Chapter 14
Storm Warning
Jason
Fifteen minutes later, the coaches’ suite smells like burnt coffee and old tape. Jessie parked me here with a look that promised paperwork and texted compliance; the TV is muted but flashing highlights, our last game reduced to jerky ghosts that refuse to look away.
The coaches’ suite smells like burnt coffee and old tape.
The TV is muted but flashing highlights, our last game reduced to jerky ghosts that refuse to look away.
I take the chair by the window, far end of the oval, because distance is supposed to be smart.
Riley sits across from me near the whiteboard, legs crossed, pen aligned with her clipboard like she can staple the room into behaving.
We don’t look at each other. Not directly. My eyes do a lazy circuit of faces—Ducks at the head with his chewed cigar, Adams with his dry mouth twist, Julia leaning against the minibar pretending she’s furniture—and stop a breath short of Riley’s shoulder before moving on.
“Skate loads from morning practice,” she says, voice crisp enough to slice. She doesn’t aim it at me. She aims it at the air between us. “Maddox capped at seventy percent, no red flags. Sensations?”
Adams clears his throat like it’s his line. “Any soreness this afternoon, Jason?”
I let my knee bounce once under the table and lock it down. “Normal. Quads woke up mean and then got over it.” My voice is even. The word mean makes Riley’s pen tick once against the board. No one but me would hear that as a laugh.
Ducks taps the marker against the whiteboard. “Neutral-zone traps tonight. Don’t be cute at the blue line.” He points the marker at me without looking. “Maddox, your east-west looks are there if you don’t float. Don’t float.”
“Ten-four,” I say. I don’t float. Not anymore.
The meeting stretches like skate laces pulled too tight: zone exits, faceoff assignments, special teams tweaks.
I speak when spoken to. Riley routes everything through Adams—injury risk, load management, minutes ceilings—like we’re strangers who only speak adjacent.
Every neutral glance ricochets like a puck off tempered glass.
The elevator ghosts live in my peripheral vision.
The echo of her mouth is a problem I keep telling my pulse to ignore.
A knock thuds at the door, two beats, late. Ducks grunts, and Julia cracks it open. Assistant Coach Murphy slips in, hair damp, followed by a man in a navy sport coat who wears compliance like a cologne.
“Sorry,” Murphy says. “Brought Danvers from compliance. Quick thing about staff-player boundaries given the road schedule.”
Danvers’ gaze sweeps the room with a bureaucrat’s smile. It drifts over the lineup board, lands on Riley’s clipboard, then on me. It stays a fraction too long in both places, like he’s reading a headline that hasn’t been written yet.
My pulse spikes, stupid and obvious. I make my face blank and reach for the paper cup of coffee in front of me. It tastes like the bottom of a bench bag. Good. I deserve it.
“Just reminders,” Danvers says. “Travel compresses boundaries. Best practice is documented interactions, no closed-door sessions without a second staff present.” His smile widens. “Protects everyone.”
Riley’s pen doesn’t move. “Understood,” she says, professional to the bone. I watch her knuckles whiten around the clipboard, then force myself to watch the TV instead.
Ducks snorts. “We’re big on chemistry, Danvers.
On and off the ice.” It’s a joke he’s made a hundred times about line mates who actually pass the puck.
Laughter skitters around the room like a dropped coin anyway.
Murphy chuckles too loud. Julia’s mouth does a private wince.
I don’t laugh. Across from me, Riley goes very still.
Heat lifts under my ribs, sharp as a cross-check.
Protectiveness is dumb in a room full of people who think they’re on my side, but I feel it anyway.
I picture stepping in front of her like I did at the door, a wall between her and the smirk I hear under Danvers’ smile.
Instead, I sit back and let the chair creak, casual as a false start.
“Right,” Ducks says, rolling over it. “Back to the kill. Maddox, you’re first over the boards if Kitson’s stick stays a wet noodle.”
“Copy,” I say. The meeting drags through zone coverage and matchup assignments.
Riley’s voice stays neutral, but I feel her restraint in every clipped syllable.
When it ends, the room unravels—chairs scraping, cups tossed, pens capped.
I don’t look at her. She doesn’t look at me.
We leave a table’s length of air between us and pretend it’s enough to breathe.
The laugh lines from Ducks’ joke don’t fade; they smear. Danvers flips his notebook closed with a neat little click that makes my molars grind.
“Appreciate the reminders,” Julia says smoothly, stepping between the whiteboard and Danvers’ smile like she was born to be a firewall. “We’ll circulate an email.”
Riley’s pen finally moves—one short stroke that’s not a note so much as a pressure valve. Her face is composed, trainer-neutral, but I see the micro flinch she can’t hide fast enough when Murphy leans past her to grab a marker, brushing her elbow like she’s furniture.
Heat spikes, clean and bright. I roll my shoulders back and aim my mouth at the cold coffee before anything worse comes out.
I’m not twenty-two anymore. I don’t start fights in rooms with clipboards and witnesses.
But the part of me that still believes in putting my body between her and anything sharp is awake and pacing.
Ducks claps once, the cue to disband. “Get your heads right. Puck drop’s in three hours. Adams, Lane, send me the final availability. Maddox, extra touches after warmups if you’re feeling fancy, not instead of them.”
