Chapter 5 - Cass
Cass
The hall outside the Surge locker room buzzed with leftover adrenaline and victory. Even with the final whistle blown over an hour ago, the echo of celebration still lingered. Shouts, stick taps, and good-natured ribbing chased its way up the cinder block walls around me.
I stayed just outside the line of sight, a towel slung over my shoulder, earbuds in but silent. I’d finished my shift a few minutes ago and should’ve been out the door already, but I caught my dad’s voice from inside and couldn’t help myself.
“This is it, boys,” he was saying, his voice full of that intensity he usually saved for third periods and broken penalty kills. “I don’t give a damn about last season. That’s done. Over. You want to lift that Cup? It starts with Los Angeles.”
There was a shuffle of gear, a few muttered affirmatives.
“The games leading up to the playoffs decide home-ice advantage, and we want it. Do you want it?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin with the roar that burst out of the locker room.
“That’s what I thought,” my dad went on. “But I need every single one of you dialed in. That means on the ice and off it.” I felt like he’d added that specifically for Grayson. “No distractions. No attitude. You wear this jersey, you show up. Every. Damn. Day.”
Silence followed.
The good kind. The kind that told me they were hanging onto his every word.
“Captain, get them through travel protocols. Tucker, I want you on room designations.” There was an emphatic ‘Sir, yes, sir’ before my dad continued, “And can someone please remind Calder this isn’t peewee anymore?”
Laughter broke out, and I could just imagine how Mason must’ve been feeling.
“Your stick’s not gonna carry you if your brain’s still back in high school.” My dad had singled him out even more, which made it worse.
“My brain’s here, Coach.” Mason sounded disheartened but determined.
It was all I needed to hear. They were wrapping up, and I quickly slipped away before someone noticed me hanging around. Especially Dad.
My boots squeaked faintly on the polished concrete as I ducked around the corner, and made for the east side of the arena.
Carter, the concessions worker who had an annoying crush on me, appeared out of nowhere.
He was in a hurry, and almost crashed into me with his balancing tower of half-crushed popcorn bags and a tub of luminescent orange nacho cheese.
“Whoa! Don’t you know it’s bad luck to spill the sacred snack sauce?” he said with a goofy grin.
“It’ll be better than actually eating it,” I muttered, sidestepping the nuclear cheese. “They use that to strip the paint in here when they run out of the other stuff.”
He gave me a hardened look of sympathy. “The sooner you embrace the institution of gourmet processed food, the happier you’ll be.”
“The only thing I’ll be embracing is violent food poisoning.”
He laughed, then gestured toward the empty rink. “You up for a partner tonight?”
“Why? Is Keanu Reeves here?”
Somehow, with his arms full, he managed to dip a pinky finger into the ghastly sauce and make direct eye contact with me as he sucked it off. Slowly.
I couldn’t drag my eyes from it. As it was happening, I knew I’d just unlocked new nightmare fuel, but I could not look away.
“I know you keep shooting me down because you’re afraid you’ll fall in love with me on the ice. Afraid you can’t handle all of this.”
I flipped him off without looking back, but I was smiling. I would never date Carter in a billion years, but we had one thing in common: we were both peons in the arena, doing everyone else’s bidding.
The place was quiet now. Everyone had either gone home or was about to. I took the long way around, past the equipment cages and empty water bottle bins, until the hallway opened up into the main rink.
The lights were dimmed but not out. Enough to see the ice glinting under the overheads. Enough to feel like the world had narrowed to just me and the sound of my blades carving into the frozen ground.
I pulled my gloves tighter, stepped through the rink door, and let the familiar cold wrap around me like armor.
My dad was proud of me, and encouraged me in everything I wanted to do.
But I knew he would’ve been prouder and more encouraging if I’d turned out to be a pro skater.
It was one of those things we accepted and never spoke about, but the faint ghost of it lingered in the background of our conversations.
Which is why he didn’t know I did this from time to time. I think a part of me was scared he might take my love of skating as something else, and I didn’t have the heart to crush his dreams twice.
This wasn’t about practice, or exercise. This time was mine.
Skating late at night, when everything was still… It was the one time I felt most like myself in this place filled with testosterone and pressure and noise. No one to impress, and no name to live up to. Just the sound of my breath and my blades scraping the ice.
I pushed off, letting the chill kiss my cheeks as I crossed from one end of the rink to the other. The boards blurred past me, the ice beneath my skates smooth and ready.
