Chapter 3
Back in the locker room, Grady tested his — admittedly — ridiculous theory.
He chose when Mo was the most distracted: the moment he picked up his phone and started texting Cedarwood Girl.
"Hey, you catch where Rhodes got hit tonight?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.
Again, his theory was ridiculous, and Rhodes had been pulled so late that he hadn't even made it back onto the ice for Mo to get a close look.
Morozov didn't even look up from his phone.
"Shoulder."
So...
weird. Not damning, but weird.
And to be fair, anyone would have come out of that hit with a wrecked shoulder.
It could have been a coincidence.
What Grady did next was not his proudest moment.
He could admit that.
The next time they played Cedarwood, Grady let his stick fall behind him just a little too far.
Just enough that Rhodes would skate into it and knock his shin.
Which, of course, he did.
And that little bump sent him swiveling off balance and straight into the wall.
They pulled him for a second when he started leaning to one side.
But Grady watched.
He watched as Kirill Morozov passed the puck on a goal he absolutely should have run with — passed it to a rookie,of all people*—*and then drifted into circles near Cedarwood's bench.
First pass, they nodded to each other.
Second pass — Grady could see more clearly now when he was looking for it — Kirill subtly raised his hand and tapped against his own body.
Third pass, Callum Rhodes lifted his skate onto the bench and patted his shin.
The left one.
Back in the locker room, Grady waited again.
He watched Mo come in from his victory lap and go straight for his phone before even peeling off his gear.
Cedarwood Girl,he guessed.
And when Mo was just distracted enough, Grady asked:
"Hey, did you see where Rhodes got injured tonight?" He paused, waited for an answer, and then, just to be safe, added, "I felt really bad.
Didn't mean to clip him, just didn't realize I was carrying it so far back, y'know?"
Mo hummed, nodding slowly.
"Do not feel bad, Fletcher.
He was off ice for only seconds.
Rhodes deserves it," he said, though it didn't sound as convincing as it once did.
It took a minute before he even answered the original question.
"Left shin, by the way.
Skated weird rest of game."
Okay, yeah...
Grady hadn't imagined that.
Kirill really was checking on Rhodes.
Which...
technically wasn't a problem.
Harborcrest had good rookies that year, and with Rhodes benched, they didn't need Mo to take the goal.
If anything, it just evened the scales.
Besides, Rhodes didn't get injured often.
Morozov wasn't giving up anything to go check on Rhodes.
Not that Grady could think of, anyway.
It was just unbelievably fucking weird.
And what Grady noticed after that was what happened after Rhodes's injuries.
If Rhodes was checked particularly hard in a game against Harborcrest, it wasn't unusual for Mo to give that player the cold shoulder for an entire week.
And if anyone ever called him on it, he'd just shrug and mutter something about "being Koravian." Somehow, everyone bought it.
Grady Fletcher did not buy it.
Because he was paying attention, he had picked up on it, started keeping track, and the Venn diagram between "people who touched Rhodes" and "people Mo hated that week" was a perfect fucking circle.
When Rhodes got into a fight in Palmshore — the second fight of his entire career — it had been with a player named (ironically) Brickman.
Two and a half weeks later, when Harborcrest played Palmshore, Morozov broke Brickman's fucking nose.
And yeah, Grady sure as shit noticed that.
When Kirill Morozov became Harborcrest's captain, Grady didn't even need to check if Rhodes had taken a hit in his game the night before — wherever that game had been.
He could always tell.
Practice the next day was brutal.
If Rhodes had taken a nasty hit from Harborcrest, it wasn't unusual for the team to find themselves skating until their souls left their bodies.
Twelve-hour days.
Sometimes more.
Still, Grady had no proof.
Nothing except the giant, flashing neon sign that Mo was obsessed with Rhodes in a way no one else on the planet was.
It could have been purely friendship.
in the same way Grady could have been the tooth fairy.
It would've made sense, maybe, if they'd actually been friends.
The league had spent years doing everything short of blood sacrifice to pit those two against each other.
Even before they were drafted, they were doing press together.
Every year during preseason, almost every sports channel wanted to have an interview about the famous rivalry — though they rarely got the two of them in the same room at the same time.
There was something unique about them.
Something Grady would simply never understand, no matter how long he'd been playing or how good he was.
Morozov and Rhodes were Morozov and Rhodes.They were legends before they even reached the league, and sure as hell cemented their legacies by seven and a half seasons in.
At this point, Grady was convinced they were in a race for the Hall of Fame.
He was also convinced the league would simply induct them together, purely to keep the rivalry alive even after they retired.
People wanted them to hate each other.
That was what sold.
None of it — not the fight highlights, not the interviews, not the endless fan commentary — could change the fact that they were the only two people who understood what that was like.
The only two who'd been told over and over to think about each other.
Friendships blossomed in those environments.
Even now, Grady had the phone numbers of the people he'd been drafted alongside.
They didn't talk anymore, but at the time, he remembered being relieved to see them on the ice with him.
A reminder that he wasn't alone.
However, the way the two of them circled each other on the ice — the way they had hidden it — didn't seem friendly.
It was obvious to Grady, but maybe that was just because he actually cared about Kirill.
He tried to push it from his mind.
Mo hadn't said anything about it, and he was playing like a man possessed.
He was going for another Cup, and it was obvious.
If whatever this thing with Rhodes was had made Mo play like that, then Grady had no interest in fucking it up.
He would deal with it whenever it became a problem.
That didn't mean he stopped noticing things.
He didn't.
Every time they were on the ice together, something happened between Mo and Rhodes.
Sometimes it was just a snarky comment.
Other times it was the way they followed each other with an almost psychic understanding of each other's fakes.