Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Max Stevens
The first thing I notice is the silence on Friday morning.
Locker rooms aren’t silent. Ever. There’s always noise—tape ripping, music blasting, Fuze running his mouth like it’s a full-time job.
Even after a loss, there’s sound. Controlled, low, but there.
Today? Nothing. I push the door open, bag slung over my shoulder, and the room shifts.
I see the way conversations cut off mid-sentence, the way heads turn and then don’t turn fast enough away.
Fuze is the worst liar on the team. He’s staring at his phone like it personally offended him.
“Morning,” I say, dropping my bag onto the bench. No one answers. That’s when I know. “Alright,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair. “Who died?”
Anthony struggles to suppress a laugh. Trey doesn’t laugh. He is already three steps ahead of whatever this is. “Check your phone,” Trey says.
I don’t like the way he says it. I pull my phone out of my pocket. Notifications stack on the screen. Texts. Mentions. Missed calls. My stomach drops before I even open anything. The first thing I tap is the team group chat.
The caption Fuze wrote is:
Fuze: east dock activities
and the team response is exactly what I expect.
Trey: oh no
Knox: Is that a towel?
Mac: He’s wearing the socks
Dude: LMAOOOO THE SOCKS
Amusement and dread in equal measure. It's funny right up until it isn't.
Fuze: brO
Fuze: I DIDN’T POST IT I SWEAR
Fuze: okay I posted it in the group but NOT online
Fuze: I think someone screenshotted it
Fuze: this is not my fault (it might be a little my fault)
I swipe out. Open Instagram. And there it is.
The photo. Me in a towel. Skate socks. Standing too close to Toni.
Her blazer slightly open from the wind. Hair pulled loose around her face.
Looking up at me like— fuck. Like that. Like she forgot the world existed for half a second.
And I’m looking at her like I never wanted it to come back.
The caption:
“NHL Trainer Gets Cozy with League’s Biggest Problem Child ”
Comments flood underneath:
“Isn’t that the ref trainer???”
“Conflict of interest much?”
“LMAO Stevens finally scoring somewhere”
“That’s NOT a good look for the league”
“Her dad is gonna LOSE IT”
"She probably slept her way into that job anyway lol"
I read that last one twice. My jaw locks so hard that it aches. It’s not funny at all. This isn’t locker-room shit. This is her job. I put my phone face-down on the bench. Pick it up again. Put it down.
“Max,” Trey says, low. “You need to get ahead of this.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s not the point.” His captain’s expression is on.
“How bad?” I hand him the phone. He reads. His expression tightens by a degree. He returns the phone. “How much of that photo is what it looks like?”
“We were locked out.”
“I know that. How much of it is what it looks like?”
I hold his gaze. He holds mine. “All of it,” I say.
“Of course.” He shakes his head. Runs a hand over his neck. “Her job?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Across the room, Mac mutters, “Man, she’s screwed.”
I turn so fast that the bench creaks under my weight. “Watch your mouth.”
He lifts his hands. “I didn’t mean—”
“Then don’t say it.” Silence drops again. Not tense this time. Careful. Like everyone suddenly remembers this isn’t a joke. Because it’s not.
“Max.” Trey is still in the doorway. “Her father?”
I look at the comment. Her dad is gonna LOSE IT. Frank Amato whose opinion lives in Toni's spine like a load-bearing wall. “He doesn’t know about us,” I say. “He doesn’t know about any of it.”
Trey absorbs this. “She’s going to try to handle it alone.”
“I’m not sure what she’s thinking.”
“Are you going to let her?”
I stand. The skate laces are done. The question hangs there, and the answer is so clear it doesn’t require a second of consideration. “No.”
I find her in the film room which is the smallest, most controlled space available, footage running on mute.
The door is half-open. I push through it.
She is standing at the monitor, facing away, tablet in one hand.
Her phone is screen-down on the table. Her shoulders carry every pound of what has happened this morning, and she has not moved them an inch lower.
“Toni.” She doesn’t turn right away. That hits harder than anything online. When she does, her expression is controlled. Professional. Clean. “I’ve seen it,” I say.
“Close the door.” Her voice is level. The professional register, fully engaged.
I close the door.
“Damian Price’s office called at six fifty-eight.
” She turns. Her face gives nothing away.
Her eyes give everything. “My supervisor called at seven-oh-two. The league’s communications team is aware.
