The agreement held through the next two days like thin ice under too much weight.
We skated early. We shared the ice in a silence that no longer felt like starvation. When the hate rose high enough during drills that my hands shook inside my gloves, I did not vanish. I found him after the final whistle, stood in the corridor outside the locker rooms, and said the truth out loud even when it tasted like metal. He listened without defending himself. He did not try to fix it. He simply absorbed whatever I threw and remained exactly where he was—present, patient, costly.
The team had started to notice.
Not the full shape of it. Not the history or the claim or the night against the glass. But the way Damian’s eyes found me across the neutral zone and held. The way I no longer cut wide to avo
