23. FINN
Chapter twenty-three
FINN
Imiss the first pass because I’m thinking about Bailey.
Not in a poetic, deep, meaningful, look at the sunrise and reconsider your entire life kind of way.
I’m thinking about Bailey under me in her bed.
Her soft mouth kissing me. Her moans as she comes undone.
Which is why the puck slides clean past my stick during a basic passing drill and smacks into the boards hard enough to make Dylan turn his head.
He stares at me.
I stare back. “What?”
Dylan’s mouth curves. “Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing look.”
“No, that was a you just missed a pass my grandmother could’ve handled look.”
“Your grandmother plays hockey?”
“She has focus.”
Ty skates by with a grin. “O’Malley’s whipped.”
“I’m not whipped.”
Knox collects the puck and sends it back toward the line. “You missed a very simple, slow pass.”
“I was adjusting.”
“To what?” Dylan asks. “The puck not being on your stick?”
Nico glides past us, expression calm. “It was a bold strategy.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I’m choosing to receive it as support.”
Coach blows the whistle before anyone else can pile on, which is lucky because I’m absolutely the kind of man who will stand in the middle of practice defending a bad pass until the entire team gives up.
We reset.
This time, I get my head back where it belongs.
More or less.
That’s the problem lately. My head keeps finding places it would rather be. Bailey’s kitchen. Bailey’s porch. Bailey’s car outside the movie theater. Bailey’s bedroom.
I know how to want a woman. That has never been the issue.
Want is easy. Want is heat, chemistry, a hand on the back of a neck, a mouth against skin, a dark room, a bad idea that feels too good to regret.
What I feel for Bailey is not just want.
I want coffee with her when she’s tired.
I want to know whether she ate during a shift.
I want to sit beside her during movies that I would normally hate, but somehow end up enjoying because she is beside me.
I want her sharp looks when I say something ridiculous and her quiet smile when she tries not to let me see I got to her.
I want her in my life in all the ordinary places.
That is new.
The drill starts again, and this time I’m sharp. Pass, receive, turn, shoot. Simple. Clean. Good enough that Coach doesn’t yell.
By the time we move into small-area games, I’ve found my legs.
Small-area games are exactly what they sound like.
Less space. Less time. More bodies in your way.
It forces quick decisions, which is great when your brain is cooperating and less great when your brain is replaying Bailey saying my name in a bedroom voice I am not allowed to think about during practice.
I think about it anyway.
I still win the puck battle against Jace in the corner, so apparently I’m capable of multitasking.
“Look who remembered his job,” Jace says, shoulder-checking me lightly as we skate back to the line.
“I’m gifted.”
“You’re distracted.”
“Also gifted.”
He laughs. “She’s good for you.”
That gets through before I can dodge it.
I look over. “Who?”
Jace gives me a flat look. “Don’t insult both of us.”
I push my helmet back with my glove. “You know, there was a time when this team respected privacy.”
“No, there wasn’t,” Ty says from behind us. “We’ve always been terrible at that.”
“Consistent,” Nico adds.
Knox leans on his stick, watching me in that too-observant way men get once they’re happy and think everyone else should confess feelings too.
I point at him. “Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
Coach blows the whistle again, and we skate.
For the next twenty minutes, I manage to play like a professional athlete and not a man mentally pacing outside a door he hasn’t decided whether to open. My passes are clean. My shots are better. I take a hard angle to the net, get tied up by Roman, and almost go down before catching myself.
Roman looks at me. “Focus.”
“I am focused.”
“You are smiling.”
“That’s allowed.”
“Not during battle.”
“Noted.”
He skates away like he has delivered a military decree.
By the end of practice, I’m sweating, tired, and in a better mood than I have any right to be. The team notices that, too, because hockey players are nosy. Give them one emotional breadcrumb, and they’ll follow it like bloodhounds.
In the locker room, Ty drops onto the bench across from me. “So. Date three.”
I pull off my gloves. “No.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You were about to.”
He grins. “Probably.”
Dylan glances over from his stall. “Leave him alone.”
I look at him. “Thank you.”
“Don’t make it weird,” he says. “I just don’t want to listen to Ty interrogate you for twenty minutes.”
Ty leans back, still watching me. “You do look different.”
“I’m sweating.”
“No.” His grin fades a little, but not all the way. “You look happy.”
I look down at the tape on my shin pad. “Maybe I am.”
