The Linemate's Vow

Declan O'Shea is eighteen and bulletproof until his mother's scream cuts through the echo of skates on ice. He turns at the blue line. His father is folded over an aluminum seat-back in Section C, Row 4, like someone unplugged him. Frank O'Shea spent thirty years laying brick for the city of Vancouver, and he had exactly one rule for his son, delivered in a rink in Trois-Rivières with snow melting through the holes in Declan's sneakers. *"You quit, you're dead to me."* Declan is twenty-nine now, lacing up for his tenth NHL season opener at Rogers Arena, and he still cannot get the smell of that rink out of his sinuses. Coach Mila Kwan pins the lineup sheet to the board at 6:47, thirteen minutes before they are due on the ice. Declan does not need to look at it. He has played with the same two wingers for two years and knows their habits like his own hands. He looks anyway. *O'Shea, D. — Desjardins, J. — Marchenko, A.* Jordan Desjardins is the rookie. The first-round pick. All arms and legs, hair still wet from the shower, stall fourteen, directly next to him. Jordy is carrying something he has kept out of the media entirely — a sister, Lysanne, who is not away on any bus but in a hospital bed. Declan is carrying something he has kept out of everything. The first person to work out either of these is Declan's younger brother Rory, who is on the same roster, who holds Declan responsible for what happened to their father, and who has a phone and a reason to use it. What comes of that is a piece in The Athletic by M. Chen about a fracture in the Vancouver locker room, allegations the organization declines to address, a head coach who does not return calls, and a rookie whose first-line spot suddenly looks to everybody like something other than earned. It also involves a splint, a hand cleared for skating but not for shooting, a charity auction where Declan bids up the only thing he has left of his father and then hands it away, and a hospital room where somebody finally says the number out loud. This is an MM hockey romance about a veteran who has spent his whole career not saying one true thing, a rookie who asks anyway and does not look away, and a brother who knows precisely where to push. The romance is closed-door.