Chapter Four
Coop
Coop Vale brought coffee.
Black for Frankie.
Regular for himself.
No foam art.
No cinnamon.
No emotional drizzle.
No small heart drawn on the lid by the barista, who had asked if the second coffee was “for someone special” and then smiled like she had personally discovered romance.
Coop had said, “It’s for a planning meeting.”
The barista had said, “Sure.”
Which was rude.
Accurate.
Still rude.
He reached the rink lobby at 6:44, because seven meant seven and Frankie Callahan apparently considered time a blood oath.
She was already there.
Of course she was.
Same table.
Same black hoodie.
Same tiny notebook.
Same expression like the morning had offended her and she was building a legal case.
But today, there was something different beside her coffee.
A protein bar.
Peanut butter.
Placed across the table from her.
Where he usually sat.
Coop stopped walking.
Frankie did not look up.
“Don’t make it weird,” she said.
He looked at the protein bar.
Then at her.
Then at the protein bar again.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You have posture.”
“My posture is touched.”
“Stop having that.”
“I can’t. It came with the spine.”
Her pen paused.
Very slight.
Coop counted it as a win because he was becoming pathetic and had decided to make peace with that.
He set her coffee down carefully, far enough not to crowd her notebook.
“Black,” he said. “No foam art. No emotional drizzle.”
Frankie lifted the cup and inspected it. “No foam. You live.”
“High praise.”
“Low praise.”
“I’ll take it.”
She slid the protein bar two inches closer to him.
“Recovery snack,” she said.
“Not flirting?”
Her eyes lifted.
Flat.
Deadly.
Beautiful in the kind of way that probably got men hit by pucks because they forgot basic survival skills.
“Do you want it back?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then learn.”
He sat.
The protein bar stayed between them.
A small, ridiculous thing.
A snack.
A peace offering.
A rule violation within rules.
He tucked it into his hoodie pocket before he could embarrass himself by smiling at it any longer.
Frankie opened her notebook. “We need to fix the goalie station.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Time is fake. Problems are real.”
“Hard to argue.”
“Don’t try.”
He took out his folder. “I updated the event flow after yesterday. Claire likes hockey first. Reese added captain messaging. Wren added press boundaries and made three comments that felt like threats but were technically punctuation.”
Frankie nodded once. “Wren is efficient.”
“She also renamed the donor reception ‘The Investment Ask.’”
“Good.”
“Brenda renamed it back to ‘Community Forward Reception.’”
Frankie’s face went still.
Coop had never seen a person threaten a phrase before.
Not the speaker.
The phrase itself.
“I know,” he said. “Wren changed it again.”
“To what?”
“Future of the Fire.”
Frankie considered. “Approved.”
“Moderate praise. We’re improving.”
She turned a page. “The Wall Holds is bad.”
Coop leaned back. “I thought you approved it.”
“I said fine.”
“Frankie, that’s your version of a parade.”
“No.”
“Small parade.”
“No floats.”
“One banner.”
“Vale.”
He grinned into his coffee, then remembered he was supposed to be professional.
Frankie saw it.
Her eyes narrowed.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“The showcase?”
“Being irritating.”
“I contain mult—” He stopped himself so fast he nearly bit his tongue.
Frankie’s stare sharpened.
He pointed at her. “I stopped.”
“You almost said it.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You thought it loudly.”
“Can thoughts violate the watch list?”
“Yes.”
“Noted.”
Her mouth twitched.
There.
That tiny smile she refused to finish.
The kind that made him feel like he had scored short-handed in overtime, except quieter and worse for his long-term emotional stability.
Coop looked down before he got caught looking at her mouth.
Professional.
He was professional.
Mostly.
“Okay,” he said. “Why is The Wall Holds bad?”
“It makes me sound like a slogan.”
“You are a little bit a slogan.”
She reached for his pen.
He surrendered it immediately.
Smart men survived.
Frankie crossed out the station title and wrote:
READ THE ICE
Coop looked at it.
Then looked again.
“Oh.”
“Better?”
“Much.”
“Because the point isn’t that I stop everything. I don’t. No goalie does. The point is that saves start before shots. Reads. Pressure. Bodies. Edges. Bad choices by forwards.”
“Hey.”
She glanced at him. “Forward-adjacent.”
“I’m a center.”
“Exactly.”
He pressed a hand to his chest. “That felt personal.”
“It was structural.”
“That’s worse.”
Frankie ignored him and drew a new version of the station layout. “The crowd needs to see the decision tree. Puck carrier. Passing option. Screen. Rebound risk. Make it visible.”
Coop leaned in.
Not too close.
He had become deeply aware of measurements around Frankie. Inches mattered. Tone mattered. Whether his hand rested on the table or stayed in his lap mattered.
Not because she was fragile.
Frankie Callahan was not fragile.
