The Boy I Don't Remember

ETHAN'S POV

I kiss him like I've been starving for years.

Then I forget his face.

Rain. Music. Alcohol. Hands. Laughter.

Cold fingers. Mint. Someone whispering, "Maybe next summer."

Then black.

The ref's whistle went off and put me back in my body.

Ethan Drake. Number 19. Captain of the Ridgewood Wolves. Three thousand people in the building, and every one of them knew where I was standing.

The chant started low in the student section the second I came out of the tunnel. Drake. Drake. Drake. It built, voice on voice, until I could feel it through my chest pads.

I didn't look at the Jumbotron. Didn't have to. My face was already up there between periods, same as it was on the back of half the jerseys in the stands. When that many eyes are on you, you learn where all of them are without checking.

I took one breath of rink air, sharp and freezing, and dug my edges in. The cold cut right through my pads the way it always did, and I held on to it. Everything else in a building like this could lie to you. The cold never did.

"Eyes up," I called, steady, the way Coach liked it. "We finish the way we started. Nothing sloppy."

Asher Kane tapped his stick against mine. Right wing, best friend since freshman year. "You good, Cap?"

"Always." Then, because he'd know if I left it that clean: "Ask me again after we close it out." A joke. A small truth laid over the bigger one. I'd been doing it so long it didn't cost me anything anymore.

The whistle cut the noise. I won the face-off clean and snapped the puck back to our defenseman before the Eagles center even moved. We pushed. The crowd roared. My blood ran the way it only does at full speed — every nerve on, stick out, puck moving like it was reading my mind.

Six minutes left in the second. Up 2–1 on Eastern Michigan, and the score meant nothing. One bad shift and the scouts packed into the press box would start writing about my leadership. One blown line change and the scholarship letter on my desk at home — the one I'd read eleven times — turned into a polite no. I'd built the whole season into a wall between me and that letter. I couldn't let one brick slip.

I fed Asher tape to tape. He carried it over the blue line, faked twice, shot. The goalie kicked it wide, and I was already crashing the net, shoulder into their defenseman. The rebound sat loose in the crease and my stick found it before I did. I jammed it under the bar.

Goal light. Horn. 3–1.

The building exploded.

I didn't give them the poster smile — the one hanging outside the athletic center that's supposed to look effortless. I skated to the bench, tapped gloves, kept my face exactly where the cameras wanted it, already on the next shift. That was the job. Keep the machine running. Don't hand them anything they could carry out of the building.

Under all of it, the same loop.

What if they knew?

I put it back in the box where it lived and took my spot. There was a lot in that box. The scholarship. The letter. And under everything else, the thing I'd never said out loud to a single person inside these walls — the thing a boy on a rain-soaked porch figured out about me in under a minute last summer, because I let him. That was the whole trick of the box. You could carry anything, as long as nobody watched you pick it up.

"Drake." Coach Harlan's bark. "Line change. Stay sharp."

I came over the boards and dropped onto the bench, legs heavy. Asher handed me a water bottle without a word. He always knew. I drank half, wiped my mouth on the back of my glove, and let my eyes drift across the ice.

The PA crackled.

"Entering for the Wolves — number 7, Ares Cole!"

The crowd gave him more of a huh than a cheer. The name had been going around the locker room all week — transfer from some program out west, showed up mid-season, some situation nobody would say out loud. Coach called him raw talent with an attitude problem. I'd decided he wasn't my problem.

Then he stepped over the boards.

He didn't jog. He glided, like the ice had been waiting on him. Six-two, maybe more, built for contact and light on his edges. Dark tattoos ran down both forearms under his sleeves. Helmet buckled tight. He didn't look at the bench. He didn't look at the crowd. Three thousand people, and he moved like not one of them had any claim on him. He took center like the spot had always been his.

The puck dropped. He won the draw before their center finished thinking about it, spun, carried it straight through our defense before they'd set. Two strides into the slot — no look, no hesitation — and he ripped a wrist shot top shelf, glove side. So clean the goalie's blocker barely twitched.

Goal light. 3–2.

The building lost its mind.

Ares skated back at the exact pace he'd left at. No fist pump. No helmet tap. Nothing. He'd just scored on a ranked team in his first forty seconds of college hockey, and his face didn't change — not for the ice, not for the noise, not for the goal. None of it touched him.

He passed our line. His eyes came up once and held mine for less than a second.

I looked away first. My building. My name on every jersey in it, and I looked away first.

"Cole!" Coach clapped sharp over the noise. "That's the standard right there!"

The bench cheered. Asher elbowed me. "Kid doesn't mess around."

"No." It came out a half-step off. I heard it and brought it back down where it lived. "He doesn't. Good for us."

I sat. My knees wouldn't hold still under my pads. The scar on my lip — healed smooth for months now — pulled tight in the cold, and I pressed my tongue against the inside of it. Old habit. One I'd stopped being able to trace.

Ares dropped onto the far end of the bench. Sweat already dark at the edge of his helmet. He peeled off a glove and flexed his hand twice — knuckles, then fingers. The tattoos moved with it. Sharp black lines. A constellation, maybe. Hard to tell from here.

Then I saw it.

A scar. A thin white line through the curve of his lower lip.

The rain. The porch. Mint. That same scar catching against my mouth just before—

No.

Not possible.

He glanced up. I hadn't looked away fast enough. The corner of his mouth moved — not a smile, something shorter than that — and then it was gone, and the arena was still roaring about a goal that was already thirty seconds old.

I turned back to the ice. Tightened my gloves. Watched the puck.

The whistle blew for the next face-off. I pushed off the bench and kept my voice exactly where it needed to be.

"Let's go, Wolves."

I vaulted the boards and my skates bit the ice. Forty seconds until the drop. I spent every one of them on the same three lines I always used. You're fine. You're in control. The armor holds.

Ares Cole had been in a Wolves jersey for under a minute, and the game already felt like a different game.

I wasn't going to look into it. I was going to skate harder, hit cleaner, and keep every seam locked on the picture I'd spent two years building. The golden boy didn't crack. Not under these lights. Not in front of three thousand people who thought they knew exactly who they were looking at.

The final horn sounded. 4–2. The locker room was all shouting and shoulder slaps and music cranked too loud, and I barely heard any of it. I sat at my stall unlacing my skates with hands that weren't quite steady, watching the steam come off my pads.

"Drake." Coach Harlan, through the noise. "My office. Bring the new guy."

I looked up.

Ares Cole stood by the door, helmet under one arm, dark hair damp and messy. The grin finally surfaced — small, private, aimed across the room at me and nobody else. A whole room full of people, and it went to exactly one of them.

"Welcome to the team," Coach said, clapping him on the shoulder.

His eyes found mine.

"We've met before."

Three words. Half the room close enough to hear them, and not one person looking.

I stopped breathing.