Chapter 2
Caleb
Conditional status.
Behavioral monitoring.
One more incident and I'm gone, no appeal.
I've swallowed some version of this speech from three different coaches in three different states, so by now I could probably deliver it better than Dixon's delivering it to me.
Here's how it goes. You stand still. You keep your mouth shut.
You nod when it's done, and you show nothing, because the second a guy like me shows something, that something is what they write down.
And you sure as hell don't have an outburst.
It used to be hard. Now I've got it down to a science. There's a trick to not giving a fuck, and the trick is you go somewhere else behind your eyes and leave your body parked at center ice in front of whoever's shoving the speech down your throat.
So my body stands there.
I quietly swallow the words.
And then Dixon turns away from me, yells up into the stands, and the whole day gets interesting.
"Where's my daughter? Hey, Jasmine, get down here, please."
Daughter.
Behind me, Bass says some wild shit. "Hold the fuck up. Coach has a daughter?"
Now here's the thing I can't get over. A rink full of hockey players, and not one of them knew the coach had a kid in the building? I mean, that's weird. Even for a group of self-absorbed hockey shits, that's weird.
Me, though? I clocked her at seven a.m. on my first lap, the way I clock everything, because it turns out everybody in a rink is watching somebody, but she was watching everybody and didn’t seem impressed by a single one of them.
I know the difference because watching everybody is how you survive a house like the one I grew up in.
She had on a big hoodie, hanging onto a clipboard and a mug of something like it was her wubby. And she's pretty in a way nobody's bothered to tell her about, which is its own kind of crime.
I figured her for a team manager. Support staff. An intern, maybe.
I did not figure her for this…the coach’s daughter.
She comes down the steps slow, and I watch her do it, which is stupid, because Coach is watching me watch her.
But I'll give the fat heads on this team exactly one thing.
She looks nothing like her father. Dixon's a nondescript guy, pale, blonde, the human equivalent of a beige wall.
She's a knockout. Dark, reddish-tan skin, a whole head of dark curls piled up in a bun that's losing the fight to hold them.
She's a walking ball of contradictions, this one.
Chin up like she's the authority in the room.
Sleeves pulled all the way down over her hands, which is a dead giveaway she's not half as sure of herself as the chin wants me to believe.
Why? No idea. Her eyes go across the room like a scanner.
Bleachers, bench, players, me. I don't know what she's adding up, but she's adding up something.
She stops at the boards and doesn't step on the ice.
And while her father talks, she does this one thing nobody else in the building catches. Her thumb finds the rubber lip of the boards and runs it. Back and forth. Slow. The entire time. Her face is a locked door, but the thumb is the tell.
I bank it. Definitely an old habit.
"This is Jasmine," Coach says to the group, in the same dead voice he just used to put me on a leash. "Some of you have apparently been walking past her for three years. That ends today."
Nobody breathes.
Not even her.
"And just so we're all on the same page, Jasmine is my kid, but she also runs my compliance program. Eligibility, conduct, documentation. As of this morning, that includes Mr. Adams."
Wait. What?
"He will report to her weekly. And when she talks, she's talking with my voice. Anybody's got a problem with that, you bring it to me. Personally."
Nobody's got a problem with that.
Hell, they're so busy short-circuiting over the fact that Coach grew a daughter overnight, I don't think they've got the spare wattage to decide whether they have a problem or not.
"Good. Hit the showers."
Bass skates past me real slow. "Three years, bro. She's been here three years." He says it like I'm the one who hid her, like I personally pulled the cloak off the girl.
I don't know. Maybe I did.
I come off the ice last. That's the rule when you're the new guy who just put a teammate on his ass after the whistle. You go last. You don't make anybody feel hunted in the tunnel.
She's still at the boards. Up close, she's all eyes. Dark, careful, almond-shaped, and pretty enough that I lose the thread of my own thoughts for a second. They're also tired in a way sleep doesn't touch. I find myself wanting to know why, which is not information I need.
"Adams," she says.
My dick jumps a little when she says it.
That, right there, is not good.
She says it to my jaw. Not my eyes. And I don't mind, because every coach and counselor and cop who's ever come looking for my eyes was checking for the crazy in them, and she isn't digging for anything. It's the first conversation in two years that doesn't feel like a search I never agreed to.
"That's me."
"Tuesday. Seven forty-five. Conference Room B,” she says in a steady voice, tightly holding onto the clipboard. "Bring your paperwork."
She walks off without waiting for an answer.
I know I should be at least a little worried that the new coach just set his daughter loose in my orbit.
It is not how this kind of thing usually goes.
But the only thing I'm actually working out, this exact minute, is how a girl wearing that much fabric still manages to make her ass move like that when she walks.
Fucking delicious.
* * *
The locker room is loud, and I want no part of it. The one upside is I get to sit here and eavesdrop on these idiot motherfuckers who call themselves a team.
"A daughter?" Bass announces to the room, half-dressed. "Coach has had a whole entire daughter in this building for three fucking years, and not one of you degenerates knew?"
"She doesn't look like Coach," somebody mutters.
"Yeah, how were we supposed to know?"
"You didn't know either," Shane says to Bass.
"I said good morning to her TODAY of my own free will. By the math, that means I knew her first, which makes her mine to protect. I called it."
"That's not how anything works," Shane scoffs. “Just be quiet.”
Bass is all noise. I've known a hundred guys like him. Harmless, probably. But I've been wrong about harmless before, so I sit at my stall, keep my head down, and let the zoo be a zoo.
Neo doesn't say a word. He's the big quiet captain at the end of the row, untaping his socks like nothing in this room has ever once surprised him. He looks up. Not at Bass. At me. I hold it, because looking away from a guy like that is straight pussy.
And I'm a lot of things, but I'm not that.
He goes back to his tape, making his judgments about me. That's fine. Most guys do. Most of them get it wrong.
Then Shane drops down next to me, friendly the way a repo man is friendly. "So….conditional status, huh?"
"Yep."
"And the coach's daughter holding your leash."
"Apparently."
"Cool, cool." Hand on my shoulder, warm smile. Then the voice drops a few degrees. "You do what she says, and you don't get cute with the coach's family, newbie.”
Seriously? This dude didn’t even know she existed ten minutes ago.
"Wasn't planning on cute."
"Nobody plans on cute," he says, and walks off.
I sit there another minute. Whatever that was, it had nothing to do with hockey. But I can't take that on. Not my circus.
Same as the last three teams.
I won't be here long enough for it to matter.