Breakaway (Atlanta Firebirds #4)

Chapter 1 Luca

The alarm goes off at five-forty. I reach for my phone on the nightstand, and the screen fills with it. Blue water, white railing, the palms lined up against a sky I haven't stood under in two weeks. The balcony. The view from fourteen floors up in an apartment that is no longer mine.

I set the phone down. Face up.

Twenty-four boxes, flattened and recycled in forty-eight hours.

Clothes in the closet by category. Cabinets contain kitchenware, ordered from left to right by how often items get used.

The cutting board I brought from Miami is too small for the counter, but it's mine, so it stays.

Shelves are on order. When they arrive, the books go on them.

For now, the books sit in a box by the window with the spines facing up so I can read the titles without opening the flaps.

Coffee takes two minutes. I drink it standing at the counter. Five-point-one. The beans are adequate, and the water here has a mineral weight to it, something chalky on the back of the tongue. Finding a better roaster is item forty-two on the ‘Atlanta’ Transition tab.

Atlanta in September has a thickness. The air through the car window is warm and still.

Not salt-warm. Not coastal. A landlocked heat, stubborn, arriving without breeze and refusing to leave.

Someone clearly overpaid for the Firebirds logo design, which covers the glass and concrete facility off the highway.

Four-point-eight for the kerning. Loose.

The hallway smells like new carpet and fresh paint. Framed renderings on the walls, showing what this building will look like when it has won something. Right now, it hasn't.

The locker room is loud before I get through the door.

Music, something with brass and a drum fill, coming from a phone propped at a stall across the horseshoe.

Already at his stall, Jensen laces his skates, his focus unwavering.

Murray is a couple of stalls over, unpacking with the same settled weight.

"This humidity is going to kill me," I say. "I'm sweating through my third shirt today."

Mueller looks over at me. "Didn't you just come from Miami?"

"Yes, but at least there we had the beach and an ocean breeze." I drop into my stall. "This is just hot soup. No beach. No breeze. Just soup."

"The soup is part of the charm," says the guy across the horseshoe, the one with the music and the dark hair. Marchetti. "Give it a month. You'll acclimate."

"I will not acclimate. I will endure. There's a difference."

A few guys laugh. Good.

I start unpacking. Skates first, aligned with the stall frame.

Helmet on the shelf, visor forward. Gloves on the hooks, fingers down.

Tape, two rolls, left of the gloves. Hangers separated by type.

Toiletry bag at a specific angle, adjusted once, then again because the first angle was wrong by two degrees.

Bag folded, zipper out, tucked under the bench.

The guy with the music is watching me. I catch his eye.

"Marchetti. You look like you slept in your car."

He grins. "I look great. I look fantastic. This is what five hours of sleep and a positive attitude looks like."

"It isn't." I study his stall. Pre-wrap sitting on top of his slides on top of his tape. "And that's horrifying."

"That's a system. It's a load-bearing Jenga machine. Don't touch it."

"That's a cry for help. And I say that with warmth."

He laughs. I go back to adjusting my stall and he goes back to his, muttering about shelf placement while the brass track shifts into the next song.

The room fills. More faces I recognize from the group chat, matched to bodies and voices for the first time.

Thompson finds his stall a few down from Marchetti.

Taller than I expected. Kowalski, M?kinen, Davis, Soucy.

Each one settling in, building a small territory in a space that belongs to nobody yet.

Ikonen is near the tunnel. He carries himself like someone the room naturally gravitates toward, unprompted. Asher is in the stall next to him, not at his own nameplate, talking with his hands. It looks like they already know each other, even though we’re all new to this team.

A tall blond kid comes in late. Young. His bag is too big for his frame, and he bumps a bench on the way to his stall.

Nobody says anything, which is the right move.

Hájek. I know the name from the team chat that started weeks ago.

Czech. Second round. He sits down and puts his hands on his knees and reads his nameplate as if it might have instructions on the back.

