Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Max Stevens
“The universe has a terrible sense of humor.”
“Or a great one.” I hold the door open. My room. She doesn’t take it as an offer. She crosses to her own room and presses her key card to the reader. Nothing happens. She tries again. Still nothing. “Do you want—”
“No,” she tries a third time. The little light stays red. She tips her head back briefly, eyes on the ceiling in the manner of a woman who has run out of patience for things that don't work. “I can call down—”
“I’ll call down.” She pulls out her phone.
I lean against the wall because the alternative is going inside and pretending I don’t hear her.
“Hi, yes, this is room 1216. My key isn’t—yes.
Yes, how long?” A pause. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
“Fine.” She hangs up. Gapes at her door.
Looks at me. “Fifteen minutes,” she says.
“You could wait in here.”
“I’ll wait right here.”
“The carpet is aggressively floral.”
“I’ve worked in hockey arenas for two years. I’m immune to aggressively floral.” She leans against the wall, arms crossed, tablet tucked under one arm, and I should go inside. It’s twelve feet away. Instead, I cross the hall and lean against the wall beside her. She says nothing. Neither do I.
This is new, the two of us standing somewhere without a clipboard between us, and we notice it simultaneously.
Her arms remain crossed. Her posture is event-appropriate, professional, and unbothered.
I’ve spent two weeks learning the distance between being unbothered and working intensely not to be bothered. This is the second one.
“Mac thinks I’m making progress,” I say.
“Mac thinks everything in six-inch increments.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“He’s usually not.” A pause. “Price cc’d the GM.”
“Trey told me.”
She turns her head toward me. The light is the specific yellow of expensive hotels attempting warmth.
It catches the line of her cheekbone, a loose strand she didn't catch when she put her hair up. I look at the strand instead of her face. Looking at her face right now will be a problem. “That’s not nothing,” she says.
“I know what it is.”
“I want to make sure you—”
“Toni.” I meet her eyes. “I know what it is.”
Her chin lifts a fraction. Recalibration. Not argument. “Okay.”
“I was going to end the season suspended,” I say. It comes out plain. The way real things do when you stop building a presentation around them. “Before you got here. Damian was this close to recommending a review. Coach knew it. I knew it.” A pause. “I don’t think the GM knew it.”
She’s subdued as she watches me. I let her. Not performing. That's new. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re the reason it’s different.
” It’s just the floral carpet and the recycled air and whatever this is.
“Not the clipboard,” I add. “Not Price. Not the threat of suspension. You.” She goes absolutely still.
“You mentioned my instincts were better than my record suggested. And I...” I stop.
Run my thumb across my beard. “Nobody had said that to me before.”
Her arms uncross by a degree. One arm drops. Her tablet shifts. It’s a small thing. I note it anyway because I catalog everything she does; she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. “It’s true,” she says.
“I know.” I hold her gaze. “That’s why it worked.”
The elevator opens at the far end of the hall. A man in a suit steps out, passes us without looking, and disappears into a room. The floor is deserted again.
“This is a bad idea,” she says. Hushed. The professional distance gone from it.
“Probably.”
“My job—”
“Your job is going well.”
“It could stop going well.”
“It won’t.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“I know you.” I push off the wall. Half a step.
Close enough now that I can see the line of tension across her shoulders.
It always shows up when she’s holding two things at once.
“You do everything right. You haven't compromised on this job once.
Price's email is going to say exactly what Trey said, because you've been handling a complication you didn't ask for, and you handled it right.
" My feet stay planted as close as before. “I know you. The version you don’t put in the file.”
Her throat moves. A swallow, small and deliberate. “Max.”
“I’m not asking for anything,” I say. And I mean it.
That’s the part that surprises even me. “I’m not doing a bit.
I’m not running a play.” I look at her directly, no grin, no performance, the stripped-down truth of it.
“I don’t want you to underestimate how well I understand you. The real version.”
The lock on her door beeps. We both look at it. A maintenance tech stands at the end of the hall with a new key card, already walking away. He must have come through the stairwell, silent and efficient, while neither of us was tracking the hallway.
She has the card now. She crosses to her room.
Presses it to the reader. The light turns green.
