, there's always a whole pile of mistakes. Sometimes they cause goals against. Sometimes they don't." He shrugged. "It's just part of the game."

"I guess. Jack sure wasn't happy about it, though."

"Eh. He'll get over it."

"Yeah." I glanced in the direction our GM had gone. "I just hope he doesn't make good on that threat to send me down."

"He won't." Condit sounded sure. Hell, authoritative: as if he wasn't just sure—he was going to make sure. "There's a reason you've stayed up as long as you have. No one's going to send you back down because you made one mistake that didn't even cause a goal against." He clapped my shoulder again. "Come on. We need to shower and eat before the buses leave."

I nodded and followed him. I felt a tiny bit better after we'd talked, but I was still off-balance and unnerved. I wanted to say I had no idea why Jack had it out for me, but I did. At least… I thought I did. He was still salty about the Pride Tape, right?

But what if he knows he has another reason to be pissed at me?

A chill ran through me.

What if he did? What if he'd somehow picked up the scent, and he knew Christian and I were hooking up?

I wiped a hand over my face. No. He hadn't. We'd been careful, and Jack wasn't subtle enough to let something like that slide if he knew.

I was just getting fucking paranoid, and after getting reamed out like that, I was on edge. That was all it was.

Closing my eyes, I pushed out a breath. Jack was just being a dick. He didn't know anything.

And the longer I stood out here like a dumbass, the less time I'd have to spend curled up with Christian back at the hotel. There wouldn't be any sex tonight, but we could probably squeeze in some cuddling.

With that in mind, I pushed my shoulders back, strode into the locker room, and got the hell out of the arena as quickly as I could.