15. Overtime
Chapter fifteen
Overtime
Luke
D ecember in New York means the Lincoln Tunnel is a parking lot and the Turnpike is an exercise in patience that I do not currently possess.
Emma’s in the passenger seat with her shoes off and her feet tucked underneath her. And instead of talking about the current humming from that corridor at BC, from the last time we were in my truck, we talk what we always do: hockey.
“Sienna thinks Okafor is just the beginning,” Emma says, staring out the windshield at the river of red brake lights ahead of us. “Thinks the Olympic committee is waiting until after the holiday. Said they need to finalize the list of returning players first.”
“She knows the details better than I do.”
“She knows everything. It’s mildly infuriating.” A pause. “Luke, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, Em. What’s up?”
“The film packages. The ones you sent. When did you start putting them together?”
I could lie. Could say October, November, some reasonable date that corresponds to when a normal coach might begin advocating for exceptional players. The truth is less defensible.
“August. ”
She turns to look at me. “August.”
“The week after I found out you’d transferred. Before we even started practice.”
“That’s... You weren’t even technically my coach then.”
“I’ve watched you play since you were fifteen. I didn’t need to be your coach to know what you were capable of.”
“But you barely came to any of my BC games.”
“Still watched them all.”
The truck is quiet except for the rumble of the engine and the distant honking of New York drivers who believe the horn is a problem-solving device.
“All of them?” Her voice is different now. Stripped of the playful edge.
“Every single one.”
“Luke—”
“It started as supporting you. Checking in. Making sure you were okay.” I keep my eyes on the road because looking at her right now would be catastrophic.
“Then it became habit. Then it became… I don’t know.
The highlight of my weekend. Watching you dominate from a studio apartment in Chicago while telling myself it was just keeping up with the family. ”
“Keeping up with the family?”
“I’m aware of how that sounds.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told you. Occasionally.”
On the phone calls that got less and less frequent the longer she was at BC. The more I tried to distance the want I was feeling that never quite went away.
She’s quiet. I can feel her gaze on the side of my face like pressure on a wound that needs to be cleaned before it can heal.
“Why?” she asks finally. “Not why’d you watch. Why’d you spend so much time on the scouting package?”
Another truth I owe her.
I grip the wheel at ten and two, force myself to breathe.
“Because I wanted you to have every opportunity I didn’t. Wanted someone to see what I see when I watch you play. Wanted—” The word catches. “Wanted to give you something, since I couldn’t give you the thing you actually wanted.”
“The thing I actually wanted,” she repeats. “Past tense?”
“You know what I mean. ”
“I want to hear you say it.”
The traffic loosens as we merge onto I-95. The city falls behind, replaced by the dark stretch of highway that leads back to campus, to the real world, to the jobs and roles and rules that are supposed to matter more than whatever is happening in this truck right now.
“I couldn’t be with you,” I say, each word measured. “The coaching dynamic, now. Grayson, then. Life. Me . So I did the thing I could do. I built a path toward your future, because I couldn’t… I wasn’t going to be part of ruining it.”
“You think being with me would ruin my future?”
“I think a scandal involving a coach and a player would. I think the narrative would eat you alive. ‘Player sleeps with coach, gets preferential treatment, career is product of favoritism instead of talent.’ I can’t do that to you.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“Maybe not. But the film packages were.”
She turns away. Faces the windshield. I watch her profile in my peripheral, notice the set of her jaw, the way she’s processing, the almost imperceptible tremor in her lower lip that tells me she’s feeling more than she wants to show.
“What about your future?” she asks. “Sienna mentioned your contract’s up in May.”
“One-year deal. Calloway and I agreed to reassess after the inaugural season.”
“And? With a 15-2-3 record and a conference lead? You think they’re going to let you walk?”
“I think nothing’s guaranteed.”
She shifts in her seat, angling toward me. “You built a nationally ranked program in four months. Built a team. You belong at Silver Pine. Everyone knows it except apparently you.”
“The board might want someone with more experience—”
“The board would be insane to replace you. And even if they tried, Calloway would fight it. Addison would fight it. The team would riot.” A pause. “I would riot.”
“Violently?”
“Extremely violently. There would be property damage.”
