Chapter 2
He shoved his feet into his street shoes, not bothering with the laces—the asymmetry of it would bother him later, but not now—and grabbed his jacket and wallet from his stall.
"Callum?" Duncan's voice, close and cautious, cut through the fog.
"You okay?"
Callum didn't answer.
He just walked, a stiff, robotic march toward the door, his mind a locked loop of the image of the car and the two words:
condition unknown condition unknown conditionunknown—
His best friend was beside him in the hallway in a second, a solid, worried presence blocking his path just enough to be an anchor.
"Hey.
Talk to me.
What's going on?"
Callum stopped.
He turned to face Duncan, his left winger, the person who knew his rhythms on and off the ice better than anyone, his tells, his routines, his quiet moods.
Except for the one, massive, decade-long secret.
The panic was a swirling storm, threatening to fracture his careful control.
He pushed it down, deep, locking it behind the most disciplined, flat calm he could muster.
He had to make the words come out.
He had to make Duncan understand enough to help.
The secret could burn.
"I need to go to Northshore Medical," Callum said, his voice a flat, unnatural monotone.
Each word was a deliberate step on very thin ice.
"Right now."
Duncan blinked, his usual easy-going expression fracturing into confusion.
"The hospital?
Are you hurt?
Did you take a puck or something?"
I need to go.
It's important." Callum's gaze was fixed, intense, willing Duncan to understand the catastrophic importance without requiring the explanation he couldn't form.
His social scripts had failed.
All that was left was raw, unprocessed need.
"You have to drive me.
I can't.
I can't operate any vehicle right now." That, at least, was an objective fact.
His hands wouldn't stop their fine, internal tremors.
He thought distantly that maybe he was cold, maybe he was freezing, maybe this was what hypothermia felt like.
He was so goddamn scared.
The confusion on Duncan's face deepened into real concern, edged with the beginning of fear.
This wasn't Callum.
He was normally their rock, their steady, emotional compass.
This was someone hollowed out and running on frayed wires.
"Callum, man, you're scaring me.
What is this about?
Is it your family?
Did something happen?"
Ty emerged from the locker room then, his usual easy grin dissolving as he absorbed the scene.
"Whoa.
What's the five-alarm fire?
Cap looks like he just got benched in Game 7."
"He says he needs to go to Northshore Medical.
Won't say why," Duncan reported, his eyes never leaving Callum's face, as if he could diagnose the problem through sheer observation.
The flat control was beginning to splinter.
The pressure behind it was too great.
A crack appeared, and a desperate, fractured sound escaped him.
," Callum said, the word sharp and strained, cutting through the hallway's quiet.
"Duncan.
Please.
I have to get there.
I'll...
I'll explain in the car.
I need to
go
He saw the moment their concern for him overrode their confusion.
Duncan and Ty shared a look, a silent conversation born of years of friendship and shared ice passed between them:
He's our guy.
He's asking.
We go
Something was very, very wrong with their captain, and he was begging for their help.
"Okay," his best friend said, his voice shifting into the decisive tone he used to organise their defensive zone.
"Okay buddie.
My rental's out front.
Let's move."
Ty fell into step without another question, falling into a natural, protective position on Callum's right side.
The three of them moved through the arena's back corridors in a tense, hurried silence, Callum leading the way with single-minded purpose.
He didn't see the staff they passed.
He didn't feel the cold slap of the Lockwood air as they pushed through the doors to the players' parking lot.
All he saw was the image of that crumpled car.
All he knew was that he had to get to Kirill.
Nothing else in the universe mattered.
In the end Callum didn't say a word in the car.
His entire being was a raw, vibrating nerve, his consciousness funneled into one single, brutal task:
Do not break down.
Inhale.
One.
Three.
Four.
Five.
He stared, unseeing, at the blur of Lockwood's brick and steel passing the window.
In the front seats, Duncan and Ty exchanged a frantic, whispered conversation, their words just a muffled buzz under the roar of blood in his ears.
"—what the hell, Ty?"
"—no idea, he just shut down—"
"—think it's a panic attack?
He's white as a sheet—"
"—just drive, okay?
Just drive."
Their voices were distant radio static.
All he could hear was the echo of crumpling metal, a sound his mind had invented and now played on a devastating loop.
Exhale.
Callum clutched, desperately, to the simple rhythm like a frayed lifeline, forcing the chaotic, screaming thoughts into the neat, ordered boxes where he usually kept game tape and nutrition schedules.
But the boxes kept breaking.
The image of the Lyric—its elegant line utterly destroyed, the driver's side wrapped around cold steel—was burned onto the back of his eyelids.
It was all he could see.
And with it came the thoughts, the awful, grieving thoughts he couldn't stop.
What if he was scared?
The idea was a physical pain.
Kirill, who feared nothing on ice, who met every check with a smirk.
Had he been afraid in that single, shattering moment?
Had there been time for that brilliant, infuriating mind to register what was happening?
What if the last thing he ever heard was the sound of his own car breaking?
Did he pray?
In that final, inevitable second when physics took over, Kirill, who carried his faith like a secret, would surely reach for it.
He would inevitably though of his mother.