Chapter Four #2
Coop laughed.
The table filled after that.
Reese arrived with Hayes.
Dani with a tablet.
Claire with new numbers.
Brenda with optimism no one had approved.
The quiet morning planning session became a full showcase war room, which should have made Coop relax. This was what he knew. People. Energy. Moving parts. A room he could make easier.
Except now he was aware of Frankie in the middle of it.
Not loud.
Not performing.
But central in a way people might miss if they were bad at looking.
She corrected the station layout.
Flagged donor sight lines.
Shut down three bad slogans.
Asked Dani for attendance projections.
Told Birdie that “Westbridge can eat my skate guards” was not approved copy.
Let Wren keep “The Wall Holds” as a social caption but not an event station name.
The wall held.
The read mattered.
Coop watched the group listen to her.
Really listen.
Something warm and fierce pressed behind his ribs.
Not pride, exactly.
Pride felt too possessive.
Recognition, maybe.
Like he had known there was more there and now the room had finally turned its head at the right angle.
Claire took notes. “If we can show projected attendance over five hundred, donor conversion from Fuel the Fire, and media impressions, the ask gets stronger.”
Dani nodded. “I can build the dashboard.”
Frankie looked at her. “With confidence intervals?”
Dani’s face lit up. “Yes.”
Birdie whispered to Coop, “They’re flirting, but with spreadsheets.”
Reese said, “I heard that.”
“You were meant to.”
Hayes leaned over Coop’s shoulder. “How’s the goalie station?”
“Renamed,” Coop said.
“To?”
“Read the Ice.”
Hayes’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s better.”
Frankie looked at him.
Hayes added quickly, “Respectfully.”
“Good.”
Coop tried not to laugh.
Failed.
Frankie kicked him under the table again.
This time, Hayes saw.
His smile became unbearable.
Coop pointed one finger at him. Not now.
Hayes’s expression said, Absolutely later.
Terrible friend.
Excellent captain.
A laptop chimed.
Wren looked down.
Her face changed.
That was never good.
“What?” Reese asked.
Wren turned the screen around.
A message had appeared in the student sports forum.
Anonymous, because of course it was.
Brookfield wants donors to believe women’s hockey is “competitive” now? Cute. Let’s see how that looks when Westbridge puts six past them.
The table went silent.
Frankie’s face emptied.
Coop felt his own smile disappear.
There was more.
Wren scrolled.
A showcase won’t save a program that only exists because the men’s team felt guilty.
Birdie said, very softly, “I’m going to commit a felony.”
“No,” Reese said.
“Small felony.”
“No.”
Frankie reached for the laptop.
Wren let her take it.
Coop watched Frankie read the post.
Once.
Twice.
No visible reaction.
That was the thing.
People thought no reaction meant no feeling.
Coop was beginning to understand that with Frankie, no reaction meant the feeling had gone somewhere too deep for public access.
Doyle’s words from two days ago echoed in his head.
Not merely participate.
Westbridge’s copy.
Emerging women’s hockey presence.
And now this.
Cute.
Guilty.
Six past them.
Frankie closed the laptop.
“Don’t respond,” she said.
Birdie stared at her. “Excuse me?”
“Do not feed anonymous rot.”
Wren’s mouth tightened. “We need to monitor it.”
“Yes.”
“And counter-message.”
“Yes.”
Birdie pointed at the closed laptop. “We should also find whoever wrote it and replace their shampoo with rink cleaner.”
“No,” Frankie said. “Tempting. But no.”
Reese studied her. “Frankie.”
“I said no.”
Too fast.
Too sharp.
Coop heard it.
So did Reese.
So did Sutter, apparently, because the coach’s voice cut in from the doorway.
“Good.”
Everyone turned.
Coach Sutter stood there in her jacket, arms crossed, expression carved from granite and disappointment.
No one had heard her enter.
Possibly she materialized when players considered crimes.
“Anonymous gossip,” Sutter said, “is not a governance metric.”
Reese’s shoulders eased by half an inch.
Book One callback.
Still true.
Sutter walked to the table and picked up the printed showcase flow. “This is a governance metric. Attendance is a governance metric. Funding is a governance metric. Performance is a governance metric. Anonymous cowards are weather.”
Birdie raised one finger. “Can weather be punched?”
“No.”
“Follow-up—”
“No.”
Birdie lowered her hand.
Sutter looked at Frankie.
Not soft.
Never soft.
But direct.
“You will not carry someone else’s sloppy sentence into your crease.”
Frankie’s mouth tightened.
“I wasn’t.”
“Good.”
The word hit harder than usual.
Maybe because it was not praise this time.
It was instruction.
Frankie nodded once.
Coop looked down at his hands.
They were curled into fists.
He opened them.
Slowly.
Frankie had seen.
Her gaze flicked from his hands to his face.
A question.
Not pressure.
Now he was the one looking away.
Because the post had hit him too.
Not for himself.
For her.
For the Spitfires.
For every polite little way people found to say prove you deserve the oxygen we already gave someone else.
The room shifted into motion.
Wren saved screenshots.
Dani pulled numbers.
Reese wrote a response framework that did not mention the post directly.
Hayes texted Landry.
Claire called it “an opportunity to clarify value,” which made Birdie gag into her sleeve.
Brenda said, “Maybe we should avoid leaning too hard into rivalry language,” and six people said, “No,” at once.
Coop stayed quiet.
Too quiet, apparently, because Hayes looked at him.
Then really looked.
Coop stood. “I need five.”
He left before anyone could ask.
The hallway outside the lounge was empty. Cold air pressed against his face. He walked past the trophy case, past the vending machines, past the rink entrance, until he reached the narrow side corridor that led toward the equipment rooms.
Then he stopped.
Hands on hips.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Easy.
Be easy.
No.
He was tired of easy.
The thought came hard enough to stun him.
He was tired of smiling because rooms got tense.
Tired of smoothing over ugly things so everyone else could pretend they were small.
Tired of being useful only when he was comfortable.
The forum post had not named him. It had not mocked his team’s existence. It had not made his body the imaginary scoreboard.
But it had landed anyway.
Because he knew how quickly people believed a woman’s mistake proved a whole program’s failure.
He knew how much Frankie would hate that the number in the post was six.
Six past them.
Specific.
Cruel.
The kind of number a goalie would carry like a bruise.
A door opened behind him.
He knew before he turned.
Frankie.
She stood at the end of the corridor, hands tucked into her sleeves, face unreadable.
“Are you rage-walking?” she asked.
He huffed a laugh.
It came out rough.
“Maybe.”
“Bad form.”
“I’ll work on it.”
“You left your coffee.”
“I did.”
“It’ll get cold.”
“Tragic.”
She came closer, stopping a few feet away.
Space.
Always space.
But she had followed him.
That fact moved through him quietly.
Carefully.
Like something entering a room with its hands visible.
“You don’t have to be angry,” she said.
Coop looked at her.
“I know.”
“For me,” she added.
He swallowed.
There it was.
The wall.
Not slammed shut.
Raised.
Protective.
He shook his head. “I’m not angry for you because I think you can’t be.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m angry because it’s ugly,” he said. “And because everyone is already trying to make it useful instead of saying it’s ugly first.”
Frankie said nothing.
His voice dropped. “It’s ugly, Frankie.”
Her face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
He saw the hit land because she had not expected him to name it that plainly.
No strategy.
No spin.
No silver lining tied in a neat bow.
Just ugly.
She looked toward the wall.
“It’s anonymous,” she said.
“Still ugly.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“It can’t.”
That stopped him.
Frankie’s jaw was tight now.
Her eyes were dry, hard, focused on something that was not the hallway.
“It can’t matter,” she said again. “If every sentence from someone hiding behind a screen gets in, then everything gets in. Then the crease is crowded before the puck drops.”
Coop’s chest hurt.
He understood suddenly.
Not all of it.
Enough.
Let nothing in was not only about romance or fear or being prickly because it was funny.
It was survival math.
Too much entered, and she could not do the job.
So she stopped everything at the door.
Even the things that deserved to be felt.
He leaned back against the wall, leaving the corridor open between them.
“Okay,” he said.
Her eyes cut to him. “Okay?”
“Okay. Then it doesn’t get to enter the crease.” He held her gaze. “But it can exist out here for a second.”
Frankie stared at him.
The silence stretched.
A door somewhere down the hall clicked shut.
The building hummed.
Her fingers curled deeper into her sleeves.
Then, so quietly he almost missed it, she said, “Six is a lot.”
Coop’s throat tightened.
Not because he was surprised.
Because she had let the sentence out.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“If they score six, people will remember.”
“If they score six, the team will still be more than that game.”
“People don’t watch goalies like that.”
“I will.”
Her eyes lifted.
He had not meant to say it like that.
So bare.
So much.
But it was out now.
Standing between them in the cold corridor.
He did not take it back.
Frankie looked at him for a long time.
Then she said, “You can’t fix me with eye contact.”
His laugh cracked through the tightness in his chest.
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“You do it aggressively.”
“My eyes?”
“Your sincerity.”
“I’ll ask it to tone down.”
“Good.”
But her voice had eased.
Only a little.
Enough.
Coop pushed away from the wall. “We should go back.”
“In a second.”
He stopped.
Frankie looked annoyed with herself.
Good.
He waited.
She reached into the front pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a folded napkin.
No.
Not a napkin.
A small square of paper.
She held it out.
Coop took it.
Inside, written in her tight handwriting, was one revised line for the showcase copy.
Brookfield is not asking whether women’s hockey belongs here. Brookfield is showing what happens when it is properly backed.
He read it twice.
Then looked up.
Frankie shrugged. “Too much?”
“No.”
“Wren can sharpen it.”
“It’s already sharp.”
“Everything can be sharper.”
He smiled faintly. “True.”
She looked at the paper in his hand. “Use it if it helps.”
“It helps.”
“Fine.”
He folded the paper carefully and tucked it into his folder.
Frankie watched him do it.
That mattered too.
Maybe all of this mattered too much.
They walked back to the lounge together.
Not touching.
Not talking.
But together.
When they entered, Birdie looked between them immediately because Birdie’s gossip radar had military-grade range.
Frankie pointed at her. “No.”
Birdie closed her mouth.
Hayes looked at Coop.
Coop gave a small nod.
I’m okay.
Mostly.
Reese looked at Frankie.
Frankie gave no nod at all.
Also an answer.
The meeting resumed.
Wren took Frankie’s line and made an actual campaign post from it.
Claire approved the donor framing.
Dani added a graph that made Brenda whisper, “Oh, that’s compelling,” like she had discovered data could flirt.
Sutter stood in the corner, arms folded, occasionally saying things like “Cut that adjective” and “Donors can smell fog.”
By the end of the hour, the anonymous post had not disappeared.
But it had been outworked.
That felt like something.
Not enough.
Something.
As the group scattered for class and practice, Coop gathered his folder and realized Frankie’s paper was still tucked inside it.
He should have offered it back.
He didn’t.
A selfish part of him wanted to keep her words.
Not as a trophy.
As proof.
The wall had opened.
Just enough to pass something through.
Frankie came up beside him near the door.
“Vale.”
He turned. “Yeah?”
She looked at his folder, then at him. “Seven tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Seven.”
“No bagels.”
“Okay.”
A pause.
“Maybe coffee,” she said.
His smile started before he could stop it.
She saw.
“Do not.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are being pleased.”
“I’ll be privately pleased.”
“Be less visible.”
“Trying.”
She shook her head and walked toward the rink.
At the doorway, she stopped.
Not fully turning.
Just enough.
“And Coop?”
His heart did the stupid thing again.
“Yeah?”
Her voice was quieter.
“Thank you for saying ugly first.”
Then she was gone.
Coop stood in the lobby long after the door shut behind her.
Around him, the rink moved on. Athletes laughing. Skates scraping. Vending machine humming. A normal morning pretending it had not just rearranged something inside him.
He touched the edge of the folded paper in his folder.
Brookfield is not asking whether women’s hockey belongs here.
He thought of Frankie’s face in the corridor.
The moment she let one sentence through.
Six is a lot.
He thought of the anonymous post.
The showcase.
Westbridge.
The wall.
The wave.
And for the first time since the whole thing started, Coop understood the danger clearly.
Not the program danger.
Not Doyle.
Not donors.
Not even Westbridge.
Frankie Callahan was letting him see pieces of her.
Small ones.
Sharp ones.
Trust measured in inches and paper scraps.
And Coop was starting to want the kind of place in her life that could not be won by being liked.
He would have to be serious.
Steady.
Patient.
He would have to stop being easy when easy meant being quiet.
He looked toward the rink doors.
Then down at the silver A on his chest.
Alternate captain.
Not decoration.
Frankie had said it like fact.
So he would have to make it true.
Not for her.
Not only.
For himself too.