Chapter Fourteen #2
Second sequence, Tanner tried to be clever and changed his release point.
Frankie stopped it anyway.
“Predictable,” Tanner muttered.
Frankie’s head snapped up.
Watch-list word.
Several people turned.
Tanner realized too late he had stepped into something.
Frankie skated forward slowly. “Say a different word.”
Tanner looked genuinely confused. “What?”
“Different word.”
Tanner looked at Coop.
Coop gave him nothing.
Tanner looked at Hayes.
Hayes shook his head slightly.
Tanner swallowed. “Expected?”
Frankie considered.
“It’ll do.”
Tanner exhaled.
Birdie, from the boards, whispered, “She protects the watch list with violence.”
Wren said, “As she should.”
The third sequence was theirs.
Coop carried wide with Hayes as the passing option. Frankie set in the crease.
Even in practice, even through the cage of her mask, Coop felt her attention like a physical thing.
Read before the shot.
He angled his shoulders as if he’d pass.
Frankie held.
That worked.
He delayed half a beat.
She tracked.
He cut tighter.
Her weight shifted.
He snapped a low shot toward the far pad, aiming for a controlled rebound zone.
She kicked it clean to the corner.
Perfect.
Whistle.
“Again,” Sutter called.
They ran it again.
This time he passed.
Frankie pushed across and got enough glove on Hayes’s shot to send it over the net.
Birdie whooped.
Nolan lifted both arms. “THE READ STOPPED THE—”
Frankie pointed her stick at him.
“—reasonable offensive opportunity,” Nolan finished.
“Better,” Frankie said.
Third run.
Coop carried.
Hayes cut late.
Frankie read pass.
So Coop shot.
High blocker.
Not hard.
Not unfair.
Enough.
Frankie snapped the save away.
Then immediately glared through the mask.
Coop smiled before remembering he should not.
Mistake.
Her eyes narrowed.
He skated by and said under his breath, “Useful?”
She said, “Barely.”
“High praise.”
“Underground praise.”
“I’ll mine for it.”
Her shoulders moved.
Maybe a laugh.
Maybe a threat.
He would take either.
By the end of the session, the station was tight.
Ninety-second intro.
Three sequences.
Built-in donor viewing point.
Clear teaching line.
Frankie’s spoken part was still the strongest piece.
Everyone knew it.
No one over-said it.
Growth.
As players cleared the ice, Coop stayed near the bench to collect cones and tape markers.
Frankie skated over, still in mask and gloves.
“You changed your shot on the third run,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To test whether the read was visible if the shooter lied late.”
Her mask hid most of her face.
Not her eyes.
“You lied well.”
“Thank you?”
“Insult.”
“I’ll take it anyway.”
She studied him.
The rink was still public. Hayes and Tanner were by the boards. Nolan was arguing with Wren about whether “reasonable offensive opportunity” could be a chant. Sutter was writing on her clipboard.
Frankie’s voice dropped. “Six-fifty was good.”
Coop’s grip tightened around the tape marker.
He looked at her.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
His smile started.
He stopped it halfway.
Her eyes warmed.
Barely.
Enough.
“Normal face,” she said.
“This is as normal as it gets right now.”
“Bad.”
“I know.”
She skated away before he could say anything else.
Smart.
One of them had to be.
Coop stepped off the ice and headed toward the locker room hall with Hayes.
They made it six steps before Hayes said, “So.”
“No.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You said so.”
“It was a small so.”
“It had context.”
“Massive context.”
Coop stopped near the equipment room door and looked at his best friend.
Hayes’s smile faded, becoming something gentler.
“You’re happy,” Hayes said.
Coop exhaled.
Looked toward the rink.
Frankie was at the far bench now, removing her mask while Birdie hovered nearby, hands moving wildly as she spoke.
Frankie looked annoyed.
And alive.
And impossible.
“Yeah,” Coop said.
The word felt terrifying.
Hayes nodded.
“Good.”
“Don’t say it like Sutter.”
“I can’t. No one can.”
“True.”
A pause.
Hayes leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Is she?”
Coop looked back at him.
“Happy?”
Coop did not answer quickly.
Because Frankie’s happiness was not simple. It was not bright and easy and available for public consumption.
It was a half-smile in the dark.
A deleted voicemail.
A hand offered in the cold.
A pastry review that sounded like structural engineering.
A goalie choosing to present her own work without letting the room own her.
“I think,” he said carefully, “she’s letting herself be.”
Hayes nodded again.
“Then don’t rush her.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.” Hayes smiled faintly. “But you’re you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means when you care, you bring coffee, fix chairs, answer texts fast, offer seventeen types of support, and accidentally become someone’s entire weather system.”
Coop winced.
“I do not.”
Hayes stared.
Coop looked away.
“Okay, maybe.”
“Frankie doesn’t need weather.”
Coop watched her across the rink again.
“No,” he said. “She needs options.”
Hayes’s expression softened. “Exactly.”
