Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The first day at a new job always felt like the first day of school.
Awkward introductions. Learning my new colleagues’ names and they me.
Smiling through the anxiety knotting my stomach.
For as often as I’d changed networks over the course of my fifteen-year career, I should have been used to first days, but it never seemed to get any easier.
I’d arrived in Boston the previous weekend.
I’d been back just long enough for my mom to get under my skin, but not long enough to have actually unpacked all of my things.
I planned on staying in Boston, but not the garden apartment of my parents’ Charlestown triple-decker.
There was no need for me to completely unpack my moving boxes if I only intended on living under my parents’ roof temporarily.
By the time Monday had rolled around, I’d been a nervous knot of anticipation, overly eager to officially start my new job.
The station’s offices were on the fourth floor of a renovated brick building that had probably once been a shoe factory.
The open floor plan buzzed with quiet productivity—producers at standing desks, monitors flickering with highlights from the previous night’s men’s basketball game.
The hum of printers and the muffled sound of sports talk radio filtered through the air.
“You’ll keep busy with a seasonal rotation between the various women’s seasons,” my new boss, Mark, explained.
He looked like a character straight out of central casting. He wore a well-loved Red Sox cap, a styrofoam Dunkin’ cup seemed permanently attached to his hand, and his accent was so thick it could have sanded paint off a car.
“It’ll be mostly sideline reporting during home games,” he continued, “and between games you’ll handle long-form features for the network’s website and our socials.”
I nodded. All of this had been explained to me during the extensive interview process. Sideline reporting was second nature by now, but the chance to write and publish about who these athletes were off the court, the pitch, and the ice was what had really drawn me to the job.
It was simultaneously the element of the new position that made me the most nervous. I’d studied journalism in college, but it had been some time since I’d actually been responsible for writing something with paragraphs and cited sources.
Mark stood from his desk and gestured toward his office door. “Why don’t we head up to the arena so you can get the lay of the land.”
I followed the taillights of Mark’s sensible sedan up the interstate.
Boston’s women’s hockey team didn’t actually play in Boston.
For now, they hosted home games at a regional branch of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, about thirty miles north of the city.
Their practice facility was in Wellesley, an affluent suburb west of Boston.
With the sport’s growing popularity, however, the league hoped that someday teams could share the same downtown arenas as the men. For now, only Minnesota, New York, and Seattle had managed that.
Mark’s blinker flashed as he exited toward the university campus.
His sedan rolled past a cluster of brick academic buildings and into a parking lot that had seen one too many New England winters.
He pulled into a spot near the back entrance of the arena.
It was the kind of nondescript concrete structure that could have passed for any mid-sized hockey rink in America.
“This is home for now,” Mark said, holding the arena door open for me. “Not fancy, but no one seems to mind once the puck drops.”
Inside, the air was sharp with the scent of ice and rubber. The low hum of the refrigeration system filled the space, broken only by the echo of pucks slapping against the boards. A few players were already out on the ice, their shouts ricocheting through the rafters as they ran through drills.
The familiar scents and sounds stirred up old memories. I hadn’t grown up playing hockey, but I’d spent enough time in rinks during college that it had become like a second home.
I smiled faintly, taking it all in—the banners from college tournaments, the scuffed plexiglass, the faint chill creeping through my jacket.
Mark’s voice pulled me back. “The locker rooms are down this way,” he said, nodding in the direction of a wide corridor. “I’ll introduce you to the coaching staff, maybe a few of the players if they’re available.”
I nodded and followed him through a maze of concrete hallways. The heels of my boots were silent on the rubber runway. My pulse quickened with a mix of nerves and something else I couldn’t quite name—anticipation, maybe.
Whatever it was, I told myself it had nothing to do with who I might run into here.
“This is your first hockey assignment, right?” Mark asked.
I hesitated. “Not exactly.”
A bushy eyebrow lifted on his face. “Oh?”
I sighed, the truth slipping out before I could stop it. “I used to date one of Boston’s players.”
Mark stopped mid-step, turning to face me. “Oh, really?”
