Chapter 2
Vs. Capitals
Aleks
When Sofie Fairfax slams the car door shut behind her, I can’t help but laugh under my breath.
Not because she is special. Not because she gets under my skin.
I laugh because she is a type. Untouchable.
Perfect hair. Perfect voice. Perfect little world built out of money and rooms she has never had to clean herself.
I grew up around girls like her. In my gymnasium in Moscow, all the children are privileged. Scholarship kids like me; a few made it a semester. Diplomat kids. Oligarch kids. The elite who pretended half the school did not exist ruled the halls.
Five girls at the top. Five very polished, very wealthy, very bored daughters of men who could buy my entire childhood street.
They used to tilt their chins up whenever I walked past. Pretend not to see me.
Pretend I did not belong there. Then, one by one, over the months and years that followed, each of those girls came to me. Separately, privately, carefully.
Slipping into stairwells or empty classrooms, cheeks flushed, skirts too short, breath shaky.
Not for apologies or a confession. Just for me.
For what they knew, I could give them. For what I did give them, but they also gave me something, and not just when they were on their knees, and that is precisely where they had to go first if they wanted anything else.
I loved them in that position, looking up at me for once.
The sex, the secrecy, the hypocrisy, and the truth that the same girls who pretended I was beneath them would come undone for me when the world was not looking.
So, when Sofie Fairfax rolls her eyes at me in the elevator and calls me AK like I’m just an object of destruction, a tool in an arsenal, not human, and she’s above everything I am? I know her type. And she is already more interesting than she wants to be.
I push the thought away for now. Enough of that. Game day matters. Everything else is noise.
What went down last night, or just moments ago in the elevator, gets wiped. My head resets. My pulse evens out.
If I am at the rink by nine, I’m good. Ice under my feet, my team, and the win are the constants in my life. Everything else is optional.
The ride is short. Traffic is low. I drink black coffee and let the morning light carve the edges off whatever softness last night tried to leave on me. By the time we pull into the arena lot, I am all blade again.
Inside, the rink smells like cold metal, ambition, and strength. Morning skate started at eight-thirty for the rookies, nine for the rest of us. I lace up without thinking. Tape, pads, skates, in the order my body recognizes.
The ice hits beneath me, and everything clicks into place. Fast laps. Passing drills. Edge work that wakes every muscle. Coaches watch. Teammates grunt. Steam lifts off shoulders. I do not speak unless I must. My mind narrows into a single line of sight.
This is the part of the day when nothing can touch me. Not last night. Not Sofie. Not Russia. Not even New York.
At ten-fifteen, we come off the ice. Treatments follow.
Trainers stretch me out while arguing about fantasy football.
Faulker’s next to me getting cupped. Moretti is getting his ankles taped.
Hank complains about sleeping on his shoulder wrong again.
I get my wrists iced, my quad scraped, then released.
By eleven, I am changed and headed to Sterling’s ride, even though he’s shacking up with Pembrooke. A few of us are still riding together after practice. Routine. Koa and Moretti have both moved out, but typically ride too. But not today.
“You get lost last night?” Sterling asks as he slides into the passenger seat next to his driver, Joel.
“Got something,” I lean back and close my eyes.
Faulker and our newest housemate, Hank Marshall, laugh. I’m not sure why it’s funny, but they’re having a good time, so whatever…
The Puck Pad is only fifteen minutes away.
Home base. Locker room number two. Sanctuary disguised as a house.
The whole time, Sterling talks about the house he’s looking at for him and Noelle, his sisters, and his mom.
He’s way too high-energy for me right now, but it’s good for him. I’m happy for him.
We arrive to find Paul Bronski standing in the living room, holding a spatula in full House Dad mode. “Finally. I thought you’d all died in traffic, and I was going to have to lace up tonight.”
He’s a trip, I think, as I take off my shoes, and he walks back into the kitchen.
Hank barrels in behind me, tripping over a box he forgot to unpack last week when he moved in. “It is not our fault. Traffic lights hate us.”
Paul calls back, “Everything hates you. Lunch in ten.”
To that, I can’t help but chuckle.
The house is loud in the way only teammates can be loud. Comfortable, familiar noise. Lunch is simple. Chicken, rice, vegetables, and protein shakes. The holy trinity.
