Chapter 37
thirty-seven
MORGAN
The words taste like broken glass coming out of my mouth: “I need you to stand with me.”
Twenty pairs of eyes stare back at me in our freshly painted locker room. For a moment, I wonder if I've horribly miscalculated this situation and my standing with these girls. I wouldn't blame them; I've spent so long pushing them away, so who am I to ask for help now?
But then Mills breaks the silence. “Fucking finally,” she says, with an exasperated sigh.
I start to respond, but my voice cracks, betraying the careful control I’ve spent three years perfecting. But I don't mind showing some emotion this morning. Not since a boy with chaos in his blood learned how to be still, and I learned that strong doesn’t mean alone.
Coach Walsh steps forward, her professional blazer masking the fury radiating off her in waves. “We’re with you, Morgan, every one of us, every step of the way.”
There's nods and backslaps and excited agreement, the sounds of a team that's been underestimated all semester and done nothing but win, despite the efforts of their own administration. Then, as one, we stand from our lockers and begin the walk to our showdown with Galloway.
I lead the walk to the administration building, and my entire team follows behind me, twenty-one pairs of sneakers creating a rhythm like a military march.
When we get there, the boardroom door looms ahead, all dark wood and institutional intimidation, the same room in which Galloway made a pass at me.
The same room in which Rook stood up for me.
Stood with me, beside me.
Mills shifts closer. “Ready to fuck shit up, Captain?” she murmurs.
Despite everything, my lips twitch. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Only on Sundays.”
The normalcy of her crude humor loosens the vise around my lungs just enough to let oxygen reach my brain.
So, with one final nod, I push open the door and head inside, followed by Mills, Coach Walsh, and the rest of the girls, who fill up the space on the edges of the room like we fill a defensive zone.
Galloway sits at the head of the conference table, his thick fingers steepled in a way I’m sure he thinks looks contemplative but actually resembles a toad attempting prayer.
He looks like one of the portraits of the dead white men adorning the wall, who definitely had opinions about female ankles showing.
Two board members flank him like gargoyles guarding a particularly uninspiring cathedral. The woman has steel-gray hair scraped into a severe bun, and the man beside her wears the permanent expression of someone discovering his coffee is decaf after it’s too late.
“Ms. Riley,” Galloway says, savoring each syllable. “How… thorough of you to bring your entire team to what was supposed to be a simple budget meeting.”
I take my seat across from him, placing my binder on the table with the precision of a sniper setting up a position. My team lines the back wall, a silent jury in crimson and black that makes me feel simultaneously powerful and exposed, like I’ve brought witnesses to watch me bleed out.
“Transparency seems important when discussing the future of my team and the athletes on it,” I say, keeping my voice level despite the battery acid doing parkour in my stomach.
"And when discussing the promises that were made to them, by you, when you recruited me to lead your female hockey program. "
His smile is as false as his hair. “How admirable, though I’m afraid their futures are precisely what we need to discuss. The fiscal realities of maintaining a program that has yet to prove its viability are proving to be especially difficult, and—”
He launches into his PowerPoint presentation without the PowerPoint, all buzzwords and bureaucratic masturbation. I’ve heard this symphony before, different conductors but always the same crescendo: You don’t matter. You never did. You’re a line item I can erase.
My fingers itch to deploy my binder—my beautiful, color-coded, cross-referenced weapon of mass documentation that contains every promise he made to me—but I know it won’t matter. This was always going to be an execution; I just chose to die with witnesses.
Then the door opens.
And he enters.
My entire nervous system experiences what can only be described as a catastrophic reboot the second James walks in. There's no manic entrance that would make a golden retriever look subtle, no voice that treats volume control as a suggestion.
He moves with the controlled purpose I’ve only seen when he’s locked into a game, reading plays three moves ahead as he guards his goal. The PBU Hockey t-shirt across his shoulders does things to my cognitive function that would concern a neurologist.
When our eyes meet across the room, he gives me the tiniest nod and then a small smile, which I know is just for me. Then he melts into the background, rather than stepping up and talking or telling a joke, which is the exact point my brain kicks in and processes the full scope of what’s happening.
