Sneak Peak
Pucking the Hotshot
Vera
I hit something solid and massive and it does not move.
Two hands catch my arms before I go down, one on my elbow, one bracing my shoulder, and I look up into the face of Rhett Maddox.
I'd been moving fast. The puck had cracked the plexi near the kids' bench thirty seconds ago and I'd spun for the first-aid kit without looking where I was going. That's my fault. The rest of this is his.
"You good?" His voice is flat. Low.
"Fine." I pull my arm back. He releases it. Not fast, not slow. Deliberate. "You shouldn't be back here during a kids' event."
"I was told to come through this tunnel."
"Then someone told you wrong." I step around him. "The players' entrance is on the east side."
"I know where the players' entrance is." He falls into step beside me, which I did not invite. "I've played here for three years."
"Great. Go use it."
"My kid is here."
That stops me for half a second. I've heard about the kid. Everyone's heard about the kid. The single-dad angle has been making the PR rounds since training camp. I just didn't think about the fact that he'd actually be here.
"Then find him through the proper entrance," I say, "and don't let another puck get loose near a group of six-year-olds."
He stops walking. I don't look back, but I feel it. That particular stillness that means someone is deciding whether to be offended.
"That wasn't my shot."
"It came from the ice."
"From warm-ups. Which were supposed to be cleared before the event started." His voice doesn't rise. That's almost more irritating. "Check your own clipboard."
I look down at the clipboard. Gate two. Warm-up clearance. Confirmed by—
Nobody confirmed it. There's a blank line where a signature should be.
I don't tell him that.
"Walking suspension," I say instead, and keep moving.
I hear him, behind me: "PR babysitter."
I absolutely do not smile.
I leave before he can say anything else. Behind me, the event is running exactly as badly as I left it: gate three unstaffed, juice boxes still missing, twenty-two kids doing nothing resembling a line.
I love this job. I remind myself of that.
***
It takes eleven minutes to get the kids settled, confirm no one is actually hurt, locate the juice boxes (back room, exactly where Janelle said), and redistribute three volunteers to cover the gaps in the gate staffing.
By the time the players come out for the skate, everything looks exactly like it was supposed to look from the beginning. Controlled. Warm. The kind of community moment that photographs well and means something.
I stand at the edge of the tunnel with my radio and watch a six-year-old in an oversized jersey try to high-five Cade hard enough to spin herself around.
This is why I took the job. Not the clipboard. Not the logistics. This.
Cade catches my eye from the ice and gives me the small nod that means good work. Coming from my brother, who communicates primarily through pointed silences and monosyllables, that's basically a standing ovation.
I'm still watching the ice when I hear it.
Small. Muffled. From around the corner, down the corridor toward the family lounge.
A child crying.
Not the startled kind, the sharp cry that comes from a scare and stops just as fast. This is the sustained kind. The kind with depth to it.
I grab a juice box off the nearest table and head for the sound.
The family lounge is technically off-limits during events. The team's designated private space, kept clear for player families. I've been steering volunteers away from it all afternoon.
I round the corner and stop in the doorway.
Rhett Maddox is on the floor.
Not sitting. Not crouching. Fully kneeling on the concrete, gear and all, his big frame folded down to child height.
In front of him is a little boy, maybe four, maybe five, with his dad's dark hair and red-rimmed eyes and both fists pressed against his own chest like he's trying to hold himself together.
"Hey." Rhett's voice is something I don't have a word for yet. Low. Careful. Nothing like the flat tone he used in the tunnel. "You're okay. The noise was loud, but you're okay."
The boy shakes his head hard. Milo. It has to be Milo.
"I know it was scary." Rhett reaches out and cups the back of his son's head. Not pulling him in. Just present. Steady. "I've got you. You're safe."
His hands are shaking.
I see it from across the room. This man who didn't flinch when I walked into him, who stood completely still while I snapped at him in a hallway, is kneeling on a concrete floor with shaking hands, talking his kid through a fright in a voice so soft it barely carries.
I stand in the doorway and I don't move.
Milo's breathing starts to even out. He unfolds his fists. He leans forward and presses his forehead against his dad's shoulder and Rhett's eyes close for just a second, like he needed that contact as much as his son did.
My grip tightens around the juice box.
