Chapter 9
nine
ROOK
The shared locker room and training facilities have become my own hell.
It’s been a week since our invasion, and the forced proximity isn’t limited to the locker room anymore. The burst pipe—that fucking burst pipe that’s somehow become the Franz Ferdinand assassination of our athletic department—has contaminated everything in the men's hockey part of the arena.
The weight room.
The treatment areas.
Even the goddamn vending machines.
Now every square foot of this place has transformed into a battlefield of passive aggression.
Equipment gets wiped down with theatrical disgust, like cooties survived into Division I athletics.
Even the fucking mirrors have invisible borders now, sight lines carefully maintained to avoid accidental eye contact.
The smell is its own special torture. My guys reek of stale sweat and yesterday's protein shakes, while the women's side carries this clean, sharp scent like they collectively bathed in eucalyptus and moral superiority. It's like there are two distinct territories marked by olfactory warfare.
And today, the battle has a sound.
The gym thrums with dueling soundtracks: my team’s obnoxious rap versus the women’s playlist—all female pop all the time, which somehow makes every rep feel like a referendum on masculinity. The bass lines crash into each other, creating sonic warfare that makes my molars ache.
Nash is currently attempting what might generously be called flirting with one of the women’s freshmen by the free weights.
She’s looking at him the way someone might look at a door-to-door salesman who won’t take the hint—not angry, just uninterested in whatever spiritual salvation or knife set he’s peddling.
It looks like this round of our rolling battle is over, at least until he flexes, actually fucking flexes mid-sentence, like that will make the difference and get her into bed with him.
But she doesn’t even blink. She just turns back to her bicep curls like he’s gym equipment that unfortunately learned human speech.
Jesus, we’re performing for an audience that left the theater.
The cold war Morgan declared with her silence when I'd sprayed her with ice has been waged by her whole team, their disdain for us obvious. And my guys don’t know what to do with being ignored. They’re used to being the main event, and suddenly they’re elevator music… there, but ignored.
So they’ve gotten louder.
More obnoxious.
Testing boundaries like toddlers with kitchen implements.
Stiles is grunting through bench presses like he’s trying to communicate with whales. The weight isn’t even that heavy—I’ve seen him rep out twice that without breaking a sweat—but he’s deliberately creating a soundtrack that would make a tennis player blush.
At this rate, we’ll be chest-beating by Thursday and pissing on the floor to mark territory by Friday. Though, knowing Stiles, he’d probably miss and mark himself.
And through it all, day after day, Morgan’s team moves with disciplined intensity that makes us look exactly like overgrown children. They spot each other with confidence. They rotate through equipment without argument. Hell, there are even spreadsheets with workout plans and spotters listed.
They communicate in head nods and eye rolls, as if they have some elaborate silent language that definitely includes specific gestures for “ignore the Neanderthals”.
And even the walk-ons to the women's team, girls who've been at Pine Barren for years and used to party with us, now make a point of ignoring us.
They're a perfect team, led by the Morgue.
She's at the pull-up bar, and I’m trying not to notice the way her shoulders flex with each rep, the controlled power that speaks to hours of dedicated training. Her red ponytail swings with metronomic precision. Her form is perfect, because everything she does is right and efficient and competent.
Then a clanging sound cuts through my reverie, metal shifting against metal, heavy and unstable.
Mills—Morgan’s defensive dynamo who looks ready to check someone through the boards using pure spite—is setting up at the bench press. The bar is loaded heavy. Two plates on each side, maybe more, and I can tell this isn’t a working set.
This is a PR attempt.
Her usual partner, a rangy forward whose name I haven’t learned because she looks at me like I’m radioactive, is nowhere to be seen. Mills scans the room, and I watch her calculate the risk versus reward of needing a spotter versus accepting help from the enemy.
Then Kellerman—sweet, eager, naive, golden-retriever-in-burgeoning-hockey-star-form Kellerman—practically vibrates with nervous energy. “I can spot you,” he offers, his voice cracking like he’s thirteen again. “If you… I mean, I know how. I won’t—”
Won’t what? Touch you inappropriately? Drop the bar on your face? Spontaneously combust from female proximity?
Mills hesitates, but practicality wins. She gives him a nod sharp enough to perform surgery. “Don’t touch the bar unless I stall. Just guide it if I call for help.”
Kellerman nods so enthusiastically I worry about whiplash. “Yeah, totally. I got you.”
Famous last words from someone who definitely doesn’t got her.
Mills unracks the weight with a controlled exhale. The first rep is clean. The second rep, she slows halfway, but she powers through. The third rep… she hits the wall and her muscles revolt, the bar frozen six inches from her chest and her arms trembling violently.
“Spot!” she grits out.
The disaster unfolds in slow motion. My body starts moving before my brain catches up, thanks to that same goalie instinct that has me dropping before the shot’s released. And, as I'm closing the distance, I see Kellerman panic and fuck up the spot.
Instead of helping her out with steady upward pressure, finding the right amount of load to help her without totally taking over, he jerks at the bar. He's got the wrong grip, terrible leverage, and physics takes over. The barbell tilts, one end dipping toward Mills’s throat.
Time fragments.
The bar tilting past recovery.
Mills’s eyes going wide.
Kellerman’s face shifting to horror.
The trajectory that ends with a crushed windpipe.
Move.
