Chapter 2 The Late Glove （Nate）
THE LATE GLOVE (NATE)
The horn eats the last second, and I’m still seeing her. Row six. Tall. Blonde waves over her shoulders. Black jumpsuit. Mouth on some smug asshole in a cashmere sweater.
I push to my feet, skate an arc, tap my posts. One-two. Water. Mask down. Tell myself it wasn’t Eden. Could’ve been a lookalike. My head doesn’t care. Jealousy hits clean and dumb. The jumbotron narrowed on her, and my lungs stuttered. He kissed her slow, sure. He hadn’t earned it.
Mine. Not mine. Not the point.
The shot that beat me wasn’t hard. Screen up top, a knuckle through traffic. My glove was late by inches. The kind of goal that rides you down the tunnel and into the room.
I don’t miss glove-side.
I also don’t twitch when my left adductor pings on a wide seal, but it did in the second. Small bite, inside the hip. It shut up when the puck dropped, but it’s there. A quiet, smug little problem.
In the locker room, I strip gear in order: right pad, left pad, blocker, glove. The boys talk around me. Sticks clatter. Tape peels. I heard a few fans ride me on the walk off. Fine. Let them. I know the save I should’ve made.
Liam drops into the stall beside mine, towel around his waist, captain’s eyes on me. “You good?”
“Fine.”
He studies me. He’s been studying me since we were kids at Chelsea Piers. He can read it when I’m lying. I stare back until he lets it go.
Finn swings past, hair damp, grin crooked. “You were a wall for fifty-eight. One squeaker got through. We’ll take it back Friday.”
I grunt, which is a heartfelt thank-you. He pops my mask with his knuckles and moves on.
Mercer, our head trainer, lingers a half second too long near my stall. “Anything nagging?”
“Nope.” I don’t blink. He nods, drops an ice bag on the bench anyway, and keeps walking. Good man. Persistent. Has a nose for bullshit.
I shower hot enough to steam the tiles and run a thumb into the adductor just inside the pelvis. Tight. Not ugly. I can feel the fibers complaining when my knee drifts past neutral. That late glove? Maybe it wasn’t just the screen. I don’t love that.
I love it even less that I let a face in row six mess with my head for two beats I didn’t have to spare.
I went ten summers without her voice. When she cut me off, I phoned until even voicemail felt useless. Then I stopped. Every few months I fed her name to a search bar. Her socials were spotless. Clinic posts, conferences, nothing personal. She was guarding the doors, and I wasn’t on the list.
I towel off, pull on my game day suit, wrap the ice bag high on my left thigh. The room is warm, wet, loud. Coach Novak does a tight drive-by with a clap on my shoulder that says, You were good enough to win. We weren’t. I nod. He keeps moving.
I should be rolling now. Banded adductor. Hip internal rotation. I’ll do it at home. Alone. No audience. No questions.
Rowan pops her head in. She’s our new PR director, since Jessica left and started her own firm. “Liam, press in ten. Dmitri, you too. Nate…” Her eyes flick to my wrapped leg. She clocks everything. “You’re good?”
“Great,” I lie.
She arches a brow. “Media wants a quote.”
“I’ve got one—I picked it up late through traffic.”
She holds out her phone. “Say it so they don’t say I paraphrased.”
I speak into it. “We’ll be better Friday. Traffic in front; I was late on it.” Even. Boring. Dead end for questions. Rowan nods and vanishes.
The event level is a maze. Training room, interview room, then a corridor skirting a VIP club behind glass. Postgame lingers there: coat check, last drinks, a few diehards delaying Eighth Avenue.
I’m iced high on the left thigh and walking fine. Finn falls in beside me, quiet.
Through the glass, there she is. Black coat, blonde waves, the camel coat from row six hovering. She slips on a heel, hand to his shoulder. He hands her a water; she hooks the lemon out and parks it on the napkin. My jaw tightens. I let it go.
The last time I saw her was at Finn and Jessica’s wedding.
Green dress, hair down, eyes I could pick out in a blackout.
I took her hand and pulled her onto the dance floor, permission be damned.
For one song, I held the past in the present.
Her brother, Leo, clocked us from the dunes, same as every summer, guarding the lines he drew in permanent marker.
We moved for three minutes. Her shoulder brushed my chest, and everything else went quiet.
It wasn’t enough to breach the wall she built, but enough to wake the obsession I’d buried for ten years.
Since then I’ve hovered over her name more times than I’ll admit and never hit dial.
I know exactly how many disasters start with what if.