We settle into the video room for introductions. First, the coaching team, and then the support staff. I've changed into my fourth shirt of the day because I refuse to sit through a meeting damp. Marchetti is on my left. Thompson on the other side of him.

"Fourth shirt," Marchetti says to me. "New record?"

"It's not a record. It's a necessity. I refuse to sit in a meeting damp."

"I am."

"I've noticed. And I've chosen not to say anything."

"You literally just said something."

I give him a look and turn back to the front of the room.

Staff introductions go one by one. Strength coach. Equipment manager. Video coordinator. Everyone clapped, kind of like hockey players do when it’s not a goal. Three hits and a nod.

Gary Miller stands first. Head athletic trainer. Standard intro.

Then the guy next to him stands. Isaiah Brooks, assistant athletic trainer. He covers the basics and sits back down.

The coach wraps up. Players stand. Chairs scrape. I pick up my water bottle and head for the hallway with Marchetti on one side and Thompson on the other.

"So we need to talk about the coffee," I say, because I have been waiting for this meeting to end so I could begin my real agenda.

"The coffee is fine," Thompson says.

"The coffee is not fine, Thompson. The coffee is an institutional failure. I've had gas station coffee with better roasting notes."

"It's free coffee in a hockey facility. It doesn't need notes."

"Coffee always needs notes. That is a non-negotiable position."

"He's right," Marchetti says. "I found a pour-over place on Piedmont. Barista named Tasha. She does this thing with the water temperature. I've been here five days and it's the best thing that's happened to me in Atlanta."

"You guys need better priorities," Thompson says.

"I need this pour-over place," I say. "I need the address. I need it today."

"I'll send it to the chat."

"Send it to me directly. I don't trust the chat with something this important."

Practice is sharp for a first day. The ice is clean, the surface tight.

I skate my routes and take my reps. The release point is where it should be.

Ikonen runs the defensive zone with a calm that lifts everyone around him.

Asher calls from the blue line, short corrections, precise.

They read each other already. Hájek's edges are solid.

His hands are quick. The rest of him is catching up.

After practice, a group of us walk to a barbecue place off Ponce that Kowalski found on his phone. Checkered tablecloths. A smoker visible through the kitchen pass. The server calls everyone "hon."

I hold up one finger.

"The brisket. Seven-point-six. Bark is eight-point-zero, smoke ring seven-three. But the sauce is sweet, which is a regional choice I'm tolerating but not endorsing."

"He's tolerating the sauce," Thompson says to M?kinen.

"The sauce is a six-two. Good sauce disappears into the meat. This sauce introduces itself, pulls up a chair, and tells you about its weekend. Condiments shouldn’t offer that.”

Kowalski asks about Miami. "What's it like down there? The team, the city?"

"Hot. Different hot, though. Miami heat comes off the water.

It's personal. Atlanta heat just shows up and sits on your head.

" I take another bite of the brisket, swallowing hard to get it down.

"The Tempest facility is older. Smaller weight room but better machines.

The ice had a dead patch near the left circle the maintenance crew never fixed.

I complained about it for two seasons and they named it after me. "

"They named a dead patch after you?" Jensen asks.

"The Berger Zone. Unofficial. But the Zamboni driver acknowledged it."

The conversation moves. Davis argues with Jensen about a tv show neither of them has finished. M?kinen eats in focused silence. Kowalski tells a story about his dog that outlives its natural endpoint by two full minutes. Not together. Just near each other.

The apartment is quiet when I get home. I put my keys on the counter. The kitchen light hums. The couch, the lamp, the box of books by the window. The walls are the same white they were twelve hours ago.

I shower. I brush my teeth. I sit on the edge of the bed and I pick up my phone from the nightstand. The balcony glows on the screen. Blue water, white railing, green palm trees below. The view from the place I used to live.

I press my thumb to the railing and hold it there.

"It's all going to be okay, right?"

No one answers.

?