The whistle blows. Here goes another face off. I bend my knees, eyes on the ref’s hand waiting for the biscuit to drop. But for some reason, I can’t keep my focus.

She’s on the sideline watching, I know she is. But who knows if she’s here to see me or Mark? None of this matters now, because we are over. Over. And I was the one who ended it, remember, asshole? She was never mine to start with anyway. But a piece of me feels lost when I sense her existence.

Puck drops, I don’t have control of it. Of course I wouldn’t, because I’m being a dimwit and thinking about her instead of the game. Forget it, just go for it now and the rest can come later.

I shuffle my feet as fast as I can, stealing the puck from the opposing offense. Corbin is on my left, a deke and I pass it to him. His eyes signal me to go to the other side, so I do, dashing all the way across the ice.

Clink.

Puck gets passed to me. Open goal, I gotta make this one. The sound of ice being scraped comes near, someone’s behind me. I swerve around and take the puck with me, but my knee gives out for a second, and someone checks me from the side. World spins around as my back hits the ice.

Get up, wuss!

Dad’s voice echoes in my head. One breath in, cold fills my lungs, and I shake my head out of the daze. Focus, damn it!

A shadow in my periphery. Then I feel a tingle on my wrist. Then comes a sharp pain, and red oozes out of my jersey.

Shit, someone just skated over my arm. I press my right hand into my left arm, but blood keeps pumping out like it’s some kind of faucet that can’t be shut off. All of a sudden I can hear metal colliding and scraping again, the smell of gas, the shattering of glass, and then everything goes silent, and all that’s in my ears is the the sound of my heavy breathing. Panic shoots inside my head—is this it? Am I going to die?

And then… everything goes black.