Before that? There’d been the time at Leo’s place a couple years ago.
She came by to drop off something—leftover birthday cake, I think—and froze the second she saw me.
She hadn’t expected me to be there. I stood, stupidly happy just to finally see her, ready to say hi, to ask how she’d been, maybe even figure out if she’d changed her number.
But she barely mumbled a hello before bolting out the door with some excuse about being late, leaving me standing there surprised, confused and—yeah, hurt.
And before that…the summer I left for training camp. She was sixteen, I’d just turned eighteen, and everyone was at the ferry dock to see me off—Leo, Ryan, our parents clapping me on the back, making weekend plans. But Eden wasn’t there.
I kept expecting her to come running down the dock at the last second. I wanted to hug her, hear her promise to write, to come to my games. When the ferry pulled away and the dock stayed empty, my chest cracked in two.
Mom must’ve noticed me searching because she leaned in, her voice low and gentle. “Baby, Eden’s over at Cassie’s house. She asked me late last night if she could stay there, and she told me to say goodbye for her.”
I nodded, pretending it didn’t matter, pretending the girl I had complicated feelings for hadn’t just pulled the floor out from under me.
I told myself we only spent those summers together because she was my best friend’s sister.
But the whole boat ride, I stared at the receding shore, wondering what I’d done wrong.
After that, I wrote to her a few times. Sent a couple of texts. Radio silence. Eventually, I stopped.
“Hey, Russo,” Finn drawls, tracking my stare. He gives a low whistle.
“Don’t.”
“Ain’t said a word.”
“You made a sound.”
“Just thinkin’, is all.” He tips his chin toward the window. “You gonna go say hey?”
“I’m not gonna interrupt her date.”
“That ain’t interruptin’. That’s a polite hello.” He studies my face. “Also, you look about two seconds from combustin’.”
He’s not wrong. The adductor throbs under the wrap, steady and petty. Eden laughs at something her date says, eyes cutting up. It’s polite. She’s trying. I can see it from twenty yards, and I hate that I can.
Rowan appears with a clipboard and a hurry. “Bus in five. Don’t linger by the glass unless you want a thousand amateur lip-readers and VIPs starting rumors.”
“Think you can make it to the bus without limpin’?” Finn rumbles.
“I’m not limping.”
“You’re icing.”
“Preventive.”
He lifts both hands. “Sure.”
I take one more look at her coat, her hair, the way she shifts off those heels, then turn for the tunnel to the players’ garage. Westchester-bound buses idle. The city hums above us. I climb on and tell myself this is restraint, not fear. My hip disagrees, and my chest stays unconvinced.
“Text her,” Finn says, casual. “Or don’t. But stop playin’ a game with your own brain.”
I flip him off. He laughs and sends one back. “You always were a comedian.” Then, softer, “You good, Nate?”
I blow out a breath. “Ask me when my adductor stops talking.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
I settle into a seat. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
Home is quiet. Lights low. I dump the bag and do what Mercer would want, boring and smart. Adductor squeezes on a ball, 90/90 breathing till the groin lets go. Ice for ten, heat after, compression shorts overnight.
The phone glows on the counter, face down. I try to ignore it. I cave.
Search: Eden Carver. My phone remembers the rest. Of course it does.
Her profile is private. Her avatar is the clinic logo—white on navy. She doesn’t show her face.
Message field blinks. I don’t have a right. I don’t have a plan. I also don’t have the ability to pretend I didn’t see her.
I type. Delete. Type again.
You at the game? Too obvious.
Nice seats. Sounds petty.
You looked happy. No.
My thumb hovers over the nickname I haven’t said in ten years. It started because she never stayed on the safe side of a fence, and I was always the idiot climbing after her. It never stopped fitting.
I type one word. Trouble.
My thumb slips. Send.
Heat spikes under my skin. I stare at the screen. Message sent to @edencarver.
I freeze, then hit Unsend. The bubble disappears. Maybe she saw the notification. Maybe she didn’t. Either way, bad idea.
Idiot.
I open the team portal and log a note for Mercer: Left adductor high. Tight post-split. No sharp pain. Monitor and load.
The phone buzzes. It’s not her.
ROWAN
Joy wants 10s reels in the morning. Do not limp on camera.
I send a thumbs-up. Pull on clean sweats. Lights low. The city hums through the glass. The crease is still under my feet. Eden’s still under my skin.
I promise myself I won’t look again. Then I count breaths in the dark and try not to think about the girl who’s been living rent-free in my head for years.