Chapter 1
The air in Lockwood always crackled for Callum Sterling.
Today, it wasn't just the pre-game electricity of a divisional rivalry.
It was a private, illicit current humming under his skin.
He pulled off his sweat-damp practice jersey in the visitors' locker room at the Stallions' facility, the familiar chill of the space a stark contrast to the warm, stubborn glow behind his ribs.
They were here.
Same city.
Same 48-hour window.
Tomorrow's game was the public obligation, the necessary cover.
But tonight, tonight was the main event.
For weeks, the ache of missing Kirill had been a constant, low-grade thrum, a background process his brain couldn't shut down.
Their stolen time was so scarce now—a frantic night here, a tense, hushed phone call there—and it was never enough.
It had been easier before the cottage, when they were both experts at denial, expertly filing their feelings into neat, manageable categories.
But now?
After the confessions, the raw honesty, and those sun-drenched days of simply
existing
together without a schedule or a secret to keep, their love felt too big to contain.
It overflowed.
And it ached with a new, profound sharpness, making every airport goodbye feel less like a necessary secrecy and more like a stupid, self-inflicted wound.
With Kirill still in Lockwood but already locked in quiet, tense conversations about a potential move to Stanwick, this season was proving to be a special kind of torture, with their time together feeling borrowed and brittle.
But for these two days, the weight lifted.
They were in the same zip code.
He could have more than a few frantic hours or a pixelated TalkWave call on terrible hotel Wi-Fi.
He could have a
morning
The thought sent a giddy, humming anticipation straight through his core, a feeling so bright it almost short-circuited his usual pre-game routine.
It was perfect as it was reckless.
Callum didn't care.
Tonight, after the obligatory team dinner he'd diplomatically duck out of early, he could go to a high-rise condo that smelled like sandalwood and expensive coffee, he'd fall asleep in the arms that knew exactly how to hold him, and he'd wake up to that stupid, perfect smirk.
No more walking on eggshells around their own feelings.
No more midnight exits that left him feeling hollowed out and freezing from the inside.
They'd carved out their truth by a lake, and Callum would never again let himself felt a shred of shame for wanting
so desperately.
"Looking forward to the game, Cap?" Ty chirped, slapping his shoulder pads into his stall next to him, breaking Callum's reverie.
"Always," Callum said, and his smile was genuine.
looking forward to it.
To the structured chaos, the clear rules, the electric buzz of pure competition.
But especially to the secret, scorching looks he'd exchange with Kirill across the sixty feet of ice between face-off circles.
Their own private, perfect game within the game.
The post-practice vibe was loose, the usual blend of exhaustion and easy banter.
Callum was half-listening to a heated debate about the best post-game burger joint in the Lantern District, mentally already curating the list of terrible reality TV he was going to make his boyfriend suffer through later, when the tone in the room shifted.
"—whoa, guys, check this out." It was Hamel, one of their rookies on defense, holding up his phone.
"Just popped up on my feed.
Looks like Lockwood's star boy had a rough morning."
Callum's head snapped up, the generic nickname a direct trigger to his nervous system.
"Nazarov?" another voice asked.
Says he wrapped his Lyric around a light pole on Ridgeline Drive.
Black ice, probably."
The world didn't tilt so much as it
dropped
The sensory input of the locker room—the clatter of gear, the easy laughter, the hiss of showers—muffled into a dull, roaring white noise.
His brain, usually a whirring machine of analysis and preparation, screeched to a single, staticky halt.
He was on his feet without any conscious decision to move.
"What?" The word came out flat, dead.
"What did you say?"
Hamel, startled by his captain's sudden, intense focus, turned the screen.
"Just this.
It's a breaking news alert.
Not many details."
The headline was a physical punch:
Stallions Star Kirill Nazarov Involved in Single-Vehicle Accident
Below it, a devastating photo.
Kirill's beloved silver Lyric 911, its front end concertinaed against a mangled streetlight, glittering with shattered glass on frosty asphalt.
Callum's vision tunneled.
The photo was all he could process.
The crumpled geometry of the metal.
The deployed airbag, a stark white fungus blooming in the dark interior. Non-life-threatening, it said, but they always say that at first
Standard procedure
He's fine.
He has to be fine.
His eyes, refusing to blink, scanned the sparse text.
taken by ambulance to Northshore Medical Center for evaluation... condition unknown...
Condition unknown.
Callum was about to be sick.
A cold nausea, sharp and immediate, swept up from his gut.
The carefully constructed, happy future he'd been mentally drafting moments ago shattered.
The warm glow behind his ribs was extinguished, replaced by an arctic vacuum of pure, undiluted fear.
His hands went numb.
His breath hitched in a sharp, painful gasp he couldn't control.
He didn't hear the questions starting to bubble up around him.
He didn't register the concerned glances.
His body was already moving, operating on a primal, singular directive that overrode everything else:
Find Kirill.
Now.