Chapter 6
six
MORGAN
I'm the last one into our locker room, and the door slams shut behind me with a metallic crash that reverberates through my bones. The sound is a physical manifestation of the rage roaring inside of me after James fucking Fitzgerald's pathetic performance on the ice.
I can still feel the cold spray of ice chips melting against my neck, trickling beneath my collar. My hands curl into fists at the insult, but I force myself to loosen them and to calm down. Because, just like retreating rather than escalating, it's necessary.
Because no matter how much I wanted to demonstrate exactly how a hockey stick can become a weapon, doing that would have been the wrong move.
Sure, it might have felt good in the moment, humiliating the big-swinging-dick in front of his buddies, but I wasn't going to do that at the expense of my team.
Now I just need to convince them that walking away was the right move.
Their eyes are all on me, twenty women tracking the ice melt dripping from my clothing, searching for cracks in my armor. They don't know me well yet, because we're strangers bound together by recruitment promises and a shared dream of legitimacy.
And this is the moment we might become a team.
Half of these girls transferred from other schools, burning bridges for a chance at something that doesn't even exist yet, under a leader they have no choice but to trust. The other half are walk-ons who were already at PBU, who showed up with duct tape on their skates and more heart than skill.
But right now, they're unified, because every woman has felt this before.
Every one of those girls knows the specific feeling of Fitzgerald's dismissal.
They've all met that boy who breaks your science project for laughs, who takes up three bus seats with his hockey bag while you stand, who treats your existence as either entertainment or inconvenience but never as equal.
But this one… holy fuck.
In the years since I last saw him, he's still larger than life, able to fill every available space with noise and that infuriating grin that says consequences are something that happens to other people.
His presence is a hurricane that doesn't care what it destroys, as long as someone laughs at the wreckage.
And, if I'm not careful, me and my team will be the china shop to his raging bull.
Three years, and he hasn't changed at all.
The memory tries to surface, so hard I can feel the sand between my toes, but I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper. That girl doesn't exist anymore. She was weak, and I cremated her the night she walked away from that boy with her dignity barely intact.
"Morgan… are you OK?" Sarah, one of my freshmen, asks.
She still has innocent eyes, still believes caring about each other is enough to make us matter.
She's from Iowa, I remember—corn country, where neighbors still bring casseroles when you're sick and high school hockey games pack the stands.
Her concern is genuine, which makes it worse, because I don't need that.
What I really need is soldiers, so I give her a single, sharp nod. It's appreciation for the gesture, dismissal of the sentiment. "I'm good, Sarah," I say.
"Captain," Mills says, stepping forward, five-foot-four of compressed determination and built like she was designed to throw hits in the corners and come up smiling through blood. The scar through her eyebrow gives her a perpetual look of skepticism that I find oddly comforting.
"I see the question in your eyes," I say, keeping my voice controlled. "You want to know why I pulled you off the ice rather than stand up to the bullies."
A few of the girls shift uncomfortably, my words echoing off our bare walls. And, as I look at each of them, I can tell they're all a little uneasy and unsure about what just happened out there. I let it all sink in, because discomfort is good. It means they're thinking.
"Let's sketch out the play." I move to the center of the room. "We get in their faces. Throw some insults back and forth. Maybe someone shoves a guy, knowing they won't shove us back…" I let my voice trail off. "Then they laugh, film it for socials, and make us look like emotional fools."
Jen, ex-Michigan State, crosses her arms. She's got the build of someone who grew up throwing hay bales and fighting brothers. "We can handle ourselves."
"I'm sure you can." I keep my voice clinical, though part of me wants to agree. Part of me wants to see the surprise on James's face when my fist connects with his perfect jaw. "And when campus security shows up, or there's a viral clip, who do you think Art Galloway punishes?"
The name lands hard, because they all know him, the athletic director who scheduled our ice time for 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. because "the men need prime practice hours, dear," and who gives me condescending smiles during meetings like I'm playing dress-up.
"His national champions who bring in millions?" I say. "Or the women's program he was forced to create?"
Silence, because the math is simple, brutal, and undeniable.
"We would have lost before we even started," I conclude. "While I don't think Fitzgerald has any deeper motivation other than drawing a laugh out of his buddies, I do think that reacting has the potential to backfire on us, not them. So I refused to give him that satisfaction or Galloway the ammo."
"So we just take it? Like we don't matter?" asks Rachel, a sophomore defenseman with linebacker shoulders, her voice cracking slightly.
I let out a sharp laugh with no humor, just recognition. "He already thinks that. Getting emotional about it doesn't change facts."
The door opens. Coach Walsh enters, expression carved from ice but eyes burning with the rage of someone who's lived this scene a hundred times.
Bri played Division I at Minnesota, went pro in Canada, and would have made the Olympics if her hip hadn't exploded.
And it's clear she knows exactly what happened.
Our eyes meet. I see my own exhaustion reflected back.
