Page 81 of Rookie Rules

"We're working," Luca answered.

"I'm sure the lens appreciates your dedication."

During the anthem, the scoreboard showed a montage of the season's first seven games. Luca appeared twice. Rowan appeared four times. Their opening-night exchange filled the final shot before the screen cut to the live lineup.

Public stories needed repetition before they became true.

Luca wanted this one. The wanting made it harder to examine what had been left outside the frame.

At the Wolf Den that night, the opponent proved Vale correct on the first shift.

Two forecheckers drove Rowan below the goal line. The weak-side winger dropped toward the wall, cutting off Finn's route. Luca saw open ice beyond the pressure and left half a second early.

The reverse pass hit the space behind him.

The opponent held the zone. One shot became two. Gabriel stopped the first through traffic and had no view of the rebound.

0-1.

Luca returned to the bench with the crowd settling into worried noise.

Rowan sat beside him. "You knew the route."

"I thought you had the reverse."

"I did. You left it."

The words found the old bruise because they were true.

Luca leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. The public story called him the speed in Rowan's system. Speed meant nothing if he kept arriving where the play was supposed to become instead of where it still was.

"Next one," Finn said from Luca's other side.

Their next shift started the same way. Rowan retrieved. Two forecheckers collapsed. Luca held.

The impulse to fly the zone pulled through his legs.

He stayed.

Finn came underneath. Rowan reversed the puck. One touch from Luca sent Finn through the pressure with speed, and the line exited cleanly.

No chance developed at the other end. The crowd did not react. On the way to the bench, Rowan struck his stick once against Luca's shin pad.

Correction received.

The next ten minutes tested whether Luca could stay inside the correction after the shame of causing a goal. On one shift he chipped the puck deep rather than carrying into two defenders. On another he tracked the opposing winger below the circle and lifted the stick before a centering pass arrived.

The crowd did not rise for either decision.

Rowan noticed both.

At the bench after the defensive play, he said, "Good support."

Luca drank from the bottle and kept his eyes on the ice. The words warmed the same place that had tightened after the goal against.

That was the danger nobody's arrows showed. Rowan's approval no longer belonged only to Luca's ambition. It had become regulation of a more private kind: one sentence could settle him, one silence could leave him searching.

He did not want to grant anyone that much influence.