“Okay,” I say, standing slow so the chair doesn’t scrape. The room erupts in movement—Murphy fielding a text, Adams stacking handouts, Danvers buttoning his jacket like he accomplished something.
Riley slides her clipboard into her bag, the strap catching on the chair arm.
I’m halfway to stepping in when she frees it herself with a quick twist and a ghost of a smile that isn’t for me.
She’s fine. Of course she’s fine. She’s built entire careers out of being fine in rooms that would rather she be invisible.
I let the window reflection do the looking for me: her profile sharp, mouth set. The bruise of the elevator kiss isn’t visible, but I feel it in my own skin like a mark under tape.
Danvers drifts toward the door and pauses just long enough for his gaze to tilt between us again, measuring a distance he can’t quantify. I plant my hands in my pockets so I don’t fold that look into a square and feed it to him.
Julia angles into my line of sight, her eyebrows a question. Behaving? I give her the blandest version of my face. She nods, almost imperceptible, and peels away to intercept Danvers with a business card and a promise of policy PDFs.
“Hey, Lane,” Ducks calls as the room thins. “Keep Maddox under twenty-one if he starts getting cute with cross-ice sauce.”
“I’ll keep everyone under twenty-one,” she says, easy as sliding a blade cap on, and the room laughs again, safer this time. She doesn’t glance at me. I don’t deserve it anyway.
I shoulder past Murphy at the threshold. He slaps my arm, a friendly thud. “Stay outta the box tonight, show pony.”
“Plan A,” I say. Plan B is smashing a man with a clipboard through a wall, so yes, plan A.
In the short hall outside, the soundproofing gives up and the arena’s low thunder creeps in—fans banging the glass during open skate, the organ test run, the deep-bellied hum of refrigeration under our feet. It steadies me. The ice always does.
Riley steps out behind Adams. For a second we’re parallel, shoulder to shoulder and not touching, our reflections doubling in the glass case of retired pucks. I keep my eyes on the trophies and talk to the air. “Load feels good. I’ll run the edge work you mapped.”
Adams answers instead. “Good. Keep strides clean. Lane will send the interval update.”
“Will do,” I say, and it costs more than it should to leave it there—to let the conversation run through a third party like a wire grounded into the floor.
Riley pauses just long enough to adjust the strap on her bag, the smallest tilt of her head in my peripheral like a nod that never fully happens. Then she’s moving, efficient, purposeful, disappearing down the corridor that smells like eucalyptus liniment and victory lies.
I exhale, slow, let the hum of the building grow in my chest until it drowns everything else out. If they want documented interactions and open doors, fine. They can watch me do the one thing they actually pay me for. I’ll give them a game they can’t forget.
Warmups burn the excess out of my legs—edge work, pivots, a couple of lazy wrist shots that thud against the boards and wake up my hands.
I don’t scan the bench. I don’t need to.
I know exactly where she’d stand if I let myself look: third from the tunnel, clipboard tucked to her ribs, eyes on feet and hips and the places where stride turns into strain. I skate away from knowing it.
The game plays out like muscle memory and math.
Every shift feeds the next: passes clean, hits hard, the scoreboard moving in our favor.
I play the angles, stay boring, until the exact second I don’t have to be.
The goal snaps off my stick and lights the building.
The sound hits bone. I let it fill me, then let it go.
Third period. One-goal lead. Ice going bad. A winger takes a run at our rookie and the world tilts. I shoulder him off clean—textbook. The crowd roars approval. Still, the adrenaline hums wrong, too sharp. I can feel Riley’s attention like a wire humming between us.
We kill the penalty. We kill the clock. We win. The horn sounds, gloves and helmets fly, and I’m somewhere in the middle of the pile, laughing because the noise is too loud to think.
The tunnel floods with bodies and heat and flashbulbs. My phone buzzes in my pocket: PR directive—USE BACK EXIT. KEEP IT BORING. I pocket it. I’m not ready to disappear yet.
Reporters swarm. Cameras glare. Riley stands in the storm, clipboard raised, all focus and precision, one curl loose by her temple. She’s not looking at me. I find her anyway.
A cameraman backpedals into her blind side, lens red, recording. Instinct cuts through the crowd. My hand finds the small of her back, steadying. She breathes. Jessie’s voice cuts through the din: “Brand row—keep it clean!”
Too late. The lens catches the angle—her focus, my hand, the sponsor logo blazing behind us like a brand.
Jessie steps into the shot, smile sharp as a blade. “Credential?” she asks. The cameraman just grins and keeps filming.
Danvers watches from the edge of the scrum. His expression says paperwork and consequences. I shift, blocking the lens, making myself the story. The red light blinks again, hungry.
Riley lifts her clipboard, a small shield. “Step back, please,” she says. Professional. Unshaken. It kills me and saves us both.
The cameraman adjusts, lining up the perfect frame—star forward, team trainer, sponsor logo. Jessie snaps again. “Now, Jason. Back exit.”
I hold the space for one more breath. Protect. Don’t break. Don’t touch. The red light blinks a final time.
And then instinct wins.
My palm finds warm skin.