My dad’s pep talk to the team wasn’t just a coaching note. It was a warning. He didn’t want anything standing between his players and the cup, especially after what happened last season.
If he ever found out about the way Mason had been hanging around me, and the way he’d been looking at me…
It wasn’t fair. I didn’t want him to look at me that way, but I liked it. A lot.
I coasted into a slow loop, bending low into a turn. Then stopped cold when I spotted movement from the corner of my eye. Just a silhouette at first, near the side entrance, half-shrouded in shadow.
I straightened up fast, heart kicking into overdrive.
The devil himself.
He leaned one shoulder against the glass, freshly showered in a pair of gray sweats and plain white t-shirt. The look on his face gave no sign about what just went down in that locker room. Instead, he looked… happy to see me.
“Jesus,” I breathed, instinctively skating back a few paces. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”
He didn’t move. Just gave that slow, crooked grin that made it feel like the air was being sucked out of my lungs all at once.
How could a guy look so effortlessly gorgeous?
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “Was just on my way out and thought I heard skates.”
My pulse was rattling, but I did my best to play it cool. “You’re not supposed to be here. Early flight tomorrow.”
“Says the girl doing pirouettes in the dark.”
“They’re called crossovers,” I muttered, although I knew he was just teasing.
“Looked like pirouettes.”
“Looks like someone with terrible taste in music shouldn’t be judging.”
He laughed under his breath, and the sound fluttered through the cold air.
I hated how warm it made me feel.
“Is there room for one more?” He was already taking his skates out of his bag.
I skated up to stop him. Everything about this was a bad idea.
“Coach hates it when the team skips rest hours,” I said.
And Mason’s response was to boot up and break onto the ice as if he weren’t flirting with disaster. In more than one form. I stood there, hands on hips, watching him carve long, easy strokes down the length of the rink.
“Show-off.” I glided toward center ice.
He spun at the far end and came coasting back toward me backwards. Backwards.
“This? This is my basic skill level.” His grin flashed like he knew exactly the kind of chaos he was inviting.
My eyes narrowed. “On account of you being out past your bedtime?”
Mason skated a few quick circles around me. “Oh, I’m wide awake, Firestarter. Must be all the post-match adrenaline.”
“I think you just like breaking rules.”
He skidded to stop right in front of me, one hand on my waist as ice went flying. “And I think you like it when I do.”
Cocky. But unfortunately, not wrong.
I tried not to play into it, but a smile crept onto my lips anyway. He was barely touching me, but the warmth seeped through my jacket as though he was made of pure lava.
“Big talk for a guy who almost ate it in slap shot drills.”
He winced, skating back on shaky legs, hands clutching his heart. “That was a low blow.”
“I call it like I see it,” I said with a shrug, and pushed off to follow after him.
He reached down mid-stride and adjusted one of his laces. “Okay, then, let’s see what you’ve got.”
I slowed to a near stop. “What do you mean?”
“I’m saying—” He gestured grandly across the open ice. “Skate-off. You and me. Show me what you’ve got.”
“Is this because I won the first point at practice? Because you’re a pro, and I work in a basement. That’s hardly fuel for a skate-off.”
But he wasn’t about to budge. “I know ice, and I know people on ice. You look like someone who can hold her own. Come on, Firestarter. Dazzle me.”
I rolled my eyes, but accepted the challenge anyway, picking up speed as I made a clean circle around the neutral zone. His gaze followed every movement. I hadn’t skated like this in months. Even when I was alone at the rink, it always felt like someone might see.
It was funny then, that Mason watching didn’t make me feel judged. Just seen.
When I looped around and came to a slow stop beside him, he gave a long, appreciative nod.
“You’ve got form,” he said. “And guts.”
“Guts, huh?”
“Not everyone would take on a challenge with a Surge player.” He started drifting backward again, and I skated alongside him.
“Yeah, well, it’s easier when said Surge player has an overblown ego that needs checking.”
He laughed out loud, the sound ricocheting off the cold rafters. “You think you know me.”
“You’re just easy to read,” I shot back, nudging his shin with the toe of my blade. “All that overtraining, the stunts on ice… You’re a flashing neon sign.”
“Yeah?” He skated closer, enough that I could see the little wrinkle near his eyes, and the mischief dancing in those deep pools of blue. “What’s my sign say?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Trying too hard.”