21. The Grind #2
She’s taping her stick.
The pattern is always the same: black tape, precise tension, measured wraps from heel to toe. Superstition disguised as discipline. She does it when she’s processing. When her hands need something to do while her brain works through whatever she’s not ready to say out loud.
I find her because I always find her. Because my body has developed a tracking system for Emma with a precision that would be useful if I were a search-and-rescue dog. Also deeply inconvenient since I’m a Division I coach who’s supposed to keep his hands to himself.
The hallway behind me is quiet. The team’s focused on pre-game routines.
Thirty seconds. Maybe less.
I cross the room. My hand finds her jaw, tilting her face up, and I kiss her. It's quick, firm. A punctuation mark rather than a sentence.
Her mouth curves against mine. She tastes like Gatorade and strawberry chapstick and the addictive combination of adrenaline and want that I’ve been sampling for two weeks via Facetime calls and these thirty second windows.
It’s not even close to enough.
“Be incredible out there, baby,” I murmur, forehead against hers.
“Even if my backchecking is—”
“Your backchecking is the best it’s been all season and you know it. Walsh is going to lose her mind Sunday.”
“Is that your professional assessment?”
“It’s my honest assessment. Take it however you want.”
“I want to take it against the wall. Mrs. Patterson’s probably wondering what happened to all that late night furniture arrangement.”
I’m laughing. In the equipment room. Forehead still touching hers. Until a voice comes from the hallway.
“Cole, you still in there? I'm looking for Coach. Have you seen him?”
Becca.
The laugh dies. I step back like a man who’s practiced this maneuver in his head approximately three hundred times. Emma picks up her stick. Begins taping as if she’s been doing it this whole time and was not just kissing her coach.
Becca appears in the doorway.
She looks at me. Looks at Emma. Looks at the perfectly appropriate four feet between us.
Something registers behind her eyes. The intake, the filing away for future reference. Becca Martinez doesn’t react to things. She collects them. Builds a picture slowly, methodically, with the same patient intelligence she brings to reading plays from the blue line.
“Coach.” Her voice gives away nothing. “Wanted to discuss the penalty kill rotation when you have a minute.”
“Now works.” I’m already moving toward the door because staying in this room with Emma and Becca’s quiet perception feels like standing between two different kinds of fire.
I follow Becca down the hallway. She doesn’t look back. Doesn’t comment. Doesn’t do anything except walk with the steady, unhurried pace of a senior captain who sees everything and says precisely as much as she intends to.
We win the game 5-2.
Day 17. Two days before the evaluation. 11:17 PM.
My office. Film on the laptop. The same footage I’ve reviewed nineteen times in the last two weeks, frame by frame, searching for any edge, any detail, any micro-adjustment that might give the team an advantage. That might give Emma and Sloane something unique to show Jennifer Walsh.
My phone goes off and nearly gives me a heart attack.
Emma
Can't sleep
Of course she can’t. I haven’t slept for days.
I don’t text back.
I call.
“Hey.” Her voice is quiet, thoughtful.
“Hey.”
“I keep thinking about what comes after.” Not the game. After . “After the season. After the evaluation. After I’m not yours anymore.”
The sentence stops my breathing. We’ve been circling this for seventeen days, both of us aware that the path we’re on has an endpoint that’s also a beginning.
It’s the phrasing. After I’m not yours anymore.
Like being mine is a temporary state. Like it has an expiration date printed somewhere I haven’t read.
“I’ve already told you, you always be mine, Em. As long as you want to be.” The words come out honest. “The job title’s the only thing that changes.”
She’s quiet. I listen to her breathe. Imagine her in my old room, lying in my old bed, probably wearing my shirt.
“I want a day,” she says finally. “Tomorrow. Before the game. Just us. No hockey. No practice. No film. Just you and me being normal people who are allowed to hold hands in public.”
I should say no. The smart move is rest, preparation, routine. The responsible coach would recommend sleep, hydration, a light stretch, and visualization exercises.
The responsible coach would also not be sleeping with his starting left winger, so we’re well past that particular moral checkpoint.
“I’ll pick you up at ten.” The decision leaves my mouth before the responsible part of my brain can intervene. “Wear warm clothes.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. ”
“Luke Anderson, if this is some kind of team-building exercise disguised as a date—”
“It’s not.”
“Because if you pull out a whiteboard at any point—”
“No whiteboards.”
“Or a clipboard—”
“Emma.”
“Or say the words ‘neutral zone transition’—”
“You like it when I say those words.”
“Sometimes.” I can hear her smiling. Can hear the shift from thoughtful to something lighter, the way she tilts toward joy when she’s given permission to stop being serious. “But not tomorrow.”
“Okay, no hockey.”
“That’s going to be hard for you.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You say that, but within thirty minutes you’ll be analyzing my walking stride for biomechanical inefficiencies.”
“Your walking stride is biomechanically inefficient. You pronate on your left foot.”
“Who uses the word pronate? I don’t even know what it means.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that tomorrow, I’m hockey-free.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Thought you trusted me, Em.”
“I do.”
“Good.” This time it’s me smiling. “Get some sleep, baby.”
“You first.”
“Not likely.”
“Then stay on for a minute. Just... be here. You don’t have to talk.”
I stay. Listen to her breathe. The rhythm slowing, steadying, the body surrendering to sleep the way it did in my truck that night in December—with the full, unconscious belief she’s safe.
I listen until her breathing goes deep and even. Until I’m sure she’s asleep.
Then I whisper something I’ve never said to a sleeping person before. Something that’s too honest for daylight and too important for silence.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life earning you, Em. Every day. I promise.”
I hang up. Set the phone down. Stare at the ceiling for a long time.
Tomorrow I’m going to take Emma sledding.
The day after, she’ll play the most important game of her life.
In four months, she might leave for nine.
And I’ll be here. Waiting. Coaching. Building something worth coming home to.
Becoming a man deserving of the woman who didn’t give up on him when she had every reason to.