Page 41 of Payback On The Ice

His light is on.

I stand on the sidewalk and look at it.

Then I go up the walk and dig for my key and go inside and take my shoes off in the hall. I go up the stairs one at a time, holding the rail, stopping on every step to breathe. On the top step I stop for a long time.

His door is right there. A line of light underneath it.

I go into my room and close the door very quietly. I sit on the edge of Nico's bed without turning the light on.

On the other side of the wall, I hear him get up.

12

DANE

Isaw the stick go up.

That's the part I keep coming back to. Not the knee. The stick. I was three strides away, standing up in my crease, and I saw Gunnar's hands come together on the shaft and I knew exactly what was going to happen, the same way I know where a shot's going before it leaves the blade. I had time. A full second. More.

I could've been there. Three strides. I've made saves that took longer.

I didn't move.

And then he was down, and the pile was on him, and I could see his face through the gap. His mouth open. Nothing going in. His eyes on me.

I stood there.

In April I didn't move either. I've told myself for six months that it was the distance. Forty feet. Nobody could have gotten there. I was in my crease and Nico was in the corner and by the time I understood what was happening, it was already done. I froze because there wasn't anything else to do.

Today it wasn't forty feet. It was three strides. And there wasn't a single part of me that was frozen.

I chose it.

I stood there and I watched a pile land on him because some part of me wanted to see it happen. It wanted him to know what it's like to be on the ice and look up and see somebody who could help, and doesn't.

And then he got up. Bent over. Breathing in those little sips. And he skated past my crease, and he looked at me.

He didn't look angry.

He looked like a guy who'd just found out something he should've known all along.

"What happened at the end there?" Halvorsen asks me in the hall after.

"Battle drill."

"I know it was a battle drill, Kovač. I was there. Who was on top of him?"

"I didn't see."

He looks at me. He's known me since I was seventeen. He recruited me out of a high school rink in Duluth that didn't even have a working scoreboard. He knows what my face looks like when I'm lying, because he's watched me do it to referees for three years.

"Okay," he says. "Deb says he's out two weeks, minimum."

"Okay."

"Okay," he says again, and walks away.

Wes is at the end of the hall by the door to the room. He doesn't have to say anything. He just looks at me, and then he goes into the room and shuts the door.