Because she was guarded.
And because he was starting to want things with a seriousness that made all his usual charm feel too cheap to use.
She drew another line.
“Here,” she said. “Put the donors behind the glass at this angle. Not centered. Centered makes them watch the puck. Off-angle makes them watch the goalie’s head.”
“The read.”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s really good.”
She did not look up. “I know.”
He smiled. “Also really humble.”
“Unnecessary trait.”
“Debatable.”
“By worse people.”
He laughed, and this time she did not tell him to stop.
That felt dangerous.
The rink lobby began to wake around them. A pair of swimmers cut through on their way to the training room. Someone from baseball mumbled about protein powder. The vending machine hummed like it had bad intentions.
Coop checked his phone.
Two messages from Hayes.
HAYES: Reese wants to know if you two have killed each other.HAYES: I said no because Frankie would do it efficiently and you would not be texting.
Coop snorted.
Frankie’s eyes flicked up. “What?”
“Hayes.”
“Is he being emotionally smug?”
“Constantly.”
“Reese has ruined him.”
“Improved him, he’d argue.”
“He would.”
Coop slid his phone back into his pocket. “They’re good, though.”
Frankie’s pen slowed.
“Yeah,” she said.
Just one word.
But softer than usual.
Coop noticed.
He was always noticing now.
He wondered if it annoyed her that he saw things. It probably did. He wondered if that was why she kept looking away first, like his attention was a shot she knew how to stop but not how to categorize.
He understood that feeling.
A little too well.
Being seen sounded nice in theory.
In practice, it could feel like standing in the middle of a rink without pads.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
Frankie’s eyes lifted. “Does what bother me?”
“Reese and Hayes. Them being together now.”
Her expression closed.
Too fast.
Mistake.
Coop set his cup down. “Sorry. Not my business.”
“No.”
He waited.
Frankie looked toward the rink doors. Beyond them, the ice sat hidden and cold and probably easier for her to talk to than him.
“No,” she said again, quieter. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“Okay.”
“It would if he made her smaller.”
Coop absorbed that.
“He doesn’t,” he said.
“No. He learned not to stand in the wrong place.”
Coop smiled faintly. “He did.”
“She still carries the team first.” Frankie tapped her pen once against the notebook. “But not team only.”
The callback landed between them.
Familiar.
Important.
A phrase earned before his book had even begun.
His book.
Ridiculous thought.
Life did not have books.
Still, lately, everything felt organized around chapters he did not remember agreeing to enter.
Coop looked at her. “Do you think you get to have that too?”
Frankie went still.
Very still.
The kind of still that made him immediately wish he could pull the question back and also glad he had asked it.
Her voice came out flat. “We’re planning a showcase.”
“I know.”
“Then plan.”
He should have let it go.
He should have smiled, made a joke, softened the edge.
Instead, he did the thing he was trying to learn.
He stayed serious.
“Frankie.”
She closed the notebook.
Not hard.
Worse.
Carefully.
“Don’t.”
The word was quiet.
Not angry.
That landed harder.
Coop sat back. “Okay.”
And he meant it.
Not okay as in fine, I’ll wait five minutes and try another angle.
Okay as in the door is yours.
Frankie’s jaw shifted once.
For a second, he thought she might say something else.
Then the lobby doors opened, and Nolan burst in wearing a beanie, slides, and the haunted expression of a man who had seen the future and found it badly refrigerated.
“Emergency,” Nolan announced.
Frankie did not turn around. “No.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Still no.”
Nolan dropped into the chair at the end of their table. “The Egg Council is in crisis.”
Coop closed his eyes.
Frankie looked at him. “This is your team.”
“It’s Hayes’s team too.”
“Deflection.”
“Survival.”
Nolan slapped a printed flyer onto the table.
brOOKFIELD HOCKEY SHOWCASE — VOLUNTEER FOOD SUPPORT
Underneath was a list of possible concessions options.
Frankie read it.
Then looked at Nolan.
“No breakfast station.”
Nolan recoiled. “You didn’t even consider it.”
“I smelled the idea.”
Coop reached for the flyer. “Nolan, we’re not serving eggs at a donor-facing showcase.”
“Why not?”
“Because last time, you called them ‘high-protein pucks.’”
“That was branding.”
“That was a health-code concern.”
Nolan pointed at Frankie. “Goalie. Back me up. Eggs are structurally important.”
Frankie took a sip of coffee. “To birds.”
Birdie arrived exactly then, as if summoned by insult.
“What about birds?”
“Eggs,” Nolan said.
Birdie froze. “You called?”
Wren stepped in behind her, saw the flyer, and immediately said, “No.”
Nolan turned slowly. “Why is everyone hostile to breakfast innovation?”
“Because your innovation smells like sulfur and ambition,” Wren said.