We eat while the TV plays highlights, which they talk over and joke about.
I’m in the zone, learning the players, planning my defense.
Hank keeps asking if we think the crowd will be vicious tonight.
Faulker keeps telling him to stop seeking validation.
Paul? It’s clear he’s reliving his days.
Me? I want to sit and watch them all with him, because what he sees comes with years of wisdom, and straight truth; he’s a damn good man.
I just can’t now, it’s not how I roll. I zone them out.
The afternoon nap window opens. Thirty-five minutes. Not one more. Not one less.
I stretch. I lie back. I let my pulse settle.
But right when sleep pulls at me, an image slips in. Sofie, rolling her eyes in that elevator, acting like she is untouchable, like she’s not interested, and it’s in the same way the others did way back then.
I exhale, annoyed at myself. I shove the thought away.
Five-thirty will come fast, and when it does, the version of me that steps back into the arena is the one built to tear teams apart, not the one lying here thinking of her.
New York tonight.
The crowd will be loud. The stakes will be high.
And I will skate like I was born for the noise.
The pregame meal is set out in the players’ lounge. Grilled chicken, pasta, steamed vegetables, rice, food that fuels but never excites. Half the guys claim they are too keyed up to eat, then inhale two plates anyway. Me? I eat.
Most of the team is on their phones, heads bent over screens, the glow lighting up their faces. That is when the noise starts.
“Deacon. Holy hell. Did you see this?” Callahan barks out a laugh.
“Buddy. My man. You brought it to the web.” Foster cracks up.
“Oh, he did. He definitely did.” Sterling smiles, “Broke the fucking internet.”
Deacon looks up from lacing his shoes with the face of a man who already regrets existing. “What now?”
Hank turns his phone around so everyone can see the headline. “Former Playboy and Hottest Man of the Year, Goes Down.”
Koa chuckles, “The proposal heard around the league."
The video is looping. Deacon dropping to one knee, the crowd roaring, his girl crying, his teammates losing their minds in the background. Already seven million views.
He scrubs a hand over his face and asks with zero inflection, “It was private. How did it get out?”
Faulker smirks. “You proposed at Icehouse. How did it not?”
I clap him on the shoulder, playing along because a few of us knew it was going to go down like that. “Relax. You look good on camera.”
Deacon lifts his chin, “I look good, she looks fucking beautiful.”
We roar at that. The good kind of ribbing follows. The kind that comes from men who would bleed for each other without hesitation. Every jab is affection. Every laugh is a new layer to their coat of armor.
He scowls, “And she’s highly intelligent. A professional. You disrespect her, I will cut you.”
“Period.” I chuckle.
“Mic dropped,” Faulker adds.
“End of.” Sterling laughs.
“Fuck off,” Moretti grumbles.
Stretch time follows. Bands pulled. Hips opened. Shoulders loosened. The locker room fills with the soundtrack of grunts, thuds, and Faulker lecturing Hank about the benefits of yoga for a goalie, specifically.
Someone throws a towel. Someone else throws it back. The speakers blast warm-up music. Energy builds in the room, the door swings open, and Coach D walks in.
Silence lasts exactly one breath.
Coach D is not loud. She doesn’t have to be. She stands in front of the whiteboard, eyes scanning the room, taking all of us in like she is cataloging strengths and sins.
“New York,” she says. Simple. Heavy. “They play fast. They talk shit. They think they’re the only New York team and will try to run you out of your own building. Prove them wrong.”
Everyone shouts out or cheers in response.
She taps the board with his marker. “First shift sets the tone. I want hits. I want speed. I want them gasping before the five-minute mark. If they want to play physical, remind them whose ice this is.”
Heads nod. Muscles tense. Heart rates rise. Coach looks directly at me. “You start us off. Make them feel you.”
A rush hits me all at once. Clean. Hungry. Electric.
Coach D steps back, voice dropping low. “You know who you are. Play like it.”
Her stare sweeps over us, sharp enough to cut tape with.
She is the first female head coach in the league and the only one who could have pulled this team out of the gutter and into something lethal.
Not because Costello was trying to make history, but because she was the best. Number one in the country at Lincoln University and Olympic-bound until that fight on the ice knocked her off the roster.
She still carries that fire in her, the kind that crackles in the air when she speaks.
And just like that, we are seