10. Jax
Chapter ten
Jax
Brick is on my chest at six AM.
I didn’t sleep. could’nt.
Still awake at two, running the parking lot back like a bad goal — frame by frame until there’s nothing left I haven’t seen. That’s how it works. You keep going until it stops changing.
It doesn’t take long.
You know what happened. Where you were. Where you shouldn’t have been.
Doesn’t take long with this either.
The second kiss.
I’ve run it enough times to know regret isn’t the problem. That’s the part that sticks. Not the kiss. The fact that I knew exactly what I was doing and did it anyway, and if you put me back in that parking lot right now nothing changes.
Brick shifts and puts more weight on my sternum like he’s got an opinion.
“I know,” I tell him.
He blinks once and settles in.
I get up at five. Make coffee. Stand at the counter because it’s something to do with my hands that isn’t thinking. The house is too quiet. I don’t turn anything on.
By practice, I’m sharp. Too sharp — three hours of sleep and nowhere to put it except the crease. The net doesn’t care what happened in a parking lot at midnight. It needs one thing from me. I give it that.
Nothing gets through.
It’s easier when there’s something in front of me to stop.
There’s nothing clean about her. It should feel better than it does.
The team feels it anyway. Less space. Faster reads. Cleaner decisions. Nobody says anything. They don’t need to.
Nova’s working the room the way she always works it — Brody first because Brody has never met a microphone he didn’t want to marry, then Sebastian, then Caleb, saving the harder ones for after she’s already got what she needs from everyone else.
I’ve watched her do this enough to know the pattern. She doesn’t know I’ve mapped it. I didn’t mean to.
She gets to Liam.
Liam gives press exactly nothing. Four on-record quotes this season, three of them about ice conditions. She says something and he turns and actually answers. Full sentence. Maybe two.
I feel something move through my chest I don’t like. I don’t look at it.
I stop a shot from Caleb that he had no business thinking would get through.
Liam skates up at the water break. Gives me the silence first — he always does, so you can’t pretend you don’t know what’s coming.
“She asks good questions,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Asked about the penalty kill structure. Not the goals against.” He drinks. “She thinks about the game differently.”
I don’t say anything.
He looks at me. “Figure out what you’re doing before Riley has to figure it out for you.”
Then he skates away. No follow-up. Just drops it and goes like it costs him nothing to be right.
Unfortunately accurate.
She comes to me last.
Always comes to me last. I don’t know if she does it for me or for herself, but either way it’s right and I find respecting it annoying.
She stops at the boards. Recorder out. Pen in hand.
“One question.”
“One,” I say.
“How do you reset after a bad goal? In your head. What’s the process?”
I look at her for a second.
“Same as before it,” I say. “You don’t carry it.”
She writes it down. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t ask the follow-up I can see her not asking for. Caps the pen and moves on.
I watch her go.
I don’t let anything through for the rest of the session.
Locker room.
I hear it before I’m through the door.
”—I’m just saying, statistically speaking, a woman that looks like that, asks questions like that, laughs like that—” Brody, holding court, zero awareness of volume. “I’m not saying I have a shot. I’m saying a man’s gotta respect the situation.”
“You don’t have a shot,” Sebastian says.
“You don’t know that.”
“She smiled at me for four seconds longer than she smiled at you.”
“She was counting your teeth, Sebastian. That’s not attraction, that’s concern.”
“At least I have all mine.”
“That was one game—”
“Gentlemen.” Caleb, solemn as a judge. “The real question is whether she’s coming to team dinner.”
I walk in.
Dead silence.
Then Brody: “Jax. Hey. We were just—”
“I heard you from the hallway.”
“Right.” He clears his throat. “So. Team dinner.”
“She’s press,” I say.
“Right, right, completely professional, yeah, obviously.” A pause. “So that’s a maybe.”
I go to my stall and start pulling gear.
Aiden is already there, skates off, leaning back with his arms crossed and the specific look he gets when he’s saving something for later.
Brody lowers his voice. Which for Brody means the guys two stalls over can probably still hear him. “Is it true you and Shaw were in Riley’s office this morning?”
“Yep.”
“Together.”
“Yep.”
“And it was—”
“Official team business.”
“Right.” He nods slowly. Very slowly. “So there’s something to have official team business about.”
“Go shower, Brody.”
“I’m just—”
“Now.”
He goes. Sebastian follows, pointing at his own teeth on the way out for absolutely no reason. Caleb fires finger-guns at me, which is somehow the most threatening thing anyone has done to me all day.
I tape my stick. The usual thirteen wraps.
Aiden waits until it’s just us. He’s always been good at that — knowing when to hold the room and when to clear it.
“She’s the grocery store girl,” he says. Not a question.
I don’t answer.
“Aurora’s going to lose her mind.”
“Aurora already knows.”
He sits up. “How bad is it?”
I look at the tape job.
“Bad.”
He nods like that tracks.
“You’re not in trouble,” Aiden says. “You’re past trouble.”
I don’t answer that either.
He studies me another second.
“You going to do something about it?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“That’s not your usual move.”
No, it isn’t.
I finish the wrap, press the tape down with my thumb, and look at the stick like it’s going to explain something.
Aiden stands up. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re cooked.”
“Don’t tell Aurora.”
“Already texting.”
He heads for the showers before I can throw something at him.
He calls before I get to my car. I let it ring twice.
“Aurora says you kissed the journalist.”
“I know.”
“In a parking lot.”
“I know.”
“At midnight.”
“Aiden.”
“Just confirming the facts.” A pause. “How bad?”
I lean against the car. Florida heat, mid-morning, the kind that makes a point. I look at the arena. Think about the hallway. The almost-smile she pulled back before it could happen.
“Bad,” I say.
Silence. Then different — no more laughing. “Yeah, man. That’s what I thought.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
Fourteen months on Bumble. Eleven dates. Women who knew exactly who they were sitting across from before they ordered. I paid every check. That was never the problem.
The problem was none of it felt like a hallway and thirty seconds and both of us making the same call and neither of us happy about it. None of it felt like having to stop myself from reaching for someone I already knew I’d do it again with.
“Don’t know yet,” I say.
“That’s new.”
It is. I don’t like it.
I read the play. I make the call. I live with it. That’s the crease. That’s my whole life.
This isn’t the crease.
“Talk to her before Riley does,” Aiden says. “That’s it. Everything else is above my pay grade.”
“Goodbye, Aiden.”
“Fully cooked, bro. Fully—”
I hang up.
Sit in the car with the engine off and the heat building. The arena sits across the lot, same as always. Same building. Same job. Round 1 in four days and I need my head exactly where it’s always been.
I sit there a while.
I get home. Put my gear bag down. Make food I don’t taste and eat it standing at the counter. Me and a kitchen and a hallway I’m going to be running back like bad tape all week.
I sit on the couch. Think about the parking lot. The second kiss.
My phone is on the cushion next to me.
I pick it up. The screen comes on. I stare at it. Look up. Look back at the phone.
Type: Brick sat in your spot on the couch tonight.
I read it once. Then again.
She’s never even been here. I know exactly what that sounds like.
It’s not a smart text. It’s the one I send anyway.
My phone goes off.
Riley Stevens:
Photo circulating. Outside the arena. You and Shaw. My office. Tomorrow.
I set the phone down.