17. Riley
Riley
Three years later, Riley eased the heat gun along the heel of a junior skate and felt the carbon fiber give beneath her thumb. Too much heat would ruin the shell. Too little would leave the kid fighting his own equipment every time he tried to turn.
Sunlight poured through the upper windows of Delaney Bespoke Skates, reaching across her workbench and the orderly racks beyond it. The smell of heated carbon fiber mixed with the clean scent of fresh grip tape. Somewhere down the aisle, a plastic hockey stick rattled across the rubber mat.
“Mommy, goal!”
Riley lowered the heat gun and glanced toward the noise.
Clara stood beside a crooked plastic net with both hands wrapped around her stick. Her curls had escaped the ponytail Riley had fixed before breakfast, and the foam puck rested several feet behind the net.
“That puck missed by a mile.”
Clara pointed at the net. “Goal.”
“You’re changing the rules now?”
“Goal,” Clara repeated, grinning.
Riley laughed and aimed the heat gun back at the boot. “Fine. It counts. Keep the puck on the mat, bug.”
Clara attacked it again.
The stick clattered away from her, struck the leg of an empty stool, and spun across the aisle.
No one rushed over to tell Riley her daughter was disrupting a sponsor meeting.
No handler appeared with a schedule. No velvet rope divided the room into places Riley belonged and places somebody else had decided she didn’t.
The shop belonged to her.
Not a factory. Not an empire. She had rejected both ideas before anyone could put numbers in front of her. Delaney Bespoke Skates stayed small because Riley wanted it small: one fabrication floor, a fitting room, storage in the back, and direct access to the coastal rink next door.
Local development players filled most of the calendar. A handful of NHL veterans had managed to earn places on her waiting list, but every one of them signed the same nondisclosure agreement before walking through the front door.
No photographers. No entourages. No exceptions.
Clara wandered up to the bench and stretched onto her toes, studying the skate.
“Mine?”
Riley switched off the heat gun and set it on the bench. “Not unless your feet grew about six sizes overnight.”
“I need fast ones.”
“You already have fast ones.”
“Faster.”
Riley pressed her thumb against the cooling heel, checking the shape. “That’s exactly what your father says about everything.”
Clara accepted the accusation without shame and chased her puck toward the other end of the shop.
Riley watched her go.
For years, ice had meant somebody else’s building, somebody else’s cameras, somebody else’s permission. Now her daughter could run between the workbenches while Riley shaped skates for kids who still loved hockey before anyone had taught them to turn it into a product.
We survived the noise. We built a place where the ice belongs to us.
The rear storage door opened, and Wade stepped out carrying a pair of steel runners.
“You done heating that heel?”
“Enough to hold the shape.” Riley rotated the boot beneath the work lamp and checked the back seam. “What’ve you got?”
Wade lifted the runners. “I pulled the profile radius for these new junior boots. The runners are locked, and that pitch is dead-on.”
Riley set the boot beside its mate and reached for the first runner.
The edge caught the sunlight as she checked Wade’s work, the blade clean and true from toe to heel.
“Good. Drop them into the holders before lunch. Toby is running afternoon practice today, and he needs the ice time to break them in.”
The bell over the street entrance chimed while Riley was checking the fit between Toby’s runner and its holder. She glanced up as Mac shouldered through the door with a cardboard tray balanced in both hands, four coffee cups wobbling in their slots.
“Clear me a landing spot before somebody knocks these into a box of eyelets.”
“The side counter’s clean,” Riley said. “Keep them away from the adhesives.”
Wade looked over from his bench. “Mine better have sugar.”
Mac crossed the shop without breaking stride. “You get whatever I bought you.”
He set the tray on the counter, nudged one cup toward Wade, then turned his attention toward Riley’s pneumatic riveting press as if the machine had personally summoned him through the door.
Riley rested Toby’s skate on the bench. “You know that passed calibration yesterday.”
Mac crouched beside the pressure gauge. “And today exists.”
“This is my shop.”
“Then you can throw me out after I check the gauge.”
That had become the shape of their mornings.
Mac arrived with coffee, found something to inspect, and behaved as though Riley had merely opened a satellite branch of Copper Shank without telling him.
Three years of owning the building had done nothing to cure him of supervising machinery that no longer belonged to him.
Riley had stopped trying.