The entire men’s hockey team files in behind him.
Kellerman and Schmidt first. Then Cooper, looking like he’d rather be getting a colonoscopy.
Even Nash and Stiles are here, their usual testosterone-fueled bro-swagger replaced with something that might actually be solidarity if you squint. Then the others.
They're all here.
They position themselves along the walls with military precision, crowding the room with dark jerseys and crossed arms. As everyone stares at the spectacle—Galloway and the gargoyles included—I feel the room’s power dynamics shift like tectonic plates.
Because say what you want about athletic administrators, at the end of the day they know their jobs are tied to the athletes.
And like a dictator who realizes he's lost his army or a boss who realizes the staff on the factory floor have walked out, a moment arrives when the bean counters must be told…
Enough.
My heart is attempting some sort of complicated gymnastics routine—part shock, part gratitude, part overwhelmed. Because I told James about the situation, and he chose to come and help, but, crucially, he's not stealing the show or making things worse.
He's just… here… silent and supportive… in complete silence.
And he brought an army.
Galloway’s face shifts through the entire pH scale, from smug neutral to acidic purple. “This is highly inappropriate. This is a closed meeting—”
“We’re not in the meeting,” Schmidt says, his voice as flat as roadkill. “We’re just standing here.”
“In a public building,” Cooper adds in his trademark monotone that somehow manages to sound sarcastic. “During public hours.”
"Unless you've got something to hide, sir," Kellerman even finds his voice. "And… uh… yeah!"
Galloway’s jaw works like he’s attempting to grind diamonds with his molars, then he looks past me and locks onto James. “This is a pathetic attempt at intimidation, and I expected better from you, Fitzgerald. Although, given your recent… academic challenges… perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.”
The veiled threat about James's grades makes my hands clench. But James doesn’t bite and doesn’t fill the space with words. He just stands there, right next to me, as immovable as bedrock, his silence speaking volumes in languages Galloway never bothered to learn.
Then the door opens again.
Coach Pearson enters and moves to stand next to Coach Walsh.
The sight of it will stick with me forever, the two coaches standing together, unified in a way that makes Galloway’s purple deepen to a medically concerning eggplant.
Because it shows that, no matter how hard he's tried, he hasn't divided or broken us.
“Pearson,” Galloway says, grasping for control like a drowning man clutching razor wire. “Surely you’re not endorsing this circus.”
“I’m endorsing my players’ right to support their fellow athletes,” Pearson says evenly. “Is there a problem with that, Art?”
The temperature drops to arctic. The board members exchange glances that precede emergency meetings and hasty resignations. Steel-Bun clears her throat with the authority of someone who’s fired bigger men for smaller infractions. “Perhaps we should—”
The door opens a third time.
My brain experiences what I can only describe as a blue screen of death as the captain of the football team enters.
Marcus Washington, a six-foot-four running back who's built like someone asked God for a human tank and God overdelivered, and perhaps the only person on campus revered more than the PBU hockey team.
The basketball captain follows. Then soccer. Baseball. Lacrosse. Swimming. Track. The boardroom that felt spacious twenty minutes ago is now standing room only, and by the time the door closes again, every single captain who represents PBU in collegiate athletics is in the room.
Marcus steps forward with the gravitas of someone who knows his mere presence changes gravitational fields. “Mr. Galloway, we’ve become aware of concerning patterns regarding the squeezing of budgets of certain teams, and we have concerns any one of us could be next if we get on your bad side.”
Holy shit, he’s going nuclear.
“That’s a serious accusation,” Galloway sputters, but Marcus continues with the inexorable force of a carefully planned offensive.
Steel-Bun leans forward with the intensity of a raptor spotting movement. “Young man, what exactly are you implying?”
Marcus turns to her with practiced diplomatic precision.
“I’m not implying anything, ma’am. I’m informing you that the student-athletes of Pine Barren University have voted.
If Mr. Galloway remains in his position, we will be initiating a comprehensive strike.
No games. No championships. No revenue.”
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear my synapses firing.