Chapter 10 Brody
TEN
brODY
I’m a fucking wreck.
I check the clock every five minutes throughout the morning. I sweat through my T-shirt and have to change after a meeting with my coaching staff. I can’t stop pacing around my office, and when Lexi pops her head in at ten minutes to noon, she smirks.
“Why are you ruining the carpet?” she asks, a clipboard tucked under her arm.
“I’m not doing anything to the carpet.”
“Not yet. But if you keep walking in circles, you’re going to put a hole in the brand-new flooring the arena operations team spent all summer working on.”
“Maybe the carpet is the problem,” I grunt. “Did you need something?”
“You’re in a mood. What pissed you off today?”
“The sun came up.”
“Hopefully this helps.” Lexi smiles and walks into my office, setting a stack of papers on my desk. “Riley’s monthly injury update. He’s cleared to start practicing with our AHL affiliate.”
I stop in my tracks and stare at her. She’s been working with him relentlessly since his accident last summer. She’s learned every component of his prosthetic leg. Put him through intense physical therapy exercises and has him skating again.
She fell in love with him too.
Almost everyone on this team has found a significant other. Four years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that was possible, but I’m glad for it. It makes my job easier. The press wants to hear about our game play these days, not what supermodel someone is sleeping with.
Even Liam, our resident asshole, isn’t as grumpy and bent out of shape as he used to be. Last week he did an interview with ESPN after a shutout and didn’t drop a single curse word during the conversation. I was shocked.
Riley’s rehab has been the most important item on my agenda, and I see the effort he’s putting in.
I know how much time Lexi has dedicated to individualized therapy and research on athletes with prosthetics.
I hear them leaving the training room long after the other guys have gone home, and it’s evident why she’s one of the best athletic trainers in the league.
She gives a shit, and it’s a huge part of why he’s been able to get to this point.
“Are you serious?” I grab the top paper off the stack, reading through it. The words cleared and vigorous physical activity pop out at me, and I let out a disbelieving laugh. “Holy shit, Armstrong. You did it.”
“Riley did it, but it was a collaborative effort. I hope this is the start of a new era in professional hockey. One that’s inclusive to all athletes, no matter what their bodies might look like.
” She turns her head at the knock on the door and offers a smile to Darcy, the team’s intern. “Hey, Darce. Who is the pizza for?”
“Coach.” She hands the cardboard box my way. “It just got here, and it’s very hot.”
“Since when do you order pizza to the arena?” Lexi asks.
“I have an afternoon meeting, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to last,” I explain. “I wanted to make sure the person joining me has a chance to eat.”
“A meeting, huh?” Lexi grins. “That’s very accommodating of you.”
“Out, Armstrong,” I bark, ignoring the girls’ laughter when I shut the door behind them.
I stare at the box, positive this is way too fucking much. Asking Hannah to come here is a business meeting. We’re not two friends catching up—I ruined any chance of that being a possibility—and I’m tempted to hand off the food to the custodial crew cleaning up the locker room down the hall.
There’s no time to stew over it though, because there’s another knock and the turn of the doorknob. I blink and Hannah is standing in front of me wearing dark jeans, white sneakers, and a sweater that slips off her right shoulder.
Sixteen months without seeing her, and the first glance has me forgetting where the fuck I am.
“Brody.” Her voice is smooth. Rich with a touch of heat.
It’s just like the whiskey we drank at her house, and I have to blink again to stop my vision from turning fuzzy.
“Sorry I’m a few minutes early. If you’re busy, I can wait out in the hall.
” Her attention flicks to the pizza I’m still holding. “Or if you want to finish your lunch.”
“No. Come in.” I gesture her inside, making sure to give her a wide berth. She closes the door behind her. “It’s pizza.”
“I’d be concerned if it wasn’t. It is pizza-shaped.”
“I ordered it in case you were hungry.” The tips of my ears burn. “Since it’s lunchtime.”
Hannah lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t miss a beat. “Let me guess. Boring cheese?”
“Only half of it. The other half has pineapple and ham. Extra pineapple, in fact.” I set the box on my desk and grab a stack of napkins from one of the drawers. “Rumor is it’s not half bad.”
She snorts and sits in the chair across from me. I hand her one of the slices, careful not to brush her fingers with mine when I pass over the pizza.
