Page 61 of Slashed Bonds

It’s more that I’m standing at the edge of somebody else’s finished house, and I’ve spent five years in a shed.

“Fun,” I say.

I bite down on my bottom lip, tauntingly, mostly so I don’t bite my tongue.

“For fuck’s sake,” the captain groans, and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“WOOF!”

Knox cheers.

Then he tackles the captain.

Full speed, from the side, and the captain of the Blackridge Vipers, six-foot-three of center, curses once and crumbles sideways onto the black stone like a folding chair.

“Fucking hell! The dog took down Cap!”

All of us look over.

There’s an Alpha in the mouth of the concourse with neon green hair and a phone up, recording, delighted, and beside him…

A woman in a black wool coat with her hands in her pockets.

Roz.

Her eyes find me. Slung in a goalie’s arms in a lobby full of shattered plastic with a dog standing on her captain.

And she’s delighted. I can see it. She doesn’t smile, because she isn’t the type, but it’s all over her.

“On the ice in five, Crowe,” she says. “And boys. Clean this fucking shit up.”

Crowe.

I haven’t heard my own name out loud in a year. Not from a stranger. Not in a room full of people. It lands somewhere under the ribs and sits there, and I don’t have time to figure out whether it hurts.

Because on the ice in five means on the ice in five.

My skates are in the truck. They’re always in the truck. The bag lives behind the seat with a roll of tape, two sticks, and a helmet I’ve had since I was nineteen, because there’s no version of me that goes anywhere without a way to get on a sheet if a sheet appears.

It’s a compulsion. My therapist has a name for it. I have a better one.

The room in my head goes quiet.

Not the Switch. The other thing.

The good silence, the one I’ve only ever found between the boards, and it arrives now like a hand on the back of my neck that I’ve decided, for once, to allow.

Nikolai is still holding me.

I tap his chest protector twice.

“Down, Daddy. Mommy’s got a tryout.”

He sets me on my feet like I’m made of something expensive, and he doesn’t let go of my elbow until my legs have proven they’ll hold, and I don’t shake him off, which is a thing I’ll think about later.

The green-haired Alpha is still filming.

“Is she real?” he asks the room. “Cap. Is she real? Did Roz build her in a lab?”