(Max’s POV)
Dinner that night was just the three of us — Lucian’s chair empty again, no explanation given, none asked for — and I waited until dessert had been cleared before I said anything at all.
"I joined the hockey team today."
Damian’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. He set it down slowly, like he wanted to make sure he’d heard that right. "You did what?"
"Joined the team. Practice starts tomorrow morning, early."
"Max, that’s—" He looked at Clara, something bright and unguarded breaking across his face. "That’s wonderful. Isn’t it, Clara?"
"Since when do you skate?" Mom’s whole face had lit up, and she reached across the table to squeeze my hand, quick and warm.
"I don’t, really. Yet." I turned my hand over to squeeze hers back. "One of the guys on the team talked me into it. Knox."
"Well." Damian picked his fork back up, but he was still smiling, the kind of smile that made him look ten years younger. "I’m glad you’re settling in, Max. Truly. This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped would happen once you two—" He caught himself, glanced at the empty chair across the table, and let it go. "Well. I’m glad."
"Don’t push yourself too hard your first week," Mom said, though she was still smiling too widely to sound genuinely worried. "You’ve never done anything like this."
"I’ll be careful."
"You’ll fall a lot," Damian said, not unkindly, a laugh in it. "I played for two years before I stopped landing on my back more than my feet."
"Good to know," I said, and meant it, some old tight thing in my chest loosening a little at the ordinariness of it — a father giving advice, a mother worrying, nothing underneath any of it except the two of them being glad for me.
I caught Mom watching me for the rest of the meal with an expression I recognized — the one she used to wear back when things were hard, the one that meant I’m proud of you and I’m trying not to make it a whole thing.
I went to bed early that night, phone charging beside me instead of forgotten and dead in some stranger’s city, and fell asleep running through everything I didn’t know how to do yet.
I woke up to my alarm going off twice before I actually registered it, and by the time I’d showered, dressed, and jammed my feet into shoes that weren’t laced properly, I was already twelve minutes behind wherever I was supposed to be.
Knox’s text from the night before sat at the top of my phone, blunt and specific: 6:15am. Rink side door. Don’t be late, coach hates that more than bad skating.
It was 6:30 when I finally shoved through the side door, breath fogging in the cold air that hit before I even reached the ice, and skidded — literally, on the rubber mat just inside the entrance — into view.
"There he is." Knox was leaning against the boards, already in gear except for his helmet, arms crossed, entirely unbothered. "Thought maybe you changed your mind."
"Sorry — I couldn’t find my— it doesn’t matter, I’m here." I was still catching my breath, hands on my knees for a second before I straightened up, aware of how loud my own heartbeat sounded in the empty rink. "I’m here. I’m sorry."
"Relax." Knox pushed off the boards, grinning like my panic was mildly entertaining. "Coach doesn’t actually care if you’re a few minutes late your first day. I just like watching new guys sprint in like the building’s on fire."
"That’s mean."
"It’s efficient." He was already walking, waving for me to follow. "C’mon. Coach wants to meet you before the rest of the guys show up and turn this into a spectacle."
Coach Reyes turned out to be a stocky, weathered man with a clipboard he barely glanced at and eyes that swept over me once, assessing, the way you’d size up a piece of equipment before deciding whether it was worth the trouble.
"So you’re the transfer’s brother." He said it like a statement, not a question, sticking a hand out that I shook. "Knox says you want to learn."
"I do."
"You’ve never skated."
"No, sir."
"Don’t call me sir, makes me feel old." He almost smiled, then didn’t. "All right. Here’s how this works. You show up, you listen, you don’t complain about falling because you will fall, a lot, probably today. If you’re serious, we’ll get you proper gear fitted by end of week. If you’re not, better to find out now than after I’ve wasted ice time on you." He handed me a clipboard with a form on it, tapped the bottom line. "Sign there. Emergency contact, allergies, all that."
I filled it out fast, aware of Knox watching over my shoulder, aware of the low hum of the rink’s cooling system and the emptiness of the place at this hour, no crowd yet, no noise except our voices and the occasional creak of the boards settling.