” She sets the tablet on the table. “The photo has been taken down from the original account, but it has been screenshotted and reposted forty-seven times as of seven minutes ago.
I read the comments before I turned my phone face-down.
Most of them I expected. One of them I'm still carrying.
Four hundred thousand people and one anonymous account and eleven words, and I've been standing in this film room for forty minutes trying to decide whether I believe them.
I don't.
But I heard them. That's the part I can't file.”
“Toni, that picture—”
“Is accurate.”
I blink. “That’s not what I—”
“We were on the service dock,” she continues, voice even. “During a fire alarm. You were underdressed. I was not.”
“Underdressed?” I huff out a short laugh. “That’s what you’re going with?”
Her eyes flick to mine, sharp. “I’m going with facts.”
“Here’s another fact,” I step closer, lowering my voice. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Her breath stutters. Small. Fast. Gone. “Yes,” she says. “We did.” That lands. Hard.
“What?”
Her grip tightens on the clipboard. “I allowed a situation that can be interpreted as unprofessional.”
“Interpreted?” My voice drops. “Toni—”
“Don’t.” The word cuts. “I need to know,” she says, “whether the photo was taken without your knowledge.”
“Fuze had his phone out. I saw it. I didn’t stop him.”
Her expression is doubtful. She contains it. “Right.”
“I didn’t think it would leave the team chat.”
“That was na?ve.”
“Yes. It was.” I drag a hand through my hair.
She picks up the iPad. Sets it down again.
Her hands are steady, but she is making them steady, and I can see the work of it.
“My supervisor wants a call at nine. Damian Price wants a call at nine-fifteen.” She pauses.
“The league’s ethics review process for conduct officers involves an assessment of any relationship, real or perceived, between the officer and the assigned player.
If an evaluator deems a relationship to compromise the integrity of the compliance program… ” she stops.
“They’ll pull you from the assignment,” I say.
“They pull me from the assignment.” A beat. “Or from the league.”
The room is noiseless. The monitor runs footage on mute.
I watch her stand in the blue light, in the gray morning, holding herself with the particular stillness of a woman who spent years making sure she had no weak points.
Someone found one this morning and put it on the internet.
“What happened on the dock, and last night,” I say. “Was real.”
“I know that.”
“It was also private.”
“I know that, too.” Her chin lifts. “The problem isn’t what it was. The problem is what four hundred thousand people have decided it was.”
“Then we correct it.”
“You can’t correct a screenshot, Max.”
“You can correct the record. The door locked behind us. Dave can confirm we were on the dock for twenty minutes. The alarm is logged by facilities.” I step closer. “We tell the truth about the dock.”
“The truth,” she says, “is that I was on a service dock with my assigned player in a compromising photograph, and I have been meeting with him outside of scheduled sessions, and I—“ She stops. Her entire face locks down. “The truth is complicated.”
“The truth is that I was in a towel because a fire alarm doesn’t wait for clothing.” I hold her gaze. “A conversation unfolded on the dock. And that I was holding your hand because you were cold.”
She stares at me. The words are true. They are also insufficient for what they were, and we both know it. “That’s not the whole truth,” she says.
“No,” I agree. “But it’s the truth that belongs to the league. What’s left is ours.”
“You can’t protect me from this,” she says.
“I’m not trying to protect you.” I stop close enough that I can see the careful way she’s breathing. “You can handle this. You’ve been handling things alone since the morning you strode into our locker room.” I hold her gaze. “I’m trying to be in it with you. There’s a difference.”
She goes completely still. “Toni.” My voice drops. “Let me be in it.” Her phone lights up on the table. The screen displays the name, which we both notice. Dad. The world contracts.
Her face has never done this before. Every layer comes apart at once. For two seconds, I see her younger, scared self.
She picks up the phone, looks at it, and then sets the screen to “Do Not Disturb.”
“You should answer,” I say.
“I will.” She doesn’t move. “In a minute.”
“He’s going to call again.”
“I— “She stops. Her thumb presses against the case. “He doesn’t know,” she says. “About Rockford. About any of it. He assigned me to this facility. He thought it was a straightforward compliance post.” A pause. “He trusted me.”
I say nothing. Because there is nothing to say to that sentence that won’t land wrong.
“He has spent an entire career building a reputation in this league,” she says.
“For three decades, every call placed correctly. Every player, every game, every situation. Defensible. Clean.” She closes her eyes briefly.
