Chapter 1 Ari #2
“I don’t know about this,” Ari said as she scrolled through photos of Chad.
She had a long, messy history when it came to dating other athletes.
They either feigned disinterest if they thought she was more successful than them, tried to downplay her achievements if they were further along, or, like Harrison, got strangely competitive the minute her success began to eclipse theirs. “I think I’m done with athletes.”
“Ari, you’ve got to date at least one hot hockey player in your lifetime,” said Yasmeen.
“I don’t need to date a hot hockey player. I am a hot hockey player,” said Ari with a wicked smile, a comment that was met with a wave of agreement from the rest of the girls on the team.
Ari and the other girls had started playing the sport as children. Their parents had ferried them to the local ice rink every weekend and cheered them on from behind the glass-lined stands. But no one had ever really thought they would get that far.
While hockey was one of the biggest winter sports and the UK was home to some of the most successful athletes in the world, their women’s ice hockey team had never qualified for an Olympic tournament.
Until a couple of years ago, when their team had signed a game-changing new player, Gracie Walters.
The twenty-six-year-old, London-born, Montreal-raised ice hockey champion had moved to Canada when she was three years old, and she’d become one of the top players in North America.
But to everyone’s surprise, she’d moved back to the UK in 2022 to study for her master’s.
She’d given up her prestigious North American career and used her dual citizenship to join Team GB.
A decision that shook up the entire International Ice Hockey Federation.
The months after Gracie joined the team had been a beautiful blur.
Gracie pushed Ari and her teammates to believe in themselves, train harder, and play better than ever before.
She took a vested interest in each one of them, spending hours studying the way they played to amplify their strengths and improve their weaknesses.
For some reason, she’d taken Ari under her wing, taking her out for coffee to talk strategy and giving her advice on how to be a better leader on and off the rink.
It was inspiring for Ari to have a captain who genuinely believed they could win and forced the rest of the ice hockey community to take notice of them.
The uninspired coach they’d been stuck with for the past few years was replaced by Niall McLaughlin, the legendary former head coach of the men’s ice hockey team.
And then, after years of being warned that they would never see an international win in their lifetimes, Ari and her newly thriving team won their nail-bitingly tense qualifier match against the Netherlands.
With that, they’d secured their place at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
Which was why they were spending the days after Christmas at a high-intensity, six-week-long boot camp.
But it was New Year’s Eve. At the end of their afternoon training session, Coach McLaughlin had given them an unofficial pass to celebrate the most successful year of their careers before their schedules filled up with more training sessions, uniform fittings, and travel plans.
But Ari and her team were still split on whether to do the responsible thing and spend the night in the boot-camp hotel or throw caution to the wind and head into the city.
“Why don’t we just stay in and relax? We could watch a movie or something,” said Sienna. She’d spent the better part of her teenage years sneaking into clubs she was too young to be in and was too tired to go out-out now.
Ari agreed. “Coach isn’t going to give us this much time off again for the rest of the winter.” She was salivating at the prospect of a sleeping in after an intense day on the ice.
“It’s New Year’s! We’re not staying here all night,” said Izzy, who loved a good party. “I heard the hockey boys are going to the—”
But Sienna cut her off. “There’s nothing I’d rather do less than sit in a random countryside pub and talk about training regimens with the hockey boys,” said Sienna.
Ari didn’t want to go, either. Harrison was friends with them, and she didn’t want bumping into him to ruin the last night of her year. But the rest of the team was determined to go out.
“Shall we get a train into London? I think I could get us into a good party,” said Yasmeen, pulling her phone out.
Yasmeen was the most well-connected person Ari knew.
She’d spent her early twenties as a firm fixture on the London party scene, and her contacts were filled with the kind of musicians, DJs, and celebrities who threw star-studded parties every week.
But before Ari could try to convince them that they would have just as much fun watching the New Year’s Eve scene of When Harry Met Sally as they would at an actual party, she heard a muffled voice calling her name through the locker room speakers.
“Arikoishe, could you please come to my office once you’ve finished getting ready? Thank you,” the voice said. The whole team oohed as Ari finished putting on her tracksuit. Coach McLaughlin only asked people to go to his office when they were in trouble, and Ari never got in trouble.
She got up, slung her duffle bag over her shoulder, and promised she’d be back to finish making New Year’s plans.
Then she walked out of the locker room, curious to hear what Coach McLaughlin wanted to talk about.
As she did, she clasped her black-leather-and-gold watch around her wrist. It made a quiet, reassuring ticking sound each second, as if it was excitedly counting down to the new year with her.
Ari couldn’t help but walk with a spring in her step as she made her way through the corridors of the ice hockey building.
She looked up at the walls decorated with old, framed team photos and vintage posters from matches played decades before she was born.
There were barely any Black players in those photos, and beyond her group of friends, Ari had never quite felt like she belonged to the ice hockey community.
She’d answered, “Yes, there are Black ice hockey players” and “No, the cold doesn’t bother people like me” more times than she could count.
