Chapter Text
Adam Parrish, a habitual skeptic, believed Cabeswater was magic. As the sun rose past the trees, they cast a haunting shadow over the ice. He’d been awestruck by it when he’d toured the rink, but he still couldn’t believe it was his home.
Technically his home was a 115-square-foot room in Dittley Hall, but he wasn’t interested in splitting hairs.
He hadn’t been on the ice since May, and he hadn’t been at all in his new skates, so he was a little shaky to start. He hovered near the wall to avoid suspicion.
Gansey, who had taken a liking to Adam for some undetermined reason, stuck close to him. It wasn’t that Adam minded. It was just that he was trying to break in new skates without announcing it to the whole team, and Gansey’s persistent hover wasn’t helping.
Gansey trailed off from the story he was telling. “You’re from Virginia too. Right?” Adam nodded. He didn’t want to talk about where he was from, but it wasn’t a secret. “Near Jonesville?”
“Henrietta.” He tried not to spit when he said it.
“Right,” Gansey said. “How could I forget? The cave systems near there are extraordinary. Have you ever had the chance to explore them?”
He could remember a cave on a field trip once when he was a kid, but nothing recreationally. Robert and Sarah Parrish didn’t do family outings.
“Only a little,” he said.
“I haven’t been in probably five or six years.” His enthusiasm was a quiet hum in Adam’s ear. He could see Gansey physically restrain himself from fidgeting. It would have been endearing if the conversation at hand was about anything other than Henrietta. “I’d love to go back sometime. The Welsh influence in the region is fascinating.”
“Gansey,” a voice called from across the ice. Ronan Lynch skated toward them. Adam didn’t let himself flinch, but it was a conscious choice, certainly not what his body’s first instinct would have been. His rigid stance threw off his balance, and he grasped the wall tighter to recover.
Ronan was taller than Adam had imagined, and there was a permanent sneer on his face that warned casual observers off. But after a moment of consideration, the fear relaxed. Not completely. Adam never wholly relaxed, especially not around new people. But Ronan couldn’t be too dangerous if he was going to so much trouble to look it. The people Adam actually feared hid their menace behind layers of polite conversation and neighborly handshakes.
The two fist-bumped casually and what a strange pair the two of them were. Gansey, encased in marble, trapped forever with the face of a teenage scholar, and Ronan, with rough stubble and bags under his eyes that made him look closer to his thirtieth birthday than his twentieth. “Ronan,” Gansey said, turning the attention to him. “This is Adam Parrish.”
Ronan’s stare was unwavering, but Adam was the most stubborn person he knew. He held his chin up and matched the larger, scarier man eye-to-eye. Adam wasn’t scared of some trust-fund legacy player. If he kept thinking that, maybe he could convince himself it was true.
“What’s wrong with your fucking skates?” he asked.
Adam didn’t have a good response. He thought he was hiding his discomfort pretty well.
“Jesus,” Gansey said. “Are those new?”
“Yeah,” he said. There was no point lying when the truth was so obvious.
“You didn’t have time to break them in this summer?” Ronan asked.
“No,” he said. “I promise you my old ones were beyond hope.” Persephone had offered to buy him new ones, but he didn’t feel comfortable with that. He liked his new ones. He could already tell they were going to speed him up. For what they cost him, he sure hoped so. “I’ll be alright. I’ve just gotta break them in.”
Ronan rolled his eyes, an irritating gesture that oozed indifference. Indifference was a privilege Adam had craved his entire life. If Adam didn’t give a shit, he didn’t get shit. He’d only stayed alive as long as he had by caring. By wanting so damn much, it leaked out of his pores. Ambition was a hell of a drug.
“We’ve got ourselves another Virginian on the team,” Gansey said, thumb rubbing anxiously at his lip. “Adam is from Henrietta. That’s near you, right?”
Ronan nodded. “Singer Falls.”
“Really?” Adam said. Another lie, of course. Everyone in the Shenandoah Valley knew the Lynch family.
“Yep,” Ronan said. There was nowhere else for this conversation to go without bringing up Ronan’s background, or worse, Adam’s, so the three of them stood in silence for way too long to be comfortable. Gansey glanced between the two of them like he was waiting for them to make some grand connection, but they continued to stare.
Ronan’s stare was a wild one, meant to scare off opponents. But Adam didn’t shy away from it. He didn’t like conflict, but he was good at it. He’d lived with it since he was born. This was his arena. A little staring competition was nothing.
“Well,” Gansey said, clapping his hands together. He rubbed them anxiously against one another. “Good talk. Ronan, I think Blue wanted to talk to you about something in the equipment room.”
Ronan took a moment to tear his gaze away from Adam, but Adam held it even as he turned to go.
“Sorry about him. He’s not always like this,” Gansey said.
Adam was willing to venture a guess that he probably was.
The first few rounds of warm-ups and drills went better than Adam expected. He was getting more comfortable in his new skates, and while he was struggling to keep up, he wasn’t the worst on the ice like he thought he’d be.
Then they started running plays.
They weren’t overly difficult or complicated. Adam was doing okay for the most part, but there was one thing he’d been dreading since he’d first signed his contract with the team.
Technically, Adam had never been checked before.
In Henrietta, the ice had been the safest place he could be. Persephone used to let him stay for hours after practice, running drills by himself or making penalty shots, or sometimes just sitting around, killing time before he had to go back home.
Here, in Cabeswater, it was going to get violent. He’d known that all along, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t happen during his first practice. He’d hoped he’d have a little time to adjust.
Henry Cheng was not a big guy, no bigger than Adam anyway. It shouldn’t have been scary watching him charge across the ice. But the second their pads collided, Adam went down hard.
