Caleb (Valencia Ice Mafia #4)

Chapter 1

Jasmine

My father’s assistant, Wendy, who sometimes works the front desk of the rink too, waves at me without looking up from her laptop. I nod at her. I have nodded at Wendy every morning for three years. Some relationships don't require words, and it’s one of the few relationships I can depend on.

The break room coffee tastes like burnt asphalt, but I drink it anyway, in the same chipped mug I've been using since sophomore year.

The mug has a faded VCU logo on one side and a hairline crack near the rim that gets bigger every semester.

Eventually, it will explode in my hand. I'll deal with it then. I’m not anything like those vapid Stanley mug girls.

Like, who needs ten Stanley Cups? This one mug is all a girl needs.

Needless to say, I’m not an Instagram baddie. I’m just a basic girl with a clipboard, a coffee, a hoodie, and a system for VCU hockey that works.

The system is this:

I get to the rink first. I check the practice plan against my father's calendar, against the maintenance schedule, against the broadcast obligations, and against the academic eligibility list. I cross-reference. I flag. I email. Then I disappear.

I do this so well that nobody notices when it's done because nobody noticed it had to be done in the first place. This is the job that keeps my dad from losing his mind and his program in the same week.

This is also, I’m not above admitting to myself, the reason I exist on this campus.

If I’m useful to him, I am here.

If I’m not useful, I am…well. I don't say what I think out loud.

* * *

The first players to come in are the freshmen, the way it always is. They show up Red Bull caffeinated and loud as hell, dressed in matching VCU sweats, joking about some inappropriate online video or some new pussy they were fortunate enough to bag.

Those poor girls. There’s no way in hell I would ever sleep with a hockey player. That’s like begging for a broken heart and a case of chlamydia.

I’ve been watching incoming VCU hockey freshmen do this for three Septembers in a row.

They start out loud, hyped to be a part of our program, but by December, they’re quiet, tired, and humbled.

Nobody on this campus knows my dad like a freshman who’s just been put through five months of his infamous Ice Mafia practice plan.

The captain of the team, Neo, walks in at six-thirty.

He doesn't say anything to anyone. He never does, at least not at this time of day. Neo Major is built like a person who has a single thought and intends to act on it without apologizing. He nods at Wendy. He nods at me. But what he hasn’t done, in three years, is know my name.

That's not unkind. That's just Neo.

Shane follows him five minutes later, already mid-conversation with somebody on his phone. Shane Sullivan is another leader on the team, and he’s louder than Neo.

He flirts with the front desk girls. He flirts with the women in the staff break room. He probably flirted with my dad's secretary, and she’s sixty-three years old and recently widowed. Honestly, I find him hilarious. He’s a charming menace in the world and on the ice.

But he walks past me without even looking up. That's fine, though, because that's the deal. I wouldn’t expect anything different from him. I’m not the kind of girl someone like him would choose to flirt with…or acknowledge.

Bass comes in last. He always comes in last. He’s the one who is somehow always five to ten minutes late, despite living in the same house as the other players.

He’s also the one who, today, looks up at me with an expression that is, for the first time in three years, slightly less than completely blank.

"Morning," he says.

I almost drop my coffee.

Bass has spoken to me approximately five times in three years. And before you ask, yes, I’ve counted. I do pathetic shit like that.

"Morning, Bass," I say back.

He nods at me. He nods as a normal person would nod at another person because in his world, it makes complete sense that I know his name and he doesn’t know mine. Then he heads toward the locker room.

I stand there with my chipped mug halfway to my mouth, wondering what the hell just happened, and try to remember if anything is unusual about today.

Then I remember.

Ah, yes, Bass is probably happier than usual. Today is the day the new transfer kid reports, and he loves fucking with the new guys.

* * *

Caleb Adams skates onto the ice at seven o'clock sharp.

He’s not what I expected.

I’ve read his file, so that my dad doesn’t have to. It’s an unofficial part of my job. My father coaches based on vibes rather than paperwork.

Immediately, a red flag goes up for me.

This kid has had three transfers in four years. Two minor disciplinary suspensions. One assault charge that didn't stick. And a VCU scholarship contingent on conduct. This is his last chance as a college hockey player.

Damn.

With this kind of paper trail, I expected someone bigger, louder, or someone who seems more of an obvious problem. What walks onto the ice instead is a tall, quiet kid with dark hair wet at the ends.

He’s wearing a black practice jersey. Number fourteen. And he moves with a specific kind of stillness that, in my experience, guys have when they are one bad day away from a total meltdown.

He doesn't look at the bench.

He doesn't look at the boards.

He doesn't look at anybody.

He skates one slow lap and starts working a puck along the wall like he’s been on this ice for years.