“It’s a conflict of interest, right?” I asked quickly, feeling the heat creep up my neck.
He shrugged. “Depends. Is there bad blood?”
“No, no.” I waved it off, feigning casualness. “It was a very long time ago. At least fifteen years. I doubt she even remembers me.”
I had no way of knowing if Dani ever thought about me.
I told myself I didn’t think about her anymore, but if I was being honest with myself, I’d unconsciously compared every woman I’d ever dated to her.
And there was a reason I’d established a strict no-dating-athletes rule.
Unstable futures. Trades. Injuries. Mood swings after losses. Too much risk. Too much heartbreak.
“I don’t care if you’re best friends with half the league,” Mark dismissed. “But once you’re assigned to cover them, you’re Switzerland—got it?”
I tersely nodded. “Got it.”
We stopped near the rink’s edge as players whizzed past, a blur of green and blue jerseys. There was a game later that evening, so for now players ran through drills on one end of the ice and stretched out muscles and limbs on the other.
Morning skate would be followed by media obligations, meetings with the coaching staff, and rehab treatments before lunch and a nap. I used to tease Dani that she napped more than a toddler, but she’d assured me it was a universal game-day ritual.
I scanned the ice instinctively until my gaze landed on her.
Even with the helmet and cage obscuring her face and the shoulder pads and breezers filling out her frame, I knew her.
I knew how she moved on the ice. The way the puck danced at the end of her stick as she weaved through defenders.
The ease with which she skated made it look like she was skimming across open water.
She still skated with the same aggression I remembered from her college days, but she’d changed. She was leaner, somehow, but with more power behind every stride. Her presence on the ice was magnetic, commanding attention without trying.
I felt eighteen years old again. Sitting in the stands. National championships. Watching her lift the collegiate trophy above her head, surrounded by her teammates, and me feeling so proud and so in love I thought my heart might burst.
My breath hitched when she looked toward the boards and her gaze snagged on mine.
She definitely saw me. I saw it in her body language. The puck at the end of her stick became forgotten. The aggression and intensity left her body.
“Callahan!”
The warning from a teammate came a second too late. Dani glanced up just in time to catch a solid shoulder check that sent her sprawling across the ice.
I involuntarily gasped. The drill kept moving around her as she scrambled back to her skates, shaking off the hit.
“Callahan! Keep your head on a swivel!” one of the coaches bellowed.
She nodded and adjusted her helmet with her gloved hand. She glanced my way one more time before sprinting to the opposite end of the ice.
Next to me, I heard Mark’s deep chuckle. “Doesn’t remember you, huh?”
I tucked myself against a concrete wall while Mark wandered off to check in with the coaching staff.
Morning skate had wrapped up at least ten minutes earlier.
Most of the players had already filed down the tunnel toward the locker room, blades clacking on the rubber mats, before the locker room doors swung shut behind them.
Technically, I could have followed Mark. That would have been the normal thing to do—to introduce myself, get a sense of the room, start off on the right professional foot.
But I stayed put. I told myself I was waiting because it was the respectful thing to do: give the staff and players some space, observe, ease myself in.
But the truth was simpler and far more pathetic.
I wasn’t ready.
Not for the reality of seeing Dani up close again. Not for the shock of how my body had reacted just from watching her skate.
My instinct was to bolt. Get in my car, pretend none of this had happened, and request a reassignment to literally any other team in Boston. Lacrosse. Softball. Professional pickleball. Someone else could cover the hockey team.
But running now would only make our first real encounter worse. And with our lives overlapping professionally, it wasn’t like I could avoid her forever.
I hovered near the tunnel entrance, pretending to scroll on my phone. Players drifted out of the team locker room in small groups—hair wet, faces flushed, lugging gym bags over their shoulders. Their chatter echoed down the corridor, bits of laughter and profanity bouncing off the concrete walls.
Dani was nowhere to be seen.
Of course she wasn’t. She’d always taken her time after practice—stretching, icing, showering, taping, whatever routine she’d perfected over the years. College-me used to tease her about how long she took. Pro-athlete Dani probably took even longer.