For once, nobody jumps on it.
Ty doesn’t make a sound. Dylan doesn’t grin. Knox just nods once like he knows what it cost me to leave the answer that bare.
I clear my throat. “Don’t be weird about it.”
My phone buzzes in my stall.
I reach for it, expecting a text from Bailey, maybe something about her shift or a quick answer to the message I sent before practice.
It’s her name on the screen, but it’s not a text.
She’s calling.
Something in me goes still.
Bailey doesn’t call during work. She texts. Efficient. Clean. Usually with punctuation that says more than the words.
I answer before the second ring finishes.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice normal.
“Hi.”
One word, and every easy thing inside me tightens.
She sounds tired. Not regular tired. Not end-of-shift tired. There’s something under it, a held breath, a strain she’s trying to keep smooth.
I stand, turning slightly away from the room.
“You okay?”
A pause.
“I’m okay,” she says.
No, she isn’t.
I know it in the space after the words. In the way she says okay, like she chose it from a list of acceptable answers and not because it’s true.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Bailey.”
She exhales, and the sound goes straight through me.
“Can I see you after my shift?”
My grip tightens around the phone. “Yeah. Of course.”
“I don’t get off until seven.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I just...” She stops.
I close my eyes.
The locker room noise fades behind me. Tape ripping. Showers are turning on. Voices bouncing off tile.
“You just what?” I ask, softer now.
“I need to talk to you.”
There it is.
The sentence nobody wants to hear from someone they care about.
I’ve heard versions of it before. From coaches. From social workers. From people who already knew something important and needed me to stand still while they delivered it.
My stomach drops.
But this is Bailey.
So I make myself stay in the moment instead of sprinting ahead to every bad possibility my brain can build.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll come to you.”
“You don’t have to change your plans.”
“I don’t have plans.”
She goes quiet again.
I can hear the hospital around her in the background. A distant announcement. The faint beep of something mechanical. Voices passing by.
“Finn,” she says.
My name sounds different.
I press my free hand against the edge of my stall. “I’m here.”
I don’t know why I say it.
Only that I need her to know.
She inhales, shaky enough that I almost ask again if she’s okay, but I don’t. She already said all she wanted to.
“Seven thirty,” she says. “My place?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Okay.”
“Bailey.”
“Yeah?”
There are too many things I want to say, and none of them feel right. Not over the phone. Not when I can hear something in her voice that I don’t understand yet.
So I keep it simple. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Another pause.
Then, quieter, “Tonight.”
The call ends, and for a second, I just stand there in the middle of the locker room, still half in gear, sweat cooling on my skin, all that post-practice ease gone like someone opened a door and let the cold in.
Dylan is watching me now.
So is Knox.
Ty too, but without the grin.
I shove my phone into my stall and start pulling off the rest of my gear.
“Everything okay?” Knox asks.
I nod automatically, then stop.
“I don’t know,” I say.
The room stays quiet.
Dylan’s voice is careful. “Bailey?”
“Yeah.”
No one asks anything more.
I head for the showers because I need something to do. Steps to follow. Gear off. Shower. Clothes. Drive. Show up. Listen.
That’s all.
Whatever it is, I can handle it.
I’m not thirteen years old with a trash bag in my hand. I’m not waiting in a doorway for someone to explain why the place I started trusting isn’t mine anymore.
I’m an adult. I’m a professional athlete. I have money, a job, a truck, a house, and people who will answer if I call.
I have Bailey.
Maybe.
The thought slips in before I can stop it, because maybe this is where I find out I don’t.
I turn the shower on too hot and step under the spray, jaw tight, hands braced against the tile.
I don’t know anything yet. Bailey asked me to come over, so I’ll go, and stand there and listen. I won’t run before I know what it is.
I won’t run at all.
***
By seven-fifteen, I’m parked outside Bailey’s place with my hands on the steering wheel and my engine still running.
I got here early.
I showered at the practice facility, threw on clean clothes, drove back to town from Santa Rosa, and spent the last ten minutes convincing myself not to knock before the time she gave me.
That feels like the right thing to do. Respect the plan.
Respect the shift ending. Respect the fact that Bailey sounded like one wrong word might crack something open.
At seven-twenty, her car pulls into the driveway, and I get out before I can overthink it. She turns off the car but doesn’t move right away. Through the windshield, I see her sitting there, hands in her lap, face pale under the dim interior light.
Something cold moves through me.