Hockey Hearttrob

Chapter3- Life Is Life-ing

Anneliese Lang’s POV

Morning lectures always feel like a different kind of endurance test. Not the kind where bodies collide, or blades scrape ice, but the kind where time stretches thin and every second feels like it’s pressing down on the back of my neck.

The campus auditorium smells like paper, coffee, and too many students trying to stay awake on too little sleep. My fingers tap lightly against my notebook even when I’m not writing- too much coffee.

My jaw tightens slightly as I shift in my seat, forcing focus onto the professor at the front. Psychology. Ironically fitting. Motivation, pressure, and identity under performance stress.

I almost laugh at that last part. My life is basically a case study.

A vibration buzzes faintly in my pocket, and I ignore it, knowing it’s a message from home. Not now. I breathe in slowly, forcing the weight down somewhere behind my ribs where it can’t interfere with anything useful.

Focus. Lecture. Notes. Hockey. Future.

Simple.

__

After class, the hallway outside is loud, brighter, and too full of movement.

Students spill in every direction, backpacks swinging, laughter bouncing off walls that feel too clean to hold real problems. Conversations and laughter, and I walk with them, but not inside them.

My thoughts stay slightly behind my steps.

I mean, I do have friends here, but we’re not close, as I’m usually busy with hockey while they’re having the luxury of having a personal life. Boyfriends, girlfriends, parties… the whole “away from adult supervision” sort of fun.

My thoughts were on my next assignment when I spotted Leo. He stands near the end of the corridor outside a lecture room, one shoulder against the wall like he’s at home. Blond hair slightly messy in a way that still somehow seems stylish.

Next to him are two others- equally attractive as well, but not from the hockey team. Unlike me, he still has time and energy to have friends. Then again, he’s not as stressed as I am.

He looked up, and our eyes connected. The air shifted, just enough that my pulse caught before my thoughts did.

But we don’t acknowledge each other.

Suddenly, there is a break in that usual control, something lighter slipping through as his mouth curved into a smile, sharp and effortless. It hit me before I could stop it, that stupid, instinctive response, my own lips starting to mirror it, my stomach dipping in a way I hated. Then reality hits when somebody walks past me. His girlfriend.

She had been walking towards him from behind me, and my smile vanished as horror filled me. I feel foolish, and heat rose too fast under my skin as the realization settled in, slow and humiliating. I dropped my gaze, tucking my chin slightly, hoping the movement hid the way my expression collapsed. But he does not see it as he’s busy walking towards her.

“Lang.” The voice cuts in from the side.

Tyler and Jax lean against a pillar like it’s been placed there for decoration, a grin already forming before I even fully turn. Jax’s backpack hangs off one shoulder, like responsibility is optional, while Tyler has no backpack or anything, hands in his jeans pockets. Both are dressed in jeans, Vans, and jackets.

“You look like you’re fighting invisible demons again,” Jax grins, sharing a look with Tyler, who shrugs his shoulders.

“I am,” I reply automatically, and his grin widens.

“Academic ones or emotional ones?” Tyler pipes in, coming towards me.

I don’t answer that, and Jax laughs anyway, pushing off the pillar and falling into step beside us as we head to the next class. Tyler throws a hand over my shoulder and takes my bag.

Leo is gone when I look back.

__

Later, I find myself outside the finance office. Not because I want to be here. Because I have to be.

The door is half-open. Inside, fluorescent lighting hums softly, and the smell of printer ink and old paper sits heavy in the air. A woman at the desk types without looking up at first.

My hands feel colder than they should. “I just need to confirm my scholarship coverage,” I manage.

She finally looks up, and there’s a pause. The kind that always feels like it lasts too long, even when it doesn’t. Then she turns her screen slightly, requesting my name.

Numbers. Status updates. Funding breakdowns. Everything technically in order.

Everything is still hanging by a thread; I can feel but not see.

“Hockey program coverage is active,” she says calmly. “As long as eligibility is maintained.”

As long as.

My throat tightens slightly. Because that part is never stable. Nothing about performance-based survival ever is.

“Thank you,” I manage, voice-controlled enough to pass as normal, and I leave before anything else can be said.

I open my phone to the message from my mother. A photo.

My baby brother, sitting on the floor at home, is holding something up proudly. Probably something broken, he’s convinced, is important. Behind him, my older brother in work clothes, leaning against the doorway, half-smiling.

Dad’s surgery didn’t just take a piece of him; it took everything we had saved, leaving behind numbers that don’t go away, no matter how hard I try not to think about them. My older brother works instead of studying, like he made peace with giving something up so I wouldn’t have to, and my baby brother… he’s still too young to understand any of it, still smiling like the world hasn’t asked him for anything yet.

Emil didn’t get the same shot at this life like his friend Leo did. College was never something he stepped into, never something waiting for him with open doors and structured paths. It slipped past him quietly, replaced by early mornings, long shifts, and the kind of responsibility that settles into your bones before you’re ready for it. He never complained. That’s the worst part. He just… adjusted. Like it was obvious someone had to.

And somehow, that someone became him.

I feel it every time I lace my skates, every time I sit in a lecture hall pretending my chest isn’t tightening under the weight of it. Because while I’m here, chasing something that still feels fragile, Emil is back home holding things together in ways no one sees. Working. Providing. Making sure our little brother doesn’t feel the gaps that surgery and bills carved into our lives.

My chest tightens hard enough that it almost hurts. I don’t realize I’ve stopped walking until someone brushes past me.

Life keeps moving. Mine just… keeps negotiating. Leo gets to carry love for it and live freely because he can afford it, while his former friend and my brother Emil carries something heavier.

Life can be so unfair.

And me? I just keep moving, holding it all together in ways no one here sees, because hockey isn’t just something I love. It’s the only reason I’m here at all.

Every time I see Leo, I see the life Emil didn’t get.

Leo carries on as if my brother meant nothing, as if years of friendship were disposable, ignoring his calls while Emil stays back home, taking over our parents’ burdens, and somehow I’m stuck in the middle.

And I hate Leo for it.

I might have had a crush on him since I was twelve, but now… I loathe the kind of person he turned out to be.