Page 28 of Take Two

Cyaire nods slowly, thoughtfully, the kind of nod that means something is being genuinely considered rather than simply received.

“So, I am not trying to look athletic,” he says.

“No.” I shake my head.

I watch his brow furrow, watch him turn the idea carefully. That is the thing, I can see him actually working, not performing comprehension but reaching for it.

“You are trying to look comfortable,” I say.

Understanding moves across his face like everything has fallen into place.

“There it is,” he says quietly.

I blink. “There what is?”

Cyaire gestures loosely between us. “Everybody keeps talking about hockey. The drills. The mechanics. The terminology and the culture and the history. Everybody keeps explaining what he did.” He pauses and points toward himself. “You’re explaining how he existed.”

For a moment I simply look at him. Then I shake my head slowly. “That is a very actor answer.”

His laugh echoes out through the empty arena, the sound bouncing off the boards and disappearing into the high ceiling above us.

“I will take that as a compliment.”

“That depends,” I say, unable to help myself.

His chin lifts. “On what?”

“On whether you can stay upright long enough to make it matter.” I gesture pointedly down toward his skates.

The challenge lands exactly the way I intended. His eyes narrow, amused and a little competitive, a combination that I find immediately inadvisable.

“Oh, now you’re definitely enjoying this,” he says.

I push backward and begin skating toward the far blue line. “Keep up.”

“I’m starting to regret thanking you,” he calls after me.

“Good,” I shoot back over my shoulder.

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It means you’re learning.”

His groan carries easily across the ice while I fight back something I categorize as professionalism and refuse to examine further.

For the first time since he walked through the arena doors, the situation begins to feel natural. That particular realization is probably more dangerous than either of us is ready to acknowledge yet.

For the next forty-five minutes, I put him through exactly the sort of work I would put any returning skater through. Nothing flashy or complicated. Edge work first, then balance drills and tight controlled turns around cones placed at intervals across the ice. Forward skating, backward skating, and then the transitions between them. Clean starts and controlled stops. The fundamentals, because the fundamentals are always where the truth lives.

Cyaire attacks every drill with the kind of focused, unrelenting concentration I usually only see from rookies trying to prove they belong on a roster. He is not performing effort. He is genuinely there, present in every repetition, testing each correction immediately rather than waiting to see whether I will notice.

Most people in his position would angle toward praise, or else look for the shortcut that gets them to something more impressive-looking before the work has been properly done. Cyaire wants information.

“What did I do wrong?” he asks, after overshooting a turn and having to correct mid-stride to avoid losing the edge entirely.

I skate a slow circle around him, watching the angle of his hips and where his eyes have been going.

“You looked at where you were instead of where you wanted to be.”