Chapter 9
Billie
The cold bit through my gloves as soon as I stepped onto the ice.
Perfect. I wanted to feel it. Wanted it to cut through everything soft left in me.
First one out. Always would be. The boards creaked, the hum of the lights sat low in my ears, and the smell—scraped ice and rubber—settled in my chest like oxygen.
Calder stood near the blue line, arms folded, hood up over his baseball cap because apparently he was too cool to wear a helmet. His stare found me before the whistle did.
“Warm-up laps. Hard pace.”
The shrill blast split the air.
I dug in, edges carving deep, legs burning before the second bend. Each stride ground out the noise in my skull—Nate, a couple of days ago, this morning, all of it. Nothing existed past the next turn.
By the fourth lap, the others were filtering out. Laughter, chatter, blades clattering against the door frame. I ignored every sound except the scrape of my own skates.
“Donovan, pick up your stick. You’re gliding like it’s Sunday brunch.”
I bit my tongue and kept going. His voice carried, sharp, cool, steady. It had that authority you didn’t have to earn; it just lived in him.
He ran us hard. Edge drills, pivots, quick transitions. By the second set, my lungs burned raw. When I clipped a cone during a tight turn, his whistle pierced again.
“Do it again.”
I looped back. He didn’t even look at the others. Only me.
“Lower. Keep your eyes up. You lose vision, you lose the puck. Again.”
The girls exchanged looks as I reset. The third attempt was clean—but not clean enough for him.
“Better. But you’re half a second late.”
“Then time me,” I muttered under my breath, the words frosting in the air.
“What was that?” His tone didn’t rise, but it filled the space between us.
“Nothing, Coach.”
He moved on, but the others were whispering. Loud enough that silence would have sounded fake.
“Does he hate her, or is he trying to sleep with her?” one of them said behind a water bottle.
The words cracked like thin ice. My stride didn’t break. I pushed harder.
Next drill—zone exits. Two groups, rotating through. When it was my turn, he blew the whistle mid-route.
“Stop. Again. Alone this time.”
I dropped to a knee, tightened my laces for the extra second it bought me, then stepped back into position. Everyone watched—sticks resting on crossbars, masks tilted. I ran the line again. Tape to tape. Cleared the blue.
“Again.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll either get it perfect or you’ll get benched. Your call.”
My hands trembled from exertion, but I went again. Faster. Harder. Puck sailed clean across the line, crisp.
He met my eyes. “That good enough for you, Donovan?”
I caught my breath, wiped frost from my visor. “Wasn’t for you, Coach.”
He didn’t smile. Just blew the whistle. And for the first time all morning, the sting in my legs felt like pride instead of punishment.
The locker room door slammed behind the last straggler, echoing across the empty rink.
I stayed by the boards, sweat drying cold under my gear, watching Calder scribble lines on his clipboard.
He didn’t look up once. The scrape of his pen felt deliberate—like a wall built one furious mark at a time.
When he finally started toward the hall, I fell into step behind him. My skates clacked over the rubber mats, heavy and sharp. He must’ve heard me but didn’t turn. His office door swung open; I followed before he could close it.
He tossed the clipboard on his desk, reached for a towel, wiped his jaw. Still not a glance.
“Are you going to coach me,” I asked, “or are you just going to punish me?”
His shoulders stiffened. “You want to play soft, go join a beer league.”
“I want to play smart.” I moved closer, close enough to smell ice melt and chalk on his sleeves. “But I can’t tell if I’m screwing up or if you’re still pissed I left your bed first.”
His head lifted. Eyes like flint. For a second, neither of us breathed.
He set the towel down slowly. “Watch yourself, Donovan.”
“Already do.”
He leaned against the desk, arms crossed, the faintest curl at one corner of his mouth. Not amusement—control, stretched tight.
“You think I’m going easy on you?”
“No. I think you’re going harder.” I matched his stare. “And I want to know why.”
The silence hit harder than a slapshot. His jaw flexed; he looked past me at the wall, at nothing.
“You don’t get special treatment here. Not good, not bad.”
“Then what was that out there? You ran me into the ground.”
