Chapter 3 Chapter Three: The Butcher

KNOX

I see it every day.

Not in dreams, not only. I see it in the shower, in line for coffee, and in the half second before every faceoff.

Black jersey. White jersey. Number four turning his head at the exact wrong moment. My shoulder hits his jaw instead of his chest. His head snaps sideways. His helmet leaves him.

And then the sound. People think a hit like that is loud. It's not. It's the quietest thing I've ever heard. Seven thousand people, and not one of them breathing.

"Hi, Wren," I say.

It comes out before I can stop it.

She goes white, then red, then something colder than both.

I know her name because I've known it for three years. It was on the fundraiser page with Eli's photo. It was on the hospital visitor list I wasn't allowed to be on. And it was what her father yelled in the tunnel that night when she tried to climb the glass.

I should've called her Miss Castellano. I should've called her nothing.

Too late now.

"You'll address me as your trainer," she says. "Or you won't address me at all."

"Okay."

"Lie back."

I lie back.

Doc Pruitt pulls a stool into the corner, crosses her arms, and watches me like a hawk watches a rabbit. Fair.

Wren doesn't look at my face. She looks at my shoulder like it's a crime scene.

"Tell me about the injury."

"Partial labral tear. Right side. Happened last February against—"

"I read the file. Tell me what it feels like."

"Like something's catching. Deep. When I reach overhead or take a check on that side."

"Pain scale."

"Three at rest. Six when it catches."

"And the scar?"

Her fingers stop just short of my collarbone. It's the first time she's almost touched me.

"Not hockey," I say.

"Then what?"

"Not relevant."

Her eyes flick to mine for half a second. Blue-gray, like the ice before the Zamboni. Then they're gone again.

"Everything is relevant," she says. "But fine."

She picks up the goniometer and takes my arm. Her hands are cold and fast, and completely steady. I wasn't expecting that. I figured she'd shake.

"External rotation. Tell me when it catches."

She rotates my arm back. Slowly at first. Then not slowly.

"There," I say.

She keeps going.

Pain lances down through my chest, white-hot. My jaw locks. I don't make a sound.

"Castellano," Doc says, low.

"I'm checking end range."

"You passed end range ten degrees ago."

Wren lets go. My arm drops to the table like a dead thing.

I stare at the ceiling tiles and breathe through it. In for four. Out for six. It's the breathing thing a sports psych taught me after the hit, after the nightmares, after I started throwing up before games.

"It's okay," I tell Doc.

"It's not okay," Doc says.

"It is." I turn my head and look at Wren. "Do it again if it helps."

The room goes dead silent.

Wren's hands curl into fists at her sides. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Don't martyr at me. You don't get to lie on my table and let me hurt you and feel like that makes you even."

"I don't think it makes me even."

"Good. Because it doesn't."

"I know."

"You don't know anything." Her voice cracks on the last word, and she hates that. I can see her hate it. "You don't know what he—"

"How is he?"

It's the only question I've had all this time.

She moves so fast I don't see it coming. She's suddenly right there, leaning over the table, one hand flat beside my head.

"Don't you dare say his name to me," she whispers. "Not in this room. Not in this building. Not ever. You don't ask how he is. You don't get to know how he is."

"Wren," Doc says, standing. "Hallway. Two minutes."

Wren straightens. She peels off her gloves, drops them in the trash, and walks out without looking back.

Doc sits back down.

"You pull that again," she says, "and I'll take your eval myself and make you wish she'd done it."

"I didn't pull anything."

"You told a grieving girl to hurt you. That's pulling something." She sighs and picks up the goniometer. "She's the best student I've had in twenty years. Don't make me lose her over you."

"Yes, ma'am."

Doc finishes the eval. Her hands are rougher than Wren's.

It hurts less. I think I hate that.

---

The locker room goes quiet when I walk in.

I've had this silence before at Carver, my first week there. Twenty guys pretending to lace skates while watching me in the mirror. You'd think I'd be used to it.

My stall is at the end, next to a massive guy with a captain's C stitched on his practice jersey. He stands up. He's got two inches on me.

"Marcus Oyelaran," he says. He doesn't offer a hand.

"Knox."

"I know who you are. Everyone here knows who you are."

"Fair."

"Coach says you're on the first line. Coach says we treat you like anybody else." Marcus folds his arms. "So I'll give you the same speech I give anybody else. Then I'll give you a special one."

Behind him, a blond guy with a mustache that shouldn't be legal leans out of his stall. "Oh, I love the special one."

"Shut up, Beau."

"Sorry, Captain."

Marcus doesn't break eye contact with me. "Regular speech. You show up early. You block shots. You don't hog the puck, and you don't bring drama into this room. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Special speech." He steps closer. "Wren Castellano is Coach's daughter. She's Eli's sister. She's also the reason half this room still has functioning ankles. She is off-limits. For every guy on this team."

Beside me, the goalie, Santangelo, is unlacing his pads very slowly. He isn't looking at me. He's listening to every word.

"But especially you," Marcus says. "You don't flirt with her. You don't text her. You don't look at her longer than you need to for tape. Touch her, Hollis, and you're dead. I won't need Coach to do it."

A guy across the room, dark hair and a jaw like a brick, snorts. "He's already done enough to that family."

"Kincaid," Marcus warns.

"What? We're all thinking it." Kincaid looks at me. "You gonna put her in a wheelchair too, Butcher?"

Nobody laughs. Nobody tells him he's wrong either.

I think about my shoulder hitting Eli's jaw. I think about Wren's hand beside my head on the table and the crack in her voice.

"Understood," I say to Marcus. "All of it."

Marcus studies me for a long second. Then he nods once and sits down.

Santangelo finally looks up.

"She's my best friend," he says quietly. "Just so you know."

"I figured."

"Did you?"

"You tried to warn her before practice. I saw you."

His jaw works. He goes back to his laces.

---

The Barn is a blue farmhouse two miles off campus with a sagging porch and six bedrooms for eight hockey players. It smells like wet gear and burned popcorn. My room is the smallest, at the top of the stairs. I asked for it. It has a lock.

I drop my bag and sit on the bare mattress.

My phone has one voicemail. Dad.

I delete it without listening. It's been a year since I listened to one. It's still the best decision I've ever made.

Then I open my banking app, the way I do on the first of every month, and I don't let myself think too hard about why. I just do the thing. Tap. Confirm. Done.

It's never enough. It will never be enough.

I lie back and stare at the ceiling. It's got a water stain shaped like a hockey stick.

Do it again if it helps.

God, I'm an idiot.

My phone buzzes against my chest.

A text from an unknown number.

Heard you signed in Harlow. Does she know what you really did?

A second buzz.

—B