Coop tucked the rotation sheet under his arm.
“She gave me rules.”
“Good.”
“She added kissing restrictions.”
Hayes’s eyebrows shot up.
Coop closed his eyes.
Already done.
Too much.
Hayes’s silence was enormous.
Coop opened one eye.
His best friend looked like every Christmas morning of his childhood had arrived at once.
“Don’t,” Coop warned.
Hayes pressed his lips together.
Failed.
“Absolutely not,” Coop said.
Hayes looked toward the ceiling.
“Happy for you,” he said, voice strained.
“Quietly.”
“Trying.”
“You’re doing terribly.”
“I know.”
Coop shoved him lightly in the shoulder and walked away before Hayes could become unbearable.
He showered.
Changed.
Checked three showcase emails.
Answered two texts from Claire.
Rejected Nolan’s updated chant proposal, which now read NO PUCKS, NO PROBLEMS and made absolutely no sense.
Then his phone buzzed with a message from his sister.
MARA: Mom says you may come late Sunday. Are you dying?
Coop smiled despite himself.
COOP: No.
MARA: Are you in trouble?
COOP: Also no.
MARA: Is it a girl?
Coop stopped walking.
Stared.
Siblings were the worst.
COOP: It’s showcase work.
MARA: That was not a no.
He stood in the hallway outside the men’s locker room, phone in hand, suddenly aware that he had not told anyone in his family about Frankie.
Not really.
He had mentioned the Spitfires.
The showcase.
Frankie in general, maybe, as the goalie running the station.
But not Frankie.
Not the car.
Not the kiss.
Not the way she made him want to be more honest and less easy at the same time.
He typed:
COOP: It’s complicated.
Mara replied immediately.
MARA: THAT IS A YES.
Then:
MARA: Is she nice?
Coop laughed.
Out loud.
A passing freshman looked at him strangely.
He typed:
COOP: No.
MARA: Excellent.
COOP: She’s good.
Mara did not reply right away.
Then:
MARA: Good for you or good in general?
Coop leaned against the wall.
That was a dangerously smart question.
Mara was nineteen and terrifying.
COOP: Both, I think.
MARA: Then don’t be dumb.
What was with the women in his life and that advice?
COOP: Mrs. O’Malley already said that.
MARA: I like her.
COOP: You’ve never met her.
MARA: I can tell.
Another message:
MARA: Mom will be weird if she knows. Dad will ask hockey questions. I will be normal and superior.
COOP: You are never normal.
MARA: Superior though.
He smiled.
COOP: Yes.
Then, after a second:
COOP: I might tell you about her first.
The dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Then:
MARA: I can be serious.
Coop swallowed.
He knew that.
Mara, beneath the weaponized sarcasm and blanket theft, could be very serious.
She had lived a year where her own body turned rooms into danger. She understood what it meant to look fine from the outside and be fighting something no one else could see.
Maybe that was why he wanted to tell her.
Maybe she would understand why Frankie mattered without making Frankie into a story.
COOP: I know.
MARA: Sunday. Bring pie. Come late. I’ll save you a seat away from Mom’s question face.
Coop’s chest loosened.
COOP: Thanks.
MARA: Also if this girl is mean to you, I’ll haunt her.
COOP: She’d probably respect that.
MARA: I already like her.
He was still smiling when he reached the lobby.
Then he saw Frankie standing by the trophy case with her phone in her hand, and the smile disappeared.
Not because of her.
Because her face was too still again.
Coop slowed.
She looked up.
There was no panic this time.
No flinch.
Just a flatness he had begun to recognize as effort.
“What happened?” he asked.
She turned the phone toward him.
A text from her father.
DAD: Watched the board clip someone sent. Presentation was fine. Don’t let the attention soften your game. Westbridge will be different.
Coop read it once.
He wanted to throw the phone.
He did not.
Growth.
Maybe.
Frankie locked the screen.
“I didn’t answer,” she said.
“Good.”
She looked at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “Coop good.”
Her mouth almost moved.
Then didn’t.
“He called it fine,” she said.
Coop’s heart twisted.
The word, from her father, was not theirs.
Not fine and hurt.
Not her deflection.
Not a joke after a kiss.
A weapon.
A small one.
Still sharp.
Frankie looked at the display.
At The Fire We Built.
At the station line.
At her own small photo.
“I think I hate that more than if he insulted it.”
Coop stepped beside her.
Not touching.
“You wanted him to see it,” he said.
Her eyes snapped to him.
He did not take it back.
She looked away.
The silence stretched.
Then she said, “Yes.”
One word.
So quiet.
More honest than a shout.
Coop nodded.
Of course she had.
Not because she wanted his approval.
Because children kept tiny, impossible places open in themselves for parents to walk through correctly.
Even when they knew better.
Maybe especially then.
Frankie’s voice went flat again. “Stupid.”
“No.”
“It is.”
“No.”
“Vale.”