“I—”
“Tell—”
We talk at the same time, and I almost choke on my bite of food. She tips her head to the side, assessing me while I pound my chest and swallow.
“Go ahead,” I rasp, wondering why the fuck I don’t have any water in here.
“It’s your office.” Hannah motions to the jerseys in frames hanging from the walls. “You first.”
“I know we’re here to talk about my daughter, but I need to say something else first. About that night at your place.”
Her inhale is sharp. “We had fun. You left. I’m a big girl, and I’m not sitting around writing your name in my diary, Brody.”
“I wanted to apologize for acting like a piece of shit,” I say in a rush of words, and she pauses mid-bite.
This is not how I practiced this earlier, but I roll with it.
“For how I left. For the things I said. I was panicking, if we’re being honest. I had tunnel vision, which lead me to being selfish.
Running out of there was inconsiderate. Telling you to forget it ever happened was even shittier.
I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I need you to know I understand how my behavior was…
really fucking lame. I’ve never cared what other people think about me, and I don’t know why I cared then.
Deep down, maybe I thought that if I pretended that didn’t happen, the rest of the night didn’t happen too. It wasn’t fair to you.”
“You sent me flowers.” Hannah sets her pizza down on the napkin in her lap. She adjusts the sleeve of her sweater, pushing it back over her shoulder. “Right?”
“I did.” I tear off a piece of crust and pop it in my mouth, not mentioning the hours I spent researching different floral arrangements from the hospital waiting room.
The websites I read until my eyes burned with tears.
Until I found a bouquet I thought would maybe, maybe convey a sliver of how sorry I was.
“I recognize it’s a cop out from an actual apology, but I needed you to know I was thinking about you even when my actions proved differently. ”
“I appreciate the apology, Brody. We’re both mature enough to recognize there was a lot happening that night. Emotions are always magnified when intimacy is involved. I know we didn’t have sex but—”
“We may as well have,” I finish for her. A faint blush sits on her cheeks, and she gives me a nod.
“Exactly. Tensions were high. You were worried about your player. It sucked in the moment, but I’m not mad. Not anymore. That was a lifetime ago.”
“It was.” I nod. “But you can still be mad at me. For what it’s worth, I’m still mad at myself. And I’m going to work to earn your trust back.”
Hannah’s lips twitch. She leans back, getting comfortable with one leg draped over the other. “Tell me about your daughter.”
A switch in conversation. Good. This is good. Easier to process, easier to talk about.
“Olivia. She’s fourteen, and she skates every day but Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.
” I pause, wanting to ask Hannah how she’s been.
If she came to any of the games last season and if I could’ve spotted her when I glanced out in the crowd.
I never let myself look. “Two hours every afternoon, except for Fridays and Sundays when she puts in four hours.” I rub my hands over my joggers and clear my throat.
“You don’t have to agree to this. Spending hours skating with a teenager is—”
“I spend hours skating as it is. Adding someone else to the mix would make it more fun. Does Olivia do the short program? Pairs?”
“Short program. She has the Potomac Memorial Open on her calendar, which is in—”
“Virginia, next August. What other NQS competitions has she done?”
“NQS?”
“National Qualifying Series. Skaters with the top scores earn a qualification berth for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Fourteen means she’s still a junior skater, and I’m wondering what she did in previous years.” She takes a bite of her pizza. “Is the Potomac Memorial her first big event?”
“No. She’s done…” I fumble with my phone, scrolling through the photos I have of Olivia in her skating outfits. Her on the ice, head dropped back and caught mid-spin. “She did the Cranberry Open last year.”
“Good for her. I like people who are ambitious and not afraid to dream big.” She smiles and takes my phone from me, zooming in on the photo. “She has good footwork.”
“You can tell that from a picture?”
“I’ve been doing this for twenty years, Brody. Could you tell if a guy has good footwork from a photo?”
“Yeah,” I admit, and her smile grows. “Easily.”
“Look at us. We’re two peas in a pod.” Hannah hands back my phone and finishes her pizza. “I’m more than happy to coach Olivia. It’ll be a learning curve as far as instructional foundations go, but I’m willing to put in the work to get it right.”
“I’ve been coaching for over a decade. Sometimes I still can’t get it right.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Life is bleak, then you die.”