Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Toni Amato
I change my outfit twice the next Monday before I catch myself and stop.
I know exactly what I'm doing and I need to stop.
I am a professional. My purpose here is to complete a job.
One of my three perfectly suitable blazers will be sufficient, and my hair will be up.
The events in that sauna were nothing more than steam, ambient heat, and a man looking like that in a towel.
I’m wearing the green one. The blazer. Done. By eight-thirty, I regret every career choice that led me here. My father calls early because he operates within military confines.
“My Antonia, you forgot to call me on our usual day. What happened yesterday?”
“Sorry, Daddy, I was extremely busy at the rink yesterday with practice and the game. Then, after I attended the press conference.”
“My girl is out there making a name for herself in the NHL. I’m so proud of you.
Are you keeping all those unruly hockey players in line?
The Guardians are no strangers to on-ice infractions, especially Max Stevens.
Did you know he leads the league in penalties?
” I freeze. He knows. “Make sure you’re not making the same mistake again, sweetheart.
You know what I always say about patterns, Antonia. ”
“I remember. Listen, I have to get dressed for work now to be on time.”
“Love you, darling, your mother would be proud. Goodbye.”
The Guardians’ practice facility reeks of testosterone and two other things I’ve catalogued since week one: the industrial adhesive spray they use on tape jobs, which coats every horizontal surface within ten feet of the locker room; the chemical smell of the ice resurfacer exhaust that backs into the corridor from the Zamboni bay every forty minutes on the dot.
The arena has its own clock. I’ve learned to read it.
The first resurfacer run at five-forty-seven a.m. means the overnight crew is wrapping up.
Gerald at the east entrance switches from his crossword to Wordle at eight a.m. exactly.
The PA system does a test tone at eight-fifteen that the players have stopped registering and I haven’t.
The supply delivery comes Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the corridor outside the equipment room smells like new rubber and cardboard for approximately forty minutes after it arrives.
There is a superstition I’ve observed but not yet documented professionally: no player taps the fourth stall from the left in the away locker room during warm-ups.
I’ve watched three separate games where this happened.
Nobody explained it to me. I’m not sure anyone remembers why it started.
They do it anyway. Ritual becomes architecture.
Sticks clatter somewhere beyond the hallway.
Music pounds through the weight room wall hard enough to rattle the framed team photos.
I stride toward the training studio with my tablet tucked under my arm, expression set to professional woman immune to nonsense.
Inside, I arrange resistance bands, mobility ladders, balance discs, and video screens for the session.
I set up the room the way I always do. Resistance bands on the left rack.
iPad on the table. Two chairs angled toward the monitor.
Mine has my notes on the seat. His is twelve inches to the right.
Twelve inches. I stop measuring and feel briefly insane.
Today’s objective: Behavior correction, impulse management, decision-making under pressure.
Today’s likely reality: Max Stevens in gym shorts, operating at full chaos capacity. The door swings open before I finish setting the cones. Speak of the menace.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know that when a player is invested in something, they stop showing up late. Max has been on time every session. Not early. Not late. Exactly on time, like a man who looked up what the line was and stood right on it.
Today he’s three minutes early, which means the line moved.
He walks in carrying coffee and chaos. Gray training shorts hang low on his hips. Black T-shirt stretched over broad shoulders. Damp hair from the shower. He smells like fresh soap and clean laundry. I do not catalogue this.
“Morning, coach.” Max clocks both chairs and sits in mine. Not the other one. Mine. With my notes on it. He shifts once, presumably feeling the notepad beneath him, and does not move. I look at him. He looks at the monitor.
“You’re in my chair.”
“Feels like our chair now.”
“That’s my chair,” I say.
“They’re the same chair.”
“My notes are under you.”
“I don’t feel any notes.”
“You’re sitting on them.”
I reach across him for my notes. Tactical error. His knees spread automatically to let me through, and suddenly I’m half between his legs, one hand braced on the table beside his hip while the players lurking behind the glass watch me attempt to retrieve a clipboard like it’s a live explosive.
Max goes very still. “You good there, coach?” Anthony gives us a thumbs-up and a wink.
He lifts one side and extracts the notepad with two fingers, hands it to me, and resettles.
I snatch the clipboard so fast that half the papers slide onto the floor.
