Behind the Ice Wall

Chapter 3 — Practice & The First Glance

SKY’S POV

Morning practice was supposed to be the one place that still made sense.

I got there early, the way I always did, lacing up in an empty locker room before the rest of the guys showed up with their coffee and their noise. I liked that hour. Quiet building, nobody around yet, just the hum of the ice machine somewhere behind the walls.

By the time Coach Petrov ran us through rebound drills, that quiet had turned into something else.

I squared up for a wrist shot from the circle. Read the angle right. Tracked it clean. Still let it slide through my legs — a shot I hadn’t missed since my rookie year. It clacked off the boards behind me loud enough that a couple guys turned their heads.

“You good?” Marchetti called out from the blue line.

“Fine,” I said, and got back into my stance.

I wasn’t. My head kept sliding somewhere else in the middle of a read, and by the end of the session I’d let in three shots I had no business letting in. A high glove shot I usually ate up. A rebound I should have smothered instead of kicking back into traffic. A shot through a screen I usually track without even thinking about it.

Petrov skated over. I knew that look. Not angry. Just watching me close, the way he watched guys who were one bad week away from becoming a problem somebody had to deal with.

“Head’s somewhere else today,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Working through some stuff,” I said, which was as close to true as I planned on getting.

He nodded and skated off toward the other end. I figured that was the end of it.

Then Coach Reyes told me, off to the side, low enough that only I could hear it: “Dr. Frank is going to sit in on practice today. Just observation. Don’t let it throw you.”

It threw me a little anyway.

I looked toward the tunnel and there she was, standing near the boards with a coffee in one hand, watching the ice with the same easy attention she’d had in her office two days before. She wasn’t watching the drills. She was watching me — how I reset between shots, how my shoulders sat, whatever it was underneath all of it that she seemed to be able to read better than the guys who’d played beside me for years.

Our eyes met across the ice.

Most people looked away first. Coaches did it out of habit, glancing back down at a clipboard the second they realized they’d been caught staring. Scouts did it too, pretending they’d been looking at something behind me. It was a small thing, but I’d learned to read it the way I read a shooter’s shoulders — a tell.

Amira didn’t look away.

She held it a beat longer than she needed to, long enough that I felt it somewhere under my ribs, and then she gave me a small, measured nod — barely there, more acknowledgment than warmth — before turning back to her coffee like nothing had happened.

I looked away first. Gripped my stick harder than I needed to, like that would undo whatever had just happened. I told myself it was nothing. I didn’t buy it, and that bothered me more than the feeling itself did.

She watches me like she’s trying to figure me out, I thought, sliding back into my crease. Not like she’s judging me.

I’d spent six years getting watched by scouts and cameras and forty thousand people a night, every one of them waiting to see if I’d fail. I knew what that felt like. This wasn’t that. There was no waiting in the way she looked at me. No scoreboard running behind her eyes. I didn’t know where to put that, and not knowing bothered me more than being judged ever had.

Near the end of practice, Damian Baron showed up at the glass. Hands in his pockets, suit that cost more than most people’s rent, that pleasant look on his face that never told you a thing.

“Everything on track with our franchise goalie?” he said to Reyes, loud enough for a few of us to hear. “I’d hate for last week to become a habit. Sponsors don’t tolerate habits.”

“He’s fine, Damian,” Reyes said, some edge under it. “We’ve got it handled.”

“Good to hear.” Damian smiled — the kind that stays at the mouth and never gets to the eyes — and walked off toward the elevators without waiting around.

I noticed Reyes’s face change, just for a second, after Damian left. Something tight around his jaw that hadn’t been there a minute before. I didn’t know what that was about. I filed it away anyway, the same way I filed away every detail on every shooter I’d ever faced. Habit, maybe. The part of me that’s always paying attention to who’s watching, and why.

In the locker room after, Marchetti threw a towel at my head, grinning. “So. You and the shrink. She any good?”

“She’s fine,” I said, too fast.

“Relax, man, I’m not saying anything.” He laughed, pulling his jersey over his head. “Just asking if it’s helping.”

“They’re sessions. That’s it.”

“Sure.” He kept grinning. “You’ve said her name twice in ten seconds and I only asked one question.”

I opened my mouth to correct him and realized I couldn’t actually remember if that was true.

“Forget it,” I said, and shoved my skates in my bag harder than I needed to.

​

I was the last one out, gear bag over my shoulder, heading down the tunnel toward the parking lot, when I found her still there — leaning against the wall near the exit, coffee long gone cold in her hand, like she’d been waiting.

“Wilson,” she said, straightening up. Not Sky. First name, like we were still in the building, still on the clock.

“Dr. Frank.”

“You reset faster after a bad goal than most people reset after a bad morning.” She said it plainly, no compliment in her tone, just an observation, the kind she made in her office when she wasn’t asking anything, just naming something out loud. “I noticed that today. Three bad shots, and by the third one your shoulders were already back where they needed to be. Most guys carry the first mistake into the second.”

“It’s the job,” I said, the same thing I always said, and heard how thin it sounded the second it left my mouth.

“That’s what you keep telling me.” She studied me another second, unreadable, then pushed off the wall. “See you Thursday.”

She walked off toward the staff exit before I could figure out what to say back.

That night, lying in bed with the city lights coming through the blinds, I caught myself doing something I hadn’t done in years. Checking the time. Doing the math. Working out how many days it was until Thursday.

I didn’t ask myself why.

I already knew I didn’t want the answer.