I have to admit, there’s something about the way he moves on the ice. It’s hypnotic. Is it confidence? Is it anger? I’m not sure. But it’s kind of sexy in a very odd way.

My dad has him paired against Bass for the scrimmage, and this is probably why Bass was so cheerful this morning. Pairing them together, and I want to be very clear about this, is a deeply unsubtle move on my father’s part.

Bass is a scrapper. Bass talks shit. Bass tests. And more than likely, Bass is going to do something within the first three minutes to see what kind of transfer he just got handed. Of course, that’s the point. My father has set this up because that’s exactly what he wants to find out too.

I should have warned the kid.

But I won’t.

A girl barely seen and never heard doesn’t give new players a “heads up”, especially if she wants to stay that way.

That's also part of my system.

* * *

The whistle blows.

The scrimmage is fast and ugly, the way scrimmages always are. Bodies hitting the ice hard, sticks slapping, somebody's mouthguard already lost. Bass takes the first run at Caleb in the corner. Clean check, more or less. Caleb absorbs it without changing his face.

Two shifts later, Caleb takes a run at Bass.

Also clean.

And they do this, back and forth, for about six minutes, but I can see Caleb getting wound tighter behind the eyes, even though nothing about him gives it away.

His face is doing nothing. His shoulders are doing nothing.

But there is something coiled inside the stillness of his cold, dark eyes that I’ve seen before.

And I understand before anybody else does that this is going to end somewhere it shouldn't.

The whistle blows.

A beat passes.

And Caleb finishes the hit anyway.

The rink goes silent in a way where you can hear the air handlers, where you can hear somebody's stick clatter against the boards, where you can hear, in the very back of the bleachers, somebody's water bottle drop.

In the middle of the ice, on his ass, Bass exhales loud enough to be heard. "Yeah," he says, half under his breath, half not. "That's gonna leave a mark."

Shane goes still. Jaw tight. Shane is the boundary enforcer in this room, and even he is, for the first sixty seconds, just observing.

Neo doesn't move. He never moves without purpose. But his attention sharpens in a way I can feel from where I'm standing, and I know in my bones that Neo, or Cap as he’s affectionately called, has just made a private decision about Caleb Adams. A decision that probably ain’t good.

My stomach drops before I know why.

I grip my clipboard tightly.

I don’t even know this kid, and already I’m worried as fuck for him.

* * *

My dad blows the whistle a second time. Sharp. Final. Caleb is off the ice in under five seconds. It’s obvious that this isn’t his first rodeo, and he’s had this conversation with other coaches before; that much is obvious.

He skates off without arguing, without protesting, and without looking at any of the players on the team, especially the one he just hit…Bass.

My dad doesn’t yell, but frankly, that’s the worst version of him. I’ve known it my whole life. The yelling version of my dad is the one who loves you, or at least the guy who gives a damn. The quiet version is the version that has already made a decision, and it typically isn’t a very good one.

He walks Caleb to center ice.

He delivers the consequences right there, in front of the whole team.

Conditional status.

Behavioral monitoring.

One more incident and he’s gone. No appeal.

I watch the room react in micro-expressions. Bass exhales again. Shane's jaw tightens. Neo simply nods in what I assume is agreement. The freshmen don't move or say a word. In fact, they look petrified.

Caleb's face does nothing.

I feel for the guy, though. There seems to be some sort of disconnect. Maybe he doesn’t completely understand what just happened? I know this tone from my father, and I know what it means.

This is the tone my dad used the night my mother packed her bags. Decisive. Distant. Unwilling to soften for anyone…even her, a woman he claimed he would have killed someone for.

This is the tone that says I have already decided. This is the tone that says you are now a problem I am managing, and I’m annoyed I have to. This is the tone that, if you have ever been on the receiving end of it from this man, you don’t forget. It reeks of disappointment and disgust.

But Caleb Adams hasn't said a single word.

And then, and this is the part I don’t see coming, my dad calls my name.

Out, the fuck, loud.

In front of the entire team.

“Where’s my daughter? Hey, Jasmine, get down here, please.”

This is not what we do, and it takes me completely off guard, so I freeze. But I don’t freeze for very long, because this is my damn job, and well…my father’s the boss. If he calls me to the ice, then I need to pull my big girl panties up and do it.

Reluctantly, I step forward, my hoodie swallowing my frame, and my clipboard against my chest. My heart is pounding in the parts of my body that should not have a pulse, like my fingertips, my temples, and the soft inside of my left wrist.

I shouldn’t have had a caffeinated coffee this morning; I should have taken a damn weed gummy. My anxiety is on a level eight.

Heads turn.

Then Bass, bless his ignorant heart, actually leans over and whispers to Shane in a voice meant to be heard:

“Hold the fuck up. Coach has a daughter?"