He picks them up and continues to sit there with long limbs loose, completely comfortable taking up space in rooms that don’t technically belong to him. “Problem solved.”
“You’re late.”
He checks an invisible watch. “I’m three minutes early.”
“You’re still late spiritually.” A laugh breaks loose from the doorway. Lucas McKenna leans against the frame, holding a protein shake.
“Can I stay? This is better than Netflix.”
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Max says.
Lucas grins. “Conflict already. Love that for you.”
I point down the hall. “Out.” He leaves laughing.
Max sets one coffee beside me on the desk. “I remembered your order.”
“I never gave you my order.”
“Exactly.” I glare at the cup like it insulted my mother.
“How do you know what I drink?”
He shrugs. “You're efficient and you don't trust anything sweet. Oat milk latte. No sugar.”
I hate how accurate that is. “I’m not drinking anything you brought me.”
“Suit yourself.” He picks it up and takes a sip from the same lid. “Delicious.”
Insufferable. I straighten. “Phone in the locker.” He pulls it from his pocket and drops it into my palm. Compliant. Suspicious.
“Watch,” he says.
“What?”
“Me trying.” My stomach flips. He hands me the coffee. I don’t take it. “Drink it.”
“No.”
“I walked three blocks.”
“Nobody asked you to.”
“I suffered for this latte.”
“You play professional hockey.”
“Exactly. I’m delicate.”
I move to the center of the room. “We have some time before the phone call with Damian Price.” From behind me:
“You’re really not drinking it?”
“No.”
“That hurts.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Will I?”
“Unfortunately.” I roll my eyes.
I pull the other chair out. Sit. Open my iPad. He has been in this room for forty seconds, and I already need to regulate my breathing.
We get through the pre-session setup. I pull up the penalty file. Turn the screen to show him the Vancouver footage — and stop.
My lock screen is different.
It was a standard NHL logo this morning. It is now a photo of Max Stevens from the official team website — the media portrait, full smile, stick on shoulder — with the caption, in white text, someone has added beneath it: your most important assignment.
I stare at it.
He is looking at the monitor with the focused attention of a man watching critical film footage. The monitor is off.
“Mr. Stevens.”
“Mm.”
“When did you change my lock screen?”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
“You were the only person who touched this tablet.”
“I handed it back immediately.”
“You changed my lock screen in the time it took to hand it back.”
He turns and looks at the screen. At his own face on my iPad. Then back at me with an expression of pure serenity. Consider the contents of my file with this visual aid.
From the hallway, through the glass, Anthony Dudek is watching. He catches my eye. Mouths: I saw nothing.
I open the settings. Navigate to the display menu. There must be seventeen steps to changing a lock screen image. Max watches me do it. He says nothing. When I’m finished and the screen is back to the NHL logo, he nods once.
“Good,” he says. “Now. Vancouver. Third period.”
I open the clip. “Your penalty in the third.”
“Cross-checking call.” He leans back, arms crossed. “Controversial.” I am attempting to explain body positioning while fully distracted by his forearms.
“It was not controversial. You hit a man into the boards with eight seconds left and a one-goal lead.”
“He was draped over Knox like a bad tuxedo.” I pull up the clip. Let it play. We both watch the hit in silence — the angle, the force, the immediate ref signal, the way the Gold Coast bench deflates.
“You had two other options,” I say. “Here.” I tap back fifteen seconds. “You had position. You could have stepped between them and drawn the interference call.”
“Too slow.”
“It was not too slow. Watch your feet.” I pause it and point at the frame. His feet on the ice, weight already distributed wrong for what he did. “You hit before you evaluated. That's habit, not instinct.”
He pauses for a moment. Watching the screen. Actually watching it, not performing attention. I’ve started to recognize the difference. There’s a version of Max that performs and a version that’s actually present, and they’re not always the same. Right now he’s present.
“Okay,” he says.
I blink. “Okay?”
“You’re right.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. The same posture from last night in the sauna, and I absolutely do not think about that. “Habit. I learned to go early on hits because if you hesitate, you miss the window. But you’re saying the window here wasn’t—“
“The window here was draw the call, not win the hit.” I tap to the next clip. “Different goal. You didn’t read it.”