I flash a smile. But there’s something building in my chest that’s bigger than amusement, bigger than the comfortable banter we default to when the real conversation gets too heavy. It’s the realization—landing slowly, then all at once—that she’s not just talking about coaching.
She’s talking about staying. About a future where I’m at Silver Pine beyond May. Where she’s on a trajectory toward the PWHL or the Olympics. Where the coaching relationship has an endpoint, and beyond that endpoint is a question neither of us has fully articulated:
What happens when I’m not your coach anymore?
The highway stretches ahead. Dark. Quiet. The kind of road that invites honesty because there’s nothing to distract from it.
“Can I ask you something?” My turn for questions.
“I believe that’ll make us even.”
“Were you nervous that transferring might take away your dream of playing hockey professionally?”
She’s quiet for long enough that I glance over. She’s still staring forward. Then finally, “Yes and no. I thought it would be one year. A new team. Allow people to see how good I actually am when I stop being afraid of finding out.”
She finally glances my way. Our eyes meet for less than a second before I have to turn back to the road. “I’ve been hiding behind ‘good enough’ my whole career. Good enough in high school. For BC. Never actually testing whether I’m good enough for everything . Because if I try and fail—”
“You won’t fail.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve watched you play for seven years, Emma. I compiled forty hours of footage proving exactly how good you are. I know .”
She swallows. Hard. In the green glow of the dashboard, I can see the shine in her eyes that she’s trying to blink away.
“What else?” I ask. Because there’s more. I can feel it.
“I want...” She stops. Starts again. “I want to stop being the girl who makes decisions based on what she’s running from.
BC was running. Every guy I’ve ever dated was running.
Even coming to Silver Pine… I can admit now that part of it was running.
From Drew. From what happened. From feeling like I’d failed at something. ”
“You didn’t fail at BC.”
“I failed at being happy there. And I told myself that was BC’s fault, or Drew’s fault, or the team’s fault. But some of it was mine. Because I was using hockey as a substitute for—”
She stops but I hear the word anyway.
For me.
For not getting me and the hockey.
“Emma.”
“I want you.” She says it without looking at me.
Says it to the windshield, to the night, to the road that’s carrying us back to real life.
“I’ve wanted you since I was fifteen years old and you stayed up to talk to me after that game I scored five goals in like I wasn't some naive high schooler. I’ve wanted you through every holiday and every phone call and every guy who wasn’t you and every time you pulled away because you thought you were protecting me.
I want you, Luke. Not as my coach. Not as my brother’s friend.
Not as the guy who sends scouting packages and keeps his distance and tells himself he’s being noble.
” Her voice breaks. Just slightly. Just enough.
“I want you . And I’m so tired of pretending I don’t. ”
I pull the truck onto the shoulder.
Not with screeching tires or a swerve. Just a calm, deliberate deceleration that belies the absolute detonation happening inside my chest.
The engine idles. The hazard lights tick. Orange, dark, orange, dark. Mirroring those blinking lights from Christmas.
“What are you doing?” Emma asks, and her voice has a tremor in it that I’ve never heard from her.
“I can’t be driving for this conversation.”
“For what conversation?”
I turn to face her. Full body. The seatbelt cuts across my chest and I unbuckle it because I need…
I need to be able to move. To breathe. To exist in this moment without restraint, even the mechanical kind.
“I need to say something and I need you to let me finish before you respond. Can you do that?”
She nods. Her eyes are wide. Dark in the dim light. Scared. And Emma Cole is almost never scared.
“I have wanted you ,” I start, and every word feels like it’s being extracted from somewhere deep enough to require surgery, “since you called me during the worst night of my life and told me I wasn’t broken.
I didn’t know what it was then. Didn’t have a name for it.
Just knew that your voice was the only thing that made the panic stop, and that scared the hell out of me because you were sixteen—”
“Seventeen.”
“I said let me finish.”
She presses her lips together. Gives me a small smile. Nods again .
“Just turned seventeen. And my best friend’s sister.
And I’d made a promise—to Grayson, to myself—that I’d never look at you like that.
And I kept that promise for years. Through every holiday at your mom’s house.
Through every phone call. Through watching you grow into this incredible, terrifying, beautiful person who could life me up when nobody else could. ”