“And his daughter’s photo is on the internet with a caption about his biggest problem child. ”
His biggest problem child.
“Answer it,” I say.
She picks up the phone and looks at my face. “Max.”
“I’ll be outside.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll be outside.” For one second, our gaze is locked. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She accepts this. Her thumb hits the green button, and she lifts the phone to her ear. Her voice, when she says Dad, is so controlled it costs her everything.
I pull the door closed behind me.
The corridor is empty. I sit on the floor against the wall outside the film room with my forearms on my knees and the sounds of the surrounding facility. The ice resurfacer running, sticks rattling, the PA doing its morning check. The team warms up somewhere within those walls.
Fourteen minutes.
The door opens. Her footsteps. She stops when she finds me on the floor.
I tip my head up.
She is controlled again. The wall is reconstructed.
Her eyes are dry and her posture carries nothing visible.
Her left shoulder, accustomed to carrying weight she refuses to set down, remains high and tight.
This is a testament to her early learning that putting it down meant someone else would decide its resting place.
“Well?” I ask.
“He’s coming,” she says.
“Here?”
“Tonight.” A pause. “He’s officiating the home game. He was always officiating it. I didn’t—“she stops. “I didn’t flag it as a conflict because it wasn’t one. He officiates this division. It’s standard rotation.”
Frank Amato. Here. Tonight. “Okay,” I say.
“He wants to see me before the game.” Her voice is even. “He wants to discuss the photograph and what he called the appearance of impropriety and what he called my judgment and what he — “She stops again. The pause is longer this time. “He was calm,” she says. “He’s always calm.”
I stand. She is two feet from me and carrying weight I can’t take from her. I am aware of this, and I stay where I am. “What do you need from me tonight?”
She considers the question with the seriousness it deserves. “To play a clean game,” she says. “I need you to give him nothing.”
“Done.”
“I mean it, Max. No penalties. No fights. No escalation. Nothing he can point to.”
“I understand.”
“Because if you give him something tonight, he will use it, and he will be right to.” Her eyes are direct. “He has spent an entire career being right. I need him to have nothing tonight.”
“He’ll have nothing,” I say. “I promise.”
She studies my face. Whatever she finds, she accepts. One quick nod. She moves past me down the corridor.
“Toni.” She stops. “For the record,” I say. “What happened on the dock and last night?”
She turns.
“It was worth it,” I say. “All of it. Whatever tonight looks like. Worth it.”
Her throat moves. The wall holds. Her eyes don’t.
She turns and walks away, and I watch her go. My chest aches with the profound helplessness of a man who has vowed to give someone nothing tonight, yet every instinct he has says give her everything.
I see Frank Amato for the first time at four fifty-three p.m. He comes through the facility entrance in his street clothes.
A charcoal coat, collared shirt, the unhurried stride of a man who has entered more arenas than he can count and has never once been uncertain of his standing in any of them.
Tall. Her height lives in him, I clock it immediately. Facial features too.
He is exactly what she described, moving through the lobby without registering the plaques or the trophy cases, or the championship banners. He finds what he is looking for at the far end of the corridor.
Toni.
She is waiting for him. Blazer. Badge. Hair up. Each layer of her professionalism present and load-bearing. She crosses toward him; he opens his arms, and she embraces him, her spine still straight even in his arms. He whispers into her hair. She pulls back.
He looks up.
He finds me across the lobby with the precision of a man who has been watching players his entire professional life and does not require a long look to form a complete opinion.
Frank Amato looks at me. He doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Doesn’t change his expression. Doesn’t signal anything to the room. He holds my gaze for three seconds with the particular quality of a referee who has already made the call and is informing me of it.
He looks at his daughter. Puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her toward the administrative corridor.
She glances at me, one look, too fast, too much, disappearing immediately.
Because looking at me is the one thing that costs her emotions she can’t afford to spend in this hallway right now. I understand why.
I watch her walk beside her father with her posture guarded, head up, every inch of her the thing she built herself into after Rockford and before this morning. I watch until the corridor door closes behind them.
The lobby is exactly as it was. Equipment rolling past. Staff on radios. The normal machinery of a game day.
Whatever it costs. She is worth it.
Once the game is over, the calls are accurate, and Amato has no grounds for complaint, I will make that point in a manner that requires no visual aid, caption, or interpretation.
Tonight, I play clean.