I cover the distance in what feels like a single heartbeat and get my hands under the falling side with millimeters to spare. The knurling bites deep, tearing skin as I roar and heave upward with everything, but the alternative is watching someone's neck get crushed on my watch.
The barbell crashes into the rack. The silence after is so complete I hear Mills’s ragged breathing, each exhale a prayer of relief. My own heart is trying to escape through my ribcage, because despite whatever shit has been going on between the two teams, someone almost got badly hurt.
Kellerman stammers, “Shit, oh shit, Mills, I didn’t mean—fuck, are you OK?”
Mills is sheet-white, her hands still gripping the bar, knuckles bone-pale. Vulnerability flashes in her eyes for exactly one second, as her mind no doubt processes what almost happened, then the look is replaced by rage aimed at Kellerman.
“Are you—” I start.
But Morgan materializes beside us. She doesn’t check on Mills, her focus locked on me. “Get away from my player,” she says.
"Morgan, I—"
"No." Her voice is low, controlled, dangerous. "Teach your goddamn puppies how to spot before they kill someone. Your guys might love you for the chaos and the laugh-a-minute fun, but sometimes you need to actually lead if you want to be captain of a team, James.”
Her words land like a string of body blows. The silence in the gym is a physical thing, pressing in from all sides. Her fury is a heat I can feel on my skin. And the old, familiar panic starts to crawl up my throat. Fix it. Make them laugh. Make it not serious.
It's like my brain has an automatic override sequence for social catastrophe, because my mouth moves before the smarter part of my brain can object. A wide, brittle grin splits my face. My voice is too loud, a desperate performance for the whole, silent room.
"Alright, people, show's over! Nothing to see here!" I gesture vaguely with one of my now-bleeding hands, then zero in on the mortified Kellerman. "Except for you, kid. You and I have a date with a remedial training video called 'Intro to Heavy Objects.' Don't worry, it's got pictures. Mostly."
A few of my teammates let out nervous, strangled laughs, but the sound dies instantly in the thick, horrified quiet that follows. The joke doesn't just fall flat, it crashes and burns, a Hindenburg of misplaced humor that goes up in flames just as fast and then crashes just as hard.
Morgan’s expression, which had been a mask of white-hot anger, simply vacates.
The rage is gone, replaced by a profound, empty stillness.
It's the look of someone who has just witnessed something so pathetic it's beneath a response.
She looks at me like I am the most disappointing thing she has ever seen.
My chest constricts as her look lands like a bullet, because the disgust in her expression and the slight curl of her lip make it clear that she thinks I’m personally responsible for what just happened, and nothing I say or do is going to change that.
She turns to Mills with an instant transformation from ice to warmth. “You’re OK,” she murmurs, barely audible. “Deep breaths. Count with me.”
My palms are bleeding and stinging like hell from where the end of the bar cut into me, but I can’t stop watching her check Mills over without making it obvious, positioning herself between her player and us like a human shield. Then, in full view of everyone, Morgan walks to an empty barbell.
No warm-up. No ceremony. She loads it herself, each forty-five-pound plate sliding on with mechanical precision. The metal sings with each addition. She’s loading it heavier than Mills attempted, and the message is clear: they don’t need us, our help, or our presence in their space.
The final plate slides home with a clang, as everyone in the room watches.
Erik Schmidt appears at my elbow. “You saved her ass. Everyone saw it.”
I nod, but I know that’s the problem. Everyone saw me save her player because my player fucked up. Everyone saw Morgan’s team need us and hate us for it. Everyone saw her player's discipline in trying to lift it and my player's loose concentration and technique in fucking it up.
Everyone saw me crack a gag when in Morgan's mind I’m the designated villain.
Morgan positions herself under the bar, and even in my frustration, I watch.
Her form is perfect, and I have to shake my head to banish thoughts of what that perfect form looks like without athletic wear on.
Then she unracks the weight and completes three perfect reps, each a demonstration of absolute control.
Each one a middle finger to the idea she might need anyone.
She racks the weight and stands, not even breathing hard.
Her eyes find mine across the gym, and the message may as well be broadcast on loudspeaker to my entire team.
She's telling us that although the women's team gets less attention and less funding, she considers them more talented and more disciplined than us.
And I'm not sure she's wrong.
“Dude,” Nash says, appearing beside me, still reeking of desperation and bad decisions. “That was fucking heroic. You literally saved—”
“Drop it,” I cut him off.
I’m starting to understand that with Morgan, every interaction is a no-win scenario.
Save her player? I’m the asshole whose team created the danger.
Try to make peace? I’m a coward not fronting up to the issues.
Make a joke? I'm not serious enough. Exist in the same space? I’m the invader in her sanctuary.
The worst part is the heat that won’t go away. The pull toward her that three years couldn’t kill and her contempt only makes stronger. My body seems determined to torture me with wanting someone who’s turned weaponized indifference into an art form.
But I can’t stop looking at her.
I did this. I taught her that needing someone was weakness. That trust gets you hurt. That letting your guard down means becoming a punchline.
The realization sits in my chest heavier than any barbell as Erik finally drags me toward the exit. Behind us, the gym slowly returns to life, conversations resuming in hushed tones. But the damage is done, with the battle lines now drawn in permanent marker.
I’m on the wrong side, holding the smoking gun of my team’s incompetence, branded with everything she thinks I am. Everything I think I am—the fraud, the imposter, the guy who's masking up all his bullshit by being so loud so often that there's no time to think.
And the worst part is, she’s right about all of it.