“Because you can take it.”
“That’s not coaching, that’s targeting.”
He pushed off the desk. The space between us shrank, the air thick with stale coffee and something that shouldn’t still be there.
“You have a problem with my drills, file a complaint with administration.”
“I’m not filing anything. I’m asking you to be honest.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think I’m not?”
“I think you’re pretending the ice erases everything.”
For half a breath, I thought he might laugh—then I saw it. The flicker that slipped through before he locked it down again. Regret, want, maybe both.
“You don’t understand the line we’re standing on.”
“I know exactly where it is,” I said. “You drew it.”
He exhaled through his nose, pacing once to the window and back, teeth tugging at a scar along his lip. The overhead light buzzed. I didn’t move.
Finally, he spoke, quiet but rough. “You earned every lap today. I pushed because you can handle it, not because of the other night.”
“Prove it tomorrow,” I said. “Push everyone else the same.”
He nodded once, the motion sharp. “Get out of here, Donovan.”
I turned for the door. His voice stopped me halfway through.
“You left first,” he said, “but you’re still standing here.”
I waited for him to bark another order, some smart remark wrapped in gravel, but instead he stared at the floor like the words were hiding down there somewhere. The air between us had that strange stillness after a fight—no winner, just exhaustion.
He rubbed a hand over his face, muttering something I didn’t catch, then looked straight at me.
“You’re good. Maybe the best on the roster.”
The words landed off-balance, like even he didn’t mean to let them escape.
I blinked. “What?”
He didn’t flinch. “You play like the ice is the only place that’s ever made sense to you. I see that. And that’s why I push you harder.”
Everything in me went quiet. No one had ever said anything close to that. Not Nate with his backhand compliments and PR smiles. Not my old coaches obsessed with statistics and sponsorship logos. Not even my parents, who treated hockey like a hobby I’d outgrow once I found something “real.”
I opened my mouth, lost the words, closed it again. The hum of the vending machine outside the office was louder than either of us.
He exhaled, shoulders loosening for the first time all day. There were dark circles under his eyes, the kind that spoke of long nights and second thoughts.
“You could’ve just said that,” I muttered.
“Would’ve been easier if I hadn’t already—” He stopped, jaw tightening. The sentence hung there, half built, heavy as the smell of ice melt and sweat.
The rest didn’t need saying. It sat between us: the hotel sheets, the heat we pretended never happened, the impossible line neither of us could erase. My pulse tripped over itself, anyway.
He looked away first, eyes dragging across the grey window glass. “You should go. Tomorrow’s drills start early.”
I wanted to hate him for switching back to coach mode, but my throat betrayed me with a nod. “Right.”
When I reached the door, he spoke again—so soft I almost thought I imagined it. “Keep playing like that, Donovan. Don’t let anyone dull it because of me.”
I paused with my hand on the handle. “Guess you’ll have to make sure they don’t.”
The hum of the compressors filled the space between us, that low mechanical heartbeat that always lived under the ice.
We stood too close. His shadow cut through mine against the glass, the smell of cold air and chalk from his gloves mixing with sweat and old coffee.
Every sound in the rink—dripping pipes, hollow boards—felt louder, closer, like the walls had decided to listen in.
Calder didn’t move, but his eyes did. They dragged down, then up again, landing on my mouth before snapping back to my face.
Regret lived there—clear, raw—but under it was something darker, hungrier.
I felt it slide through me before I could stop it.
My brain laced up its defenses; my body untied them.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
His voice came low. “Like what?”
“Like you remember.”
The words came out sharper than I meant, but I didn’t take them back. Because he did remember—I could see it. The shallow rise of his chest, the way his jaw worked like he wanted to say something he’d regret in six different ways. The silence between us went electric.
He exhaled, one shoulder twitching, like he might laugh if it didn’t hurt. The breath he let out brushed my face, warm in the freezing air. It woke things that didn’t need waking. My heart dragged behind my ribs, clumsy and loud.
I kept my hands at my sides, knuckles tight in my gloves. His fingers twitched once. Just once. Like he fought the same pull.
There, in that small pocket of the frozen world, every bad decision waited with its arms open.
His voice broke through it. “We can’t do this.”
“Then don’t start.”
Neither of us moved. The words hung between us, crystallized breath fading into steam. His throat worked. He took in a slow breath through his nose, like he needed it to stay standing.
The lights above hummed. The sound of some machine clicking off echoed across the bleachers. My pulse felt louder than both.
He stepped back first—one solid move, clearing space like he didn’t trust himself. The mask slid back into place, that coach’s face I was supposed to respect. It didn’t fool either of us.
I turned before he could say another word. My skates clacked over the rubber mat toward the exit, steady, deliberate. Every step felt heavier than the last, like he’d packed weight into the air. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know he was watching.
I felt his eyes track the line of my spine, the swing of my braid, the way my shoulders squared as I hit the door. It burned, that attention—half warning, half want. I didn’t let myself look back, because if I did, I wasn’t sure which side I’d answer.
The hall was colder, sharper, lit by buzzing fluorescents.
My reflection followed me in the scratched glass of the trophy case—helmet in hand, face pale, eyes too bright.
I didn’t look like a girl who could ruin a career.
I looked like a player trying to breathe around a mistake that still pulsed under her skin.
Behind me, the door clanged softly back into its frame. The sound chased down the hallway after me, a reminder.
He’d said we can’t do this. The problem was how badly I already had.
I shoved through the locker room doors; the air hitting me—hot, wet, heavy with soap and effort.
The hum of showers drowned out every thought I didn’t want to have, but not enough.
My legs ached from drills, my neck burned from humiliation, and under all that, something else throbbed—anger wrapped around a pulse that had nothing to do with skating.
I yanked at my gear, shoulder pads clattering to the bench. Sweat soaked through the compression fabric. Every buckle felt like it was welded shut. My fingers shook, part exhaustion, part fury. I hated this—hated that one mistake, one night, followed me into daylight like it owned me.
Helmets, pads, sticks lined the walls like soldiers. The others had already cleared out, leaving damp footprints and echoes. I peeled off my jersey, caught a glimpse of myself in the metal of the locker door—red-cheeked, wild-eyed, still catching my breath.
It was supposed to be one night. Forgettable.
Except I hadn’t forgotten a damn thing.
Turns out memory didn’t care about rules.
It clung to stupid detailed—the scrape of his stubble on my throat, the way he’d looked at me like I was something solid in a collapsing world.
Now that same man held a whistle and barked orders like we were strangers.
Maybe that was mercy. Maybe that was worse.
I dropped the last piece of gear on the floor; the thud echoing too loud. The smell of sweat and rubber burned in my throat. I pulled a towel from my bag and headed for the showers, steam leaking out the doorway like the room was alive.
Hot water hit my shoulders, punishing, scalding. It needled into every bruise until I almost welcomed the pain. I pressed my palms against the tile, forehead resting against the cool space between, and let the heat strip the rink off me.
I wanted to hate him clean out of my system. Wanted to burn off the pull that twisted my stomach into knots every time he looked at me like he didn’t remember and like he absolutely did.
But hating him didn’t empty the space he’d carved out. And that made me furious with myself.
I’d been careful before him. Controlled. Always knowing what I wanted: puck, net, win. Simple. Then he showed up in a bar, and I mistook silence for safety.
That mistake had a face now, a voice shouting my name across the ice.
The heat blurred my vision; water streamed down my back, over the bruises blooming along my ribs. I turned the dial higher until my skin hummed.
Enough.
Tomorrow, it would be about the game—skates, drills, tape, breath. Nothing else. I wouldn’t let him live rent-free under my skin. I’d already spent too long as some man’s shadow. Never again.
I had this opportunity, and I wasn't going to waste it. I had already done that when I was with Nate. I wasn't going to do it again.
I killed the water, dragged the towel around my shoulders, and picked up the pace getting dressed.
The mirror above the sinks caught me on the way out—hair dripping, eyes steadier. Fine. He could coach, he could scowl, he could try to forget. I’d do the same. The ice didn’t care who I’d slept with. It only cared if I could play.