I should leave. This is private. This is none of my business and I walked into it by accident and the professional thing to do is step back around the corner and pretend I was never here.
Rhett opens his eyes and looks directly at me.
He doesn't startle. Doesn't tense. He just looks. The look on his face isn't the enforcer, isn't the villain, isn't the guy who called me a PR babysitter twenty minutes ago.
It's exhausted. And unguarded. And asking me, without words, not to make this a thing.
I hold up the juice box.
Something shifts at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. An acknowledgment.
Milo lifts his head and sees me standing there. He's got his dad's eyes, dark and assessing, but where Rhett's land like a challenge, Milo's are just curious.
"Hi," he says, voice still thick.
"Hi." I crouch down to his level. "That puck was really loud, huh?"
He nods seriously.
"I thought so too." I hold out the juice box. "Apple or orange. You get to pick."
He looks at it. Then at me. Then at his dad, checking, the way kids do when they're not sure if the new person is safe yet.
Rhett gives him a small nod.
Milo reaches out and takes the juice box. Turns it over once in his small hands, like he's checking that it's real.
I help him get the straw in.
"Orange," he says.
"Good call."
He leans back against Rhett's knee and starts drinking and the room goes quiet except for the distant sound of the event still running without me.
I don't stand up right away.
I stay crouched at Milo's level and look at Rhett Maddox over his son's head. The tattoos on his forearms. The scarred knuckles. The reputation that precedes him into every room he walks into. And I feel something I cannot afford to feel right now.
Like the version of him I built in my head before today is missing a piece.
A significant one.
I stand up before that thought can finish forming. "I need to get back."
Rhett nods. "Yeah."
I take three steps toward the door. Stop.
"Your gate clearance form wasn't signed," I say, not turning around. "I'll fix it. But next time, make sure your people follow the protocol."
A beat of silence.
"Next time," he says, "make sure your people follow the protocol."
I walk out before he can see that he's right.
***
I spend the next ninety minutes doing my job. Smiling, redirecting, convincing a very committed small boy that he cannot keep the extra puck.
The whole time, somewhere in the back of my head, I'm thinking about shaking hands.
Cade catches my eye from the ice one more time. Good work, the nod says.
I nod back.
I'm almost certain it's a problem.
Chapter 2: The Villain Has a Bedtime Voice
Rhett
The family lounge is supposed to be private.
That's the whole point of it. A room with a code on the door, no cameras, enough distance from the noise that you can pretend for ten minutes that you're not property of a professional hockey franchise.
Milo doesn't know that. He just knows it's the room where Dad is allowed to hold him without anyone watching.
I've got him on my knee, both arms around him, his face buried in my chest. He's not crying anymore. He's in that phase after crying where the body is still shaking even though the feelings have run out. Little exhales, uneven, like an engine cooling down.
"You're good," I tell him. "I've got you."
He nods against my sternum.
"The puck hit the glass. That's all it was. Nobody got hurt."
Another nod.
I keep my voice steady. Flat and soft. The voice I invented specifically for him, the one that doesn't exist anywhere else. Not on the ice. Not in interviews. Not in the locker room where I've spent twelve years being exactly what the league needed me to be.
Milo gets the only version of me that's worth anything.
I hate that it happened here. In a building full of press credentials and phone cameras and people who earn a living turning private moments into captions.
I hate more that she saw it.
The captain's sister. Vera Lane, outreach coordinator, human clipboard, the woman who looked at me in that tunnel like I was something she'd already filed under liability and moved on.
She saw Milo shaking. She saw me kneeling on this floor with my hands not quite steady, talking my kid down from a spiral in a room I thought was empty.
***
The door clicks.
I don't look up. I don't need to. I can feel exactly who it is. The particular quality of silence that walks in with her, like she's already assessing the room and deciding how much space to take up.
Not much, as it turns out.
She crosses to us without hesitating, crouches to Milo's level, and holds out a juice box.
Apple. The good kind, not the watered-down ones the arena stocks in the press suite.
"Hey," she says to Milo, quiet and easy, like she talks to scared kids every day. Maybe she does. "I grabbed this from the snack station. You want it?"
Milo lifts his head off my chest.
He looks at her. Really looks, the way he does when he's making a decision. Then he reaches out and takes the juice box.
Something in my chest locks up so hard it almost hurts.