But random people’s preconceptions mattered way less to her than the fact that she got to play her favorite sport with her best friends.
Because one day her face would be in the photos up on those walls, and there would be countless more after her.
While it was daunting to be one of the first, she knew it meant she wouldn’t be the last.
Coach McLaughlin was a Northern Irish man in his mid-sixties who spent every single match pulling at his hair and indirectly shouting at the referee until he was red in the face.
But off the rink, he was a quiet, easygoing guy who spent training sessions carefully choosing his words, as if one wrong move might cause the team to turn against him.
He didn’t tell them anything more than they needed to know, which was why the immediacy of what he said as she walked into his office sent a chill down her spine.
“I have bad news,” he began as Ari took a seat. Coach McLaughlin looked nervous as he fidgeted in his seat and glanced over at the clear glass door.
“If it’s that we have six a.m. training on New Year’s Day, Coach, I can’t be the messenger,” Ari joked.
“It’s not that,” he said, his voice solemn.
“Are the uniforms arriving late?” Ari frowned. “Yasmeen made a whole list of video ideas for the team TikTok account, and she’ll be devastated if we can’t film those this weekend.”
“Arikoishe.”
“Coach,” she replied, concerned by the seriousness of his tone.
“Have you heard from Gracie?”
“Yeah, her flight kept getting canceled because of the storm. But she should get here by tomorrow though, right?”
“She’s not going to be here tomorrow; there’s been an accident,” Coach said. Ari’s stomach dropped. He quickly clarified. “Don’t worry, she’s okay, she’s already out of hospital.”
But Ari was already imagining worst-case scenarios. “What happened?” she asked.
Coach sighed. “She fell, badly, and tore her ACL.” He began pacing around the room as he explained what happened. “She’s too injured to play, so she won’t be joining us these next few weeks … or competing at the Olympics.”
Ari froze. A part of her reasoned that if she sat completely still and didn’t make a sound, she could convince herself that this wasn’t happening.
Trick her brain into believing this was a bad dream and rewind her watch by a week to change the course of time.
Maybe that way she could stop Gracie from going ice skating after Christmas and return her life to a timeline that made sense.
But sitting still wasn’t enough to stop the next fifteen seconds from happening. Or stop the next sentence Coach McLaughlin said from altering her team’s future. She watched as Coach walked around the room before returning to his desk.
“This isn’t the way things were supposed to happen, so we won’t tell the rest of the team until after New Year’s. You all deserve a break before things heat up. But Arikoishe, I’m telling you first because I’m making you the new team captain.”
Ari’s mouth dropped open.
“What?” she asked. Coach gave her what was supposed to be a reassuring look. But it didn’t do anything to stop the wave of doom from washing over her.
Ari was a player, not a captain. She didn’t know how to stop her teammates from going to a misjudged New Year’s Eve party, never mind how to lead them to anything that resembled victory at their first Olympics.
But before she could protest, reason, or try to convince Coach McLaughlin to change his mind, his head turned toward the noise outside his door.
She turned in her seat and glanced through the glass office door to see that her teammates had left the locker room and were walking down the hallway.
She could hear the sounds of laughter and twenty-two pairs of trainers hitting the freshly waxed wooden floors as they made their way through the building.
Blissfully unaware that their dreams were at risk.
“Coach, I don’t think I’m ready,” she said, scrambling to get him to change his mind.
“I wouldn’t give you the responsibility if I didn’t think you could handle it,” he said as he opened the door and walked toward the water fountain in the hallway.
Ari got up from her seat and followed him out.
She had a dozen questions. But before she could ask him anything, her teammates flooded the corridor. Abuzz with chatter about some party.
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow, okay?” he said.
“Talk about what?” asked Sienna.
“Nothing to worry about,” said Coach. But Ari could see the apprehension in his eyes. “Anyway, it’s four p.m. on New Year’s Eve. What are you still doing here? Enjoy your last night of freedom,” he said, waving them a cheerful goodbye.
“Come on, Ari. We have a party to get ready for,” said Yasmeen.
The winter chill washed over her as soon as they stepped outside.
It was already dark out, and the uneasy feeling that always found her in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve felt stronger than ever.
But tonight was supposed to be a celebration, so Ari let her friends drag her across the boot-camp grounds.
She did her best not to let her feelings show, but Sienna noticed her trailing behind and linked arms with her, pulling her in as the icy winter air blew against their skin.
“Next year, which is in less than twenty-four hours, we’re going to be Olympians,” said Sienna, her eyes twinkling as their footsteps crunched against a frosty patch of grass.
“Everything’s about to change,” said Izzy, looking up at the stars beginning to appear in the dark blue sky.
Ari just nodded. Everything was about to change. But the watch on her wrist didn’t feel like it was counting down to the new year anymore. It felt like a doomsday clock ticking down until the moment the team’s fate was put into her uncertain hands.