Page 36 of The Grumpy Defenseman

Samantha was at the boards, camera up and professionally cool, and the absence of her warmth was one more thing I could not put down.

We broke for water. Players drifted to the bench, grabbing bottles, chirping about nothing. Routine sounds of a team at work. Fine. Manageable.

Then Brick leaned against the boards near Samantha and said, loud enough for the group to hear, “How’s Mr. Sunshine today? Looks like someone put extra storm in his clouds.”

The guys laughed. Brick meant it with warmth. The nickname had spread the way all good nicknames did: affectionately, without malice.

I stopped skating. The blades scraped to a halt, spraying ice. The sound cut through the ambient noise of practice like a blade through tape.

I looked at Samantha.

She was standing beside Brick, camera at her side, a half-smile still on her face from the joke. Warm. Open in the way she was with everyone who was not me, the version of her that existed before Silas’s warning had installed a pane of glass between us.

The words came out before I could stop them.

“Maybe focus on your job instead of giving me nicknames.”

Sharp and cold. Loud enough that the rink went quiet. Not gradually. Instantly. The way sound dies when something wrong enters a room.

Her face changed, and recognition was worse than anger.

Brick straightened. His eyes went flat.

“Easy, McKinney.”

Across the rink, Colt lowered his water bottle without lifting it to his mouth. Sully held his whistle and did not blow it. Ryan went still at center ice, captain instincts locking onto the room before anyone else moved. Finn, halfway through a stretch along the boards, froze with one knee bent and all that rookie fire trapped behind his teeth.

I skated away before I could see the damage settle.

The instant the words left my mouth, I knew the timing was wrong and the target was worse.

Practice resumed around me. Drills and whistles. The mechanical continuation of a routine that did not pause for personal disasters.

I ran every drill at full speed and felt nothing.

Near the end of practice, during a line change, Sully caught my eye from the bench and gave one sharp nod toward the boards.

I skated over.

He waited until I was close enough that no one else could hear him.

“Whatever that was earlier, don’t do it again. Not in my room.” His voice was quiet, the way coaches said things they did not want the rest of the room to overhear. “I know you’ve got weight on you. The room knows too. But the room doesn’t get to be the place you set it down. Find another place.”

He held my gaze for half a second, then turned back toward the drill.

I pushed off from the boards and rejoined the rotation.

Samantha

The rink went quiet, and I kept my camera up.

I shot the rest of practice through a lens that had never felt heavier.

I did not look at Evan McKinney. Not once.

Ryan skated past my position near the end, his expression carrying a question he was too smart to ask out loud. I shook my head, a small definitive gesture, and he nodded and kept moving.

Practice ended. I packed with steady hands and walked out wearing professional neutrality like armor.