She pushes it open. Stands half way into her room.
“Goodnight, Max.” Her voice is even. Her face is controlled.
Her left shoulder is up. It’s been established what that means.
I don’t move. And then I step across the hallway.
Not into her room. Right to the edge of the door frame, where I stop.
Close enough that her perfume reaches me, citrus cutting through the hotel air.
Her eyes hold on mine, steady, waiting for me to turn it into a game.
I don’t. “You came down from the press box at the Boston game,” I say. “You didn’t have to do that.” Her grip on the handle tightens. “You filed four separate notes on the Rourke reads,” I continue. “Tracked each decision individually. That's someone paying attention. Not compliance. You.”
“It’s—”
“I realize what it is.” My voice drops. Level. “I want you to know that I know.” She stares at me. The real version of her is right there on her face and she's not pulling it back. Not all the way. Her mouth is tight with restraint, and her eyes are giving me everything she’s not saying.
“Get some sleep,” she says. Strained.
I step back. One step. Then another. To my side of the hall. “Seven-thirty skate,” I say.
Her knuckles are white on the handle. “I’ll be there.” She closes the door.
I stand in the corridor for three full seconds, staring at 1216.
The carpet really is aggressively floral.
I go inside and drop my bag and sit on the edge of the bed with my elbows on my knees and look at the floor, and the thing sitting on my ribcage is steadier than wanting what I can't have.
She filed four notes on those reads. Tracked each one.
She came down from the press box, though she could have recorded it from the booth.
My phone lights up on the bed. Unknown number. No. Not unknown. I’ve seen this number. Her office line, added to the team contact sheet, which I absolutely committed to memory for professional reasons. One message.
You didn’t have to say that
.
I stare at it for a long time.
Then I type back:
I know.
Three dots appear. Disappear. The typing indicator goes still.
Then:
Good game in Boston.
I set the phone facedown on the mattress. Press the heels of my hands into my eyes. Because Antonia Amato texted me from across the hallway after telling me goodnight through a closed door.
She could have texted that from anywhere.
She didn’t have to do it now.
My phone buzzes again.
Don’t read into it.
I pick it up.
Too late,
I send back.
The typing indicator appears. Holds. Holds longer than any sentence needs. Then disappears without sending. I sit with that for a long time.
In the morning, the hotel lobby is chaos. Equipment bags. Coaches yelling. Fuze arguing with the concierge about whether a decorative fountain counts as “technically swimmable.” Talia stands near the elevators, filming B-roll for the team socials while trying not to laugh.
“Give me one normal clip,” she says, camera aimed at Anthony.
Anthony immediately points at me. “Max Stevens emotionally imprinted on the compliance officer like a rescue dog.”
“Perfect,” Talia says.
I flip him off.
“Great energy,” she says.
Lucas appears out of nowhere. Too fast to be casual. “You need help with that?” he asks her.
Talia blinks at the camera in her hand. “With … holding a camera?”
“Looks heavy.”
“It weighs three pounds.”
“Still.”
I stop walking. So does Fuze beside me. We both watch Lucas McKenna, who once played an entire playoff game with a dislocated finger and called an ambulance “dramatic,” offer assistance for a camera roughly equivalent to a large sandwich.
“Oh my God,” Fuze whispers.
Lucas ignores us completely. “You get enough footage downstairs?”
Talia narrows her eyes slightly like she already suspects nonsense. “Are you trying to flirt with me?”
“No.” A beat. “Maybe a little.”
She cracks up. Actual laughter. Lucas visibly straightens like someone plugged him into a power source. Fuze looks at me. “HE’S GONE.”
“Looks like it,” I agree.
Lucas points toward the elevator. “I can show you where the players enter tomorrow. Better angles.”
Talia studies him for a second too long. “You’re extremely confident for a man who voluntarily wears suits from 2009.”
Anthony chokes somewhere behind me. Lucas looks delighted. “So that’s a yes?”
“She insulted your wardrobe,” I say.
“Which means she noticed it,” Lucas says instantly.
Fuze grabs my shoulder. “Oh he’s DOWN BAD.”
Lucas finally turns toward us. “Do either of you have lives?”
“No,” Fuze says. “This is our hobby now.”