We're both tired of this fight, at Pine Barren and a million other places, but we're the only ones who can teach these girls how to survive it.
And, if we're lucky and strong and smart and we work our asses off and get some wins, we might be able to change it a little.
"Your captain is right," she says, her voice reinforcing mine with authority. "We play their game, we lose."
She moves with that slight hitch in her left stride that only shows when she's angry, but she's dead right. And this is why I wanted to play for her—not just for tactical knowledge, but for this ability to help forge a team—and she's what Galloway ultimately used to convince me to join.
"Out there, they have every advantage," Bri says.
"The schedule, the budget, the administration's support.
But in here?" She gestures to our concrete walls, one working shower head, the flickering fluorescent that maintenance ignores because it's just the women's locker room.
"In here, we have discipline, we have each other, and we have the element of surprise, because they don't think we're capable of being more than an afterthought. "
Her gaze finds mine again, and she nods. It's clear her little speech is done, and she's giving me the floor and the permission to be exactly as cold as I need to be. And, in that exact moment, something shifts in my chest, as anger catalyzes into purpose and strategy.
"He wants you emotional, Morgan," she says, her voice dropping so only I can hear it. "This moment is fuel that can burn hot and help you forge a team."
I look at my players. Sarah with her midwestern earnestness. Mills with battle scars and unwavering loyalty. Rachel with barely contained violence from years of being told she's too aggressive for a girl. Twenty women who are here because I sold them a vision.
Time to make it exist.
"Coach is right," I say, my voice dropping colder than the ice we left. "We don't fight children throwing tantrums."
I move to the whiteboard that someone had stolen from the science faculty, complete with rickety wheels and rust on the frame, where our pathetic practice schedule lives.
I wipe what's there (5:00 a.m. Monday, 10:00 p.m. Tuesday, whenever-we-can-steal-ice Wednesday), and, in large letters, I write: FUCK EVERYONE ELSE.
"Our only argument will be the work." I tap the board hard enough to make it shudder. "Nobody gives us respect, so we take it."
Spines straighten. Jaws set. In a world where each of these girls has been disrespected or disregarded a million times, this is language every athlete in here understands—not words or politics, not waiting for others to change, not fitting into their box, but pushing for results.
"He gave me a name," I say. "He meant it as an insult, because he sees that I'm cold, something that didn't react how he wanted." I pause, ensuring I have every atom of their attention. "From now on, in this room and on the ice, you will use it."
Confusion flickers, then Mills chimes in. "If James Fitzgerald wants the Morgue, we give him—and everyone—the Morgue. Cold. Final. Deadly."
Understanding spreads. One by one, they get it. Not just a nickname, but a new team name, an identity. A weapon forged from an insult. On paper, we might be the Pine Barren Devils, but that's their name, not ours. Our name is a cold reality check where ego gets buried under an avalanche of goals.
"The Morgue," Mills says, testing it. "I fucking love it."
"The men's team can keep their parties and pranks," Jennifer adds.
My lips curve into something sharper than a smile. "Running shoes. Now."
They move as one unit. No questions. Gear stripped with efficient violence, shoes laced with purpose.
I change too, sliding on compression leggings and a crop top like armor, and as we head out, Bri catches my eye.
Her approval is written in her posture, because she knows this run isn't about fitness.
It's about team-building and transformation.
Taking twenty individual hurts and forging them into a single weapon.
We burst outside, and my lungs protest the transition from humid locker room to crisp fall, but I embrace the burn. The campus is mostly deserted, but those people who are around stop and stare as twenty women pass in perfect synchronization, our footfalls creating a war drum rhythm.
I set the pace, fast enough to hurt, not so fast we break formation. Behind me, breathing labors, but nobody falls back. Sarah, with her asthma, keeps pace through pure will. Rachel, built for power, not endurance, maintains position through spite.
We pass guys in Devils hockey jackets—fans, not players—who catcall. "Looking good, ladies! Training for something or just trying to lose weight?"
Two weeks ago, some might have flipped them off.
Tonight, we don't even turn our heads.
We are the Morgue. We don't acknowledge the living.
The path takes us around the quad, past administrative buildings where Galloway probably sits counting the men's team revenue, past dining halls where the story of what Rook did will spread.
Past the bronze statue of the university founder, whose plaque proudly declares this institution was built on "excellence and equality"—two principles that apparently expire at the rink doors.
Each footfall declares: We're still here. We're not going anywhere. We're coming to take what's ours.
My lungs burn, my legs scream, my sweat stings. But this pain is clean, controlled. Pain I chose with purpose. Focused, directed, weaponized. Not like the chaos James Fitzgerald carries, all noise and clowning around and a desperate need for attention.
The rhythm fills my head, drowning out everything else.
Because there's no room for memories of beaches or whispered promises, and no space for phantom feelings of his hands in my hair.
There are just twenty pairs of feet hitting pavement in perfect unison, writing our declaration of war across campus.
We are the Morgue.
And everyone—including James fucking Fitzgerald—is about to find out.