"Good." Coach Reyes took the clipboard back, glanced at it once, and nodded toward the ice. "Ashford, you’ve got him until the rest of the team shows. Basic balance, basic stride. Don’t let him break anything before I’ve even seen what he’s got."
"Copy that." Knox was already grinning at me again, tossing a spare pair of skates my direction that he must have grabbed from somewhere while I wasn’t looking. "These should be close to your size. C’mon, church boy, let’s see what we’re working with."
"Church boy?"
"You’ve got the energy." He was lacing his own skates back up tighter, sitting on the bench with an ease that made the whole process look effortless. "Very polite. Very ’thank you, sir.’ It’s kind of charming, honestly. Terrifying on the ice, though, I promise you that much."
I sat down and wrestled my own skates on, fumbling with the laces longer than I wanted to admit, painfully aware of how unprepared I was for basically everything about to happen.
Knox didn’t rush me. He just waited, tightening something on his own gear that didn’t need tightening, giving me the time without commenting on how long it took.
"Okay." He stood, offering a hand to pull me up once I’d finished, and I took it, wobbling immediately the second I put weight on the blades. "Whoa — okay, first lesson, don’t stand like you’re on solid ground, because you’re not. Bend your knees. Like you’re about to sit down in a chair that isn’t there."
I bent my knees. It didn’t help as much as I hoped.
"Better." He held onto my arm, steady, patient in a way I hadn’t expected from someone who’d looked, on the ice yesterday, like speed and chaos personified. "Now, don’t try to walk. Everybody’s instinct is to walk. You gotta push — little sideways pushes, like this—" he demonstrated, gliding a few feet away with an ease that made it look like nothing at all "—and let the glide do the work."
I tried it. My legs went out from under me almost immediately, and I hit the ice hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs, flat on my back, staring up at the rafters with my whole body registering the cold seeping up through the ice a half-second before the pain did.
Knox’s face appeared above me, upside down, grinning without an ounce of sympathy in it. "There it is. Congratulations, you’ve officially fallen. Everybody’s gotta get the first one out of the way."
"Thanks," I said, wheezing slightly, "so much."
"Get up. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before the vultures show up and start heckling."
He hauled me back up by the arm, steadying me until my blades stopped sliding under me. "Again. And this time don’t fight the glide."
"I wasn’t fighting it."
"You were fighting it." He nudged my back foot a half-inch with the toe of his skate. "There. Weight’s too far forward — you’re basically trying to sprint on ice, and ice doesn’t care how bad you want to."
I pushed off again, slower this time, and felt the blade actually hold for a second instead of skating out from under me. "That’s — okay, that’s different."
"See?" Knox skated a slow backward circle around me, watching. "Ankles in. You’re leaning like you’re trying to hug the ice."
"I feel like I’m about to fall."
"You’re always about to fall. That’s skating." He caught my elbow before I actually did, correcting the angle without making a thing of it. "Bend the knees more. If your legs are straight, you’ve got nothing to catch you."
I bent my knees further, wobbled, held it. "Like that?"
"Like that." Something almost proud flickered across his face, gone before he let it sit. "Okay, one more, and don’t think about it so hard. Thinking is what’s killing you."
I pushed off again — one stride, then another, no fall this time — and heard him laugh, short and genuinely pleased, from somewhere just behind my shoulder.
"There it is," he said. "Was that so hard?"
"Yes," I said, and he laughed again.
By the time the rink door banged open twenty minutes later, letting in a wave of noise and cold air and half the team trudging in with their bags, I’d managed maybe six unbroken strides in a row without falling, wobbly and slow but upright, and something in my chest had loosened just slightly, some old, tired brace against humiliation finally easing, if only a little.
"Look who’s vertical," Knox said, grinning at me across the ice like he’d personally won something.
I didn’t see Lucian come in. I just felt it — that particular shift in the air, the way the room always seemed to notice him a half-second before I did — and when I looked toward the door, he was already there, bag over one shoulder, eyes fixed on the two of us in a way that gave absolutely nothing away.
Nothing at all, except that he didn’t look away.