His father was leaning over him. He had a tight grip on the front of his sweaty t-shirt. His breath smelled like cheap beer, and Adam couldn’t figure out why that of all things bothered him so much.
“Look at me when I talk to you,” he hissed.
Adam couldn’t get his eyes open. There was dust in them. Dust in his blood, pumping through his veins. It was who he was. It was where he came from, and when he died, he’d turned back to dust. He could only hope it was soon.
“Parrish,” a voice called, softer than his father’s, almost hesitant.
He peeled his eyes open.
He was at center ice. He was lying at center ice at Cabeswater, and the entire Aglionby Men’s Hockey Team was staring at him.
“I promise I didn’t hit him that hard,” Henry said.
“Shut up,” Ronan said. “You gonna survive, Parrish?”
Adam nodded. He pushed himself to his feet. Ronan reached out to help him, but he brushed it off.
“That was impressive,” Noah said. “Do you think we could make a play out of that?”
Adam watched the coaches, gathered at the wall, watching him, expressions concerned. He gathered himself, turning his expression to stone. It was fine. He was fine. He had to show them he was tough enough for this. He couldn’t freak out every time he got checked.
Except once a guy hits the ice in a full-blown panic attack, the team gets a little nervous about hitting him again. He watched them skate around him, slowing down to let him pass. They moved slower, more deliberately. But it wouldn’t work long-term. Other teams weren’t going to leave him alone just because he was scared. He hated them, their pitying looks, their tense smiles. Fuck all of them.
He didn’t stop to talk to anyone when practice was over, not even Gansey.
He let himself take far too long in the shower. He couldn’t remember ever showering without worrying about the water bill, so he let himself enjoy then warmth as it washed over him. Once he was sure everyone else had left, he scrambled for his towel and clothes, changing as quickly as he could before returning to the main part of the locker room. Several of the guys had already left, so it wasn’t hard to avoid stares and questions. He didn’t want to talk to any of them ever again. He’d never been so embarrassed.
In the parking lot, a small crowd had gathered around a shiny, orange Camaro. He wanted to walk away. He wanted to get ahead on the reading for his Sociology class, and he hoped to find time to call Persephone and lie to her about how his first practice went great, and it was going to be a great year. But something drew him in. Whether it be fate or intuition, he wasn’t sure. Persephone used to call him perceptive. Maybe that was it.
Gansey sat in the driver’s seat, hopelessly turning his key in the ignition. A guttural growl came forth, but no signs of actual life. Blue, the team manager, was leaning out the passenger side window, yelling unhelpful instructions at Ronan as he fiddled helpless under the hood. Noah, in the backseat, stretched over the center console, face concerned. “I don’t have a fucking clue, man,” Ronan said. “You’re going to have to call Triple-A.”
“Need any help?” Adam asked.
“That depends,” Gansey said. “Do you happen to know anything about cars?”
“I know a thing or two.”
It turned out to be a faulty spark plug, a stupidly easy fix. Adam finished quickly and soon found himself in the backseat, tucked between Noah and Ronan on his way to Nino’s.
They led Adam straight to a booth at the back of the restaurant. He rushed ahead of Gansey to put his left side against the wall. Gansey slid in beside him, and the other three piled onto the opposite booth.
They ordered a large deep-dish pizza—half avocado and half sausage. Adam didn’t order anything other than water. He had a meal plan and had been taking full advantage of it. But he still couldn’t afford to be blowing what little money he had on pizza.
“You play hockey. You fix cars,” Gansey said. “What can’t you do?”
“Take a hit,” Ronan said.
Blue smacked his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up.” She turned to Adam. “Ignore him. We’re thinking about getting him a shock collar.”
Adam had known this outing was a bad idea. He’d been distracted by the hope of it all, their closeness, the way these guys knew each other better than anyone else. These were uncharted waters for Adam. He’d let them draw him in. But he knew better, and he had to keep reminding himself. He was unknowable. Untouchable. He was a functional machine made of broken pieces, and one day it would all come to a grinding halt. It was better to keep everyone else out of the way of the inevitable crash.
Gansey turned a stern glare to Ronan like he was about to scold a toddler. He opened his mouth to say something, but then shut it in a silent huff. He turned back to Adam. “Any other hobbies?”
Adam knew how to do lots of things, just nothing he’d call a hobby. His father had taught him how to protect his face. His mother had taught him how to lie. But Persephone had taught him how to play hockey. When he’d showed up at the rink, scrawny and hungry, searching for a third job, she’d seen him for what he was. She gave him a job cleaning the stands after games. She’d paid him more than he was worth and bought his equipment. Hockey was his ticket out of Henrietta, but there was one more thing she’d taught him.
“I can bake a mean pie.”
“I beg your pardon?” Gansey’s grin broke through his marble features. It made him look less noble than his previous politician-perfect smile. “Pies?”
He nodded.
“You should come bake at Monmouth,” Noah said. He bounced in his seat, an impatient gesture that shook the whole table.
“That is not a bad idea,” Gansey said. “We never have baked goods.”
“I made brownies last year,” Noah said.
“Those do not count.” Gansey shook a stern finger at Noah. “And you know why.”
When their waitress came back with the pizza, she sat it in the middle of the table and handed plates to each of them. Adam gently pushed his away. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” Gansey said, eyebrows pulled up in a concerned crease. “We should’ve asked what you wanted. We can order something else if you’d like.” His words said I was wrong, but his eyes said you poor thing. Adam hated pity.
“I’m fine,” he snapped. “I’m just not hungry.”
Ronan leaned over the table, grabbing a slice with sausage on it. It slapped onto the plate, and Ronan slid it forward, just under his face.
“Eat it anyway,” Ronan said. “You could use the fucking protein.”
Fuck Ronan Lynch.
He ate it anyway.