Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Toni Amato
I watch my father work.
That’s the thing about having a referee for a dad. You learn to watch the official. The positioning. The sight lines. The two-second pause before the arm goes up.
He’s perfect tonight. He always is.
And Max— Max gives him nothing.
I track it from the press box. Every flash point. Every moment the old Max would have gone. The late hit in the first. The corner play in the second. Briggs running Knox in the third. Each time my chest compresses and each time Max reads it, positions, draws the call, skates away.
He’s doing it on purpose. Not to perform.
He told me it was worth it whatever tonight looked like, and he is making it look like this.
Like a man who has decided what he wants to be and is being it in front of the one person whose opinion costs me the most. When Trey scores on the power play I close my eyes for two seconds. Just two. Then I go back to work.
The arena empties slowly after a loss.
Not all at once. In layers.
Fans pour out first, jerseys disappearing into the Chicago night beyond the glass doors. Staff follows after. Production crews. Security. Trainers rolling equipment cases through the tunnels. The noise drains gradually from the building until the entire arena feels like one giant exhale.
When I walk into the media room, Fuze is asleep on the floor, using resistance bands as a blanket. Talia editing video calmly beside him.
“He lives here now?” I ask.
Talia shrugs.
“Post-loss behavior.”
Without opening his eyes, Fuze says, “The floor understands me.”
Sometimes I question if I accidentally joined a circus.
My father finds me in the corridor afterward. He’s changed out of his officials’ gear, but he carries the stillness everywhere, in and out of the black and white. He stops beside me, and we both watch the post-game stream of players and staff moving toward the locker room.
Frank walks beside me through the executive corridor toward the elevators, hands in his coat pockets.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
“I’m tired.”
“You’re thinking.”
Unfortunately, he knows me too well. The game should have eased something in me. Max played sixty disciplined minutes against a team specifically trying to provoke him. No retaliation. Every decision measured.
And the entire time I kept waiting for him to lose it. He never did.
“Stevens,” he says. Not a question.
“Yes,” I say.
“You watched him more than the game,” Dad says casually.
Ice slides straight through my ribs. “I was evaluating player response patterns.”
He makes a subtle sound that means absolutely nothing good.
“Toni.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“Yes,” he says. “That’s what worries me.”
Then Frank says knowingly, “He kept looking for you.”
I stare straight ahead. “He’s emotionally reactive where you’re concerned,” he continues. “That’s dangerous for both of you.”
“He played clean hockey.”
“He played for you.”
The words hit me. A dark part of me already understands what he’s implying. The elevator arrives with a muted ding. We step inside alone. For a moment, neither of us speaks while the doors slide shut and the car descends through the levels beneath the arena.
My father is still for a moment. “Four penalty situations tonight. Two of them, I was watching him specifically.” I wait. “He made the right call each time.” A pause. “Including the Briggs hit in the third.” He glances at me sideways. “That one wasn’t easy.”
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t.”
He’s thoughtful for a moment. “I pulled the compliance session logs this afternoon. Before the game.” I go very still. “Price sent them with your preliminary review.” He faces forward. “The drill design. The methodology. The decision-tree framework.” He pauses. “That work is yours.”
I don’t trust my voice immediately. “Yes.”
“It shows,” he says simply.
Another silence. Dad always takes the time he needs.
He has never been rushed into a sentence before it was ready.
“I owe you an apology,” he says. I turn to look at him.
“Earlier. In the conference room.” He faces forward again.
“I said a man doesn’t change because a woman asks him to.
” A beat. “That was imprecise.” My father. Apologizing for imprecision.
“Dad—”
“I watched him tonight,” he says. “Whatever changed in that player, it wasn’t because someone asked him to.” He pauses. “It was because he decided to.” The hum of the elevator is muted. “I still have concerns,” he says. “About the optics and your career. What people will decide without asking you.”
“I know.”
“But those are mine to manage.” He looks at me now, directly.
“Not yours.” My shoulders relax a little.
I reach out and put my hand over his on the railing, and he turns his palm and holds it, the way he held my hand at every competition I ever competed in, every graduation, every moment where I needed weight behind me. “He’s twenty-two,” I say.
“You’re twenty-four.” His mouth curves. A small, precise thing. “Approximately the same age I was when I decided I was going to be a referee.” I laugh. It escapes before I can catch it.
Another beat. “Price is recommending you for Western Division lead.” I turn to look at him.
His expression is exactly what it always is — controlled, unhurried, final.
“He called me this afternoon. As a professional courtesy. He wanted to know if I had concerns about the assignment given our relationship.” His mouth makes the small precise curve.
“I told him I had none. That the work spoke for itself.” He holds my gaze for one full second.