Talia lowers the camera slowly. “Is the entire team like this?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Worse,” Fuze corrects.
And across the lobby, Toni walks in just in time to catch me laughing hard enough I have to brace a hand against the luggage cart. Her eyes narrow immediately. She suspects something. She's not wrong.
The hotel restaurant buffet is an active crime scene.
That’s my first thought walking in. Not because anything is technically wrong.
Everything is polished and expensive and aggressively upscale in the way business hotels become when charging twenty-eight dollars for scrambled eggs.
But the Guardians have occupied approximately half the restaurant, and professional hockey players apparently approach breakfast with the tactical intensity of military operations.
Lucas is juggling four coffees, Talia’s media badge somehow around his neck.
“Why do you have that?” Talia asks.
Lucas grins. “You dropped it.”
“You stole it.” Talia puts her hands on her hips.
“I rescued it.” Lucas rolls his eyes.
Fuze comes up beside me. “Update,” he says confidentially. “McKenna’s in his courtship era.”
Across the table:
Lucas pushing fruit toward Talia like a Victorian man trying to survive winter. “You need potassium.”
“You learned one nutrition fact and made it everyone’s problem,” she says.
“Why does he have six bananas?” I ask.
Talia looks up from her coffee. “That’s not even his record.”
Across the buffet, Fuze is carrying two plates stacked with waffles at a height that violates structural engineering principles. Anthony trails behind him, holding three tiny yogurt parfaits for reasons no one understands.
“Those are decorative,” Talia says as he passes.
Anthony looks offended. “Food is food.”
Trey sits at the center table with black coffee and the expression of a man who has made his peace with public humiliation. “This team embarrasses me publicly,” he says as I sit down.
“Daily,” Toni agrees cheerfully. “I watched Lucas put whipped cream on bacon.”
Talia gasps faintly. “Was it good?”
Lucas points at her from across the room. “Thank you. It's called culinary innovation.”
“It’s a felony,” Trey says.
I am only carrying one plate and positive energy. Because instead of sitting in the empty chair beside Anthony, I drop directly into the seat next to Toni.
“Morning, coach,” I say. My leg brushes hers under the table, and every thought I had leaves without notice.
“You’re late.”
“I’m thirty seconds late.”
“You were supposed to meet Briggs downstairs at eight.”
“I did.”
She narrows her eyes. “When?”
I point toward the buffet. “During pancake acquisition.”
“That’s not a meeting.”
“We discussed penalty minutes over hash browns. It was collaborative.”
Across the table, Talia watches me, with the expression of someone who’s certain about what she's looking at, then says into her coffee, “Good morning to Toni specifically.” Toni kicks her under the table. She barely reacts.
I glance between them. “Was that team bonding or violence?”
“Yes,” Talia says.
Anthony drops into the remaining chair, holding approximately twelve mini-muffins. “Nobody panic,” he says. “I saved the blueberry.”
“From what?” Talia asks.
“Other people.”
Fuze appears behind us, carrying another plate. Another. Plate.
“Are you stocking up for winter?” Toni asks.
Fuze sits heavily. “Training table rules.”
“That’s four croissants.”
“These are emotional support croissants.”
Talia is openly crying and laughing now. And to my surprise, Toni is too. Small at first. Then real. I’m caught off guard by it. The smile gradually softens into a warmer, more intimate expression. My heart beats faster. “Oh no,” Talia whispers. “That look again.”
“What look?”
“The one where you forget you’re trying not to fall in love with him.”
Toni drops her forehead into her hand. My soul departs from my physical body. Across the table, Lucas nearly inhales coffee wrong, trying not to laugh. Which becomes significantly worse when Talia reaches over automatically and pats his back twice without thinking. Lucas goes completely still.
Fuze notices instantly. “Oh my God,” he breathes.
“No,” Trey says immediately, sensing danger. Too late.
Fuze points dramatically between Lucas and Talia. “ANOTHER ONE.”
The entire table erupts. Talia chokes on coffee. Lucas looks delighted. Anthony is filming now because of course he is.
“I hate this team,” Trey mutters.
“No you don’t,” Toni says affectionately.
And the horrifying part is: she’s right.