Mac tapped the gauge housing and watched the needle settle. “Gauge is locked right at sixty PSI, Riley. Calibration is perfect. I’m assuming Wade hasn’t been allowed anywhere near these air lines?”
“I’m ten feet away, Mac.” Wade lifted his coffee in protest. “My job is cutting the materials. The pneumatics belong to the boss.”
“As they should.”
Riley folded her arms. “You do realize I repaired your sole press before you even hired me.”
“And I remember what that press sounded like when you were done with it.”
“It ran.”
“It complained.”
“It was seventy years old.”
Wade hid a grin behind his cup. “I’m staying out of this one.”
The argument had no teeth in it anymore. Mac straightened from the riveter, satisfied enough to stop poking at Riley’s equipment, and reached for his own coffee.
A hockey stick scraped across the floor.
Clara had abandoned her puck near the fitting stools and was staring toward the front of the shop. Recognition spread across her face, and she let the stick fall beside her before charging down the aisle.
“Uncle Mac!”
Mac put his cup back on the counter before she reached him. The same man who had once stared Riley down over a broken industrial press dropped to one knee and opened his arms.
Clara barreled into him.
Mac caught her around the middle and rocked back on his heels with a laugh. “And here’s my favorite mechanic! You keeping an eye on your mom so she doesn’t cross any wires back here?”
Clara nodded with solemn importance. “Mommy makes skates.”
“She does.”
“Fast skates.”
“The fastest.”
Riley rested a hand on her bench. “Don’t encourage her. She already thinks every tool in the building belongs to her.”
Mac looked over Clara’s head. “Smart kid.”
Clara reached for the pencil tucked behind his ear, and Mac surrendered it before she could start negotiating.
Three years ago, he had offered Riley a job because she could resurrect a machine everyone else had given up on. Then came the loft, the shop, the long shifts, and all those ordinary days when he had kept showing up without asking what Riley owed him in return.
Now Clara called him Uncle Mac before she called half the blood relatives she barely knew.
Mac carried her toward the coffee counter while she inspected the stolen pencil like a prize.
Somehow, the gruffest man Riley knew had become Clara’s Uncle Mac.
Riley had just reached for Toby’s second holder when the office door opened behind the glass wall. Maisie stepped onto the shop floor with her iPad cradled in one hand, her thumb already moving across the screen as she headed toward the bench.
“You want the short version or the irritating version?”
Riley fitted the holder against the boot and checked the alignment. “If they’re different, you’re wasting my time.”
“Fair point.”
Maisie stopped beside the bench and looked up from the screen. Her acrylic nail tapped once against the tablet. “That European prospect is officially off the waitlist. He pushed back on the NDA, so I made it clear that outside photographers will never make it through our front doors.”
Riley kept one hand on the boot. “Let him walk. A corporate brand will gladly take his money if he just wants a photo op. The cameras stay out.”
“He tried the whole ‘my management team needs content access’ routine.”
“Then his management team needs another skate maker.”
Across the shop, a wrench landed on Wade’s rolling cart. The rink refrigeration system hummed through the shared wall, steady enough that Riley barely noticed it anymore unless the building went quiet.
Maisie swiped to the next client file. “I already released his fitting slot.”
“Give it to the next junior family before you offer it north.”
“That’ll make somebody’s week.”
“That’s the point.”
Three years ago, Riley would have measured success by who wanted access to Graham and how expensive the room became once he entered it. Now a famous name carried less weight than a kid who needed a boot that stopped chewing up his ankle through practice.
The waiting list existed because the work was good.
The rules existed because Riley said so.
Maisie settled against the end of the bench. “You know, turning away professional athletes still gives me a weird amount of satisfaction.”
“You enjoy saying no too much.”
“It’s one of my core skills.”
Riley picked up the shop rag and wiped a trace of adhesive from the holder. “Add it to your résumé.”
Maisie’s eyes dropped back to the screen. “Consider it done. Though my timeline is melting down over a different spotlight right now.”
Riley rested the boot on the bench.
“Nicolle just announced her retirement from figure skating.”
The name crossed the shop and disappeared into the same refrigeration hum.
Riley folded the rag once between her hands and cleaned the edge of the bench. No arena lights followed. No press handler appeared at the door. No one shoved a microphone toward her and demanded a reaction.
Maisie tilted the tablet. “Do you want to see the announcement?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
Riley tossed the rag into the bin. “I spent enough years looking at that woman through somebody else’s cameras.”
Maisie lowered the tablet.