“It does, Antonia.” He squeezes my hand once.
Then releases it. Straightens his jacket. The official reassembling.
The doors open to the private garage level. My dad turns toward me before stepping out. His expression eases slightly around the edges. Tired father replacing league official.
“I know you think you can separate yourself from things once they matter too much,” he says gently. “You always have.” A pause. “You can’t be too careful this time, kid.”
Then he kisses my forehead and leaves.
And somehow that’s worse.
Because now I’m standing alone in the concrete silence beneath the arena with my father’s warning lodged directly beneath my sternum and Max Stevens somewhere upstairs still wearing bruises he earned trying to become someone better. I close my eyes briefly. For me.
I turn toward the elevator. The lower training corridor is nearly empty now.
Half the overhead lights already dimmed for overnight maintenance, washing the hallway in pale gold instead of harsh arena white.
My heels echo against the concrete as I walk past the film room toward the equipment area.
I know where he’ll be. The equipment door stands partially open. I stop outside it.
Inside, Max sits alone on the long wooden bench in front of his stall, elbows braced on his knees. Still half in uniform. Compression shirt damp with sweat beneath his pads, hanging loose around his hips. His hair sweaty. Bruise darkening along his jaw from the second-period collision.
He looks emotionally exhausted. Like holding himself together for three straight periods cost him something significant. He glances up at the sound of my heels. The second he sees me, his face changes. Softens. “Hey,” he says mildly. That single word almost undoes me entirely.
I step inside and shut the door behind me. The click echoes. “Toni.”
I cross the room before my brain catches up enough to stop me. Then I’m standing between his knees. He places his hands automatically against my hips. They settle like they belong there.
“You did it,” I whisper.
He looks up at me painstakingly. “Yeah?”
“No penalties.” My voice comes out thinner than intended. “No retaliation. No stupid fights. They kept trying to drag you into it and you didn’t let them.”
His thumbs move once against my coat through the silence. “I told you I could do it.”
“You did.” God. The pride in my voice. Max hears it. His entire expression painfully shifts.“You’re proud of me,” he says smoothly.
I should deny it. I don’t. “Yes.” The word wrecks him. Actually wrecks him. His head drops briefly like he needs a second to recover from hearing it. Suddenly, I grasp a terrifying truth: Nobody says that to him enough, in the meaningful ways.
My fingers slide into his damp hair before I consciously decide to touch him. Max exhales shakily. “Toni,” he says again, rougher this time.
“You trusted yourself tonight.”
His hands tighten on my hips. “No,” he says.
“I trusted you.” The air leaves my lungs.
I kiss him before I can process the damage that sentence just caused.
It’s immediate. Desperate. Relief and restraint colliding.
Max stands so fast the bench slams into the lockers behind him.
Then I’m pressed against his chest, his mouth hot and bruising against mine while his hands frame my face.
Like something that could break if he grips too hard.
“You have any idea,” he mutters between kisses, “what you did to me tonight?” My fingers knot in the front of his shirt.
“You stayed out of the box.”
“That’s not what I mean.” His forehead drops against mine. “I kept hearing your voice every time they tried to bait me.” He laughs once under his breath. Tired. Disbelieving. “Christ, Toni. I nearly smiled at Calloway in the third.”
I actually laugh. Max goes completely still. Because I think he realizes before I do that this might be the first time he’s made me laugh while I’m not fighting it. “That’s the sound,” he hisses.
“What?”
“That sound.” His nose brushes mine. “I’ve been trying to get it back since Rockford.
” That ache again. The unbearable one. I kiss him harder to stop myself from saying something catastrophic.
I pull back. Just far enough. His breath is warm against my mouth and his hands have gone still and he’s watching me with that specific quality of attention he gives things he doesn’t want to miss.
My father's voice is still in the elevator.
You can't be too careful. I know. There is no version of careful that gets me out of this. There never was. Not since Rockford. Not since the morning I looked him up in a library and called it research. It was never research. He was always going to be the one I couldn’t file away.
I close my eyes. Oh God. His hands slide beneath my blazer, flattening against the small of my back.
Pulling me fully against him. The contact sends heat everywhere instantly.
“Oh my God,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “That’s been my experience too.” I’m losing this battle. Rapidly.
Because now he smells like soap and hockey sweat, and underneath all of it is the horrifying reality that being near him feels good in a way my body has apparently decided to classify as essential.
My fingers drift across the bruise along his chin tenderly. “Does this hurt?”
“Not currently.”
“Max.”
“You touching me is affecting my ability to assess pain accurately.”
“That’s a good thing right now, because I need to ask for some time. Any contact between us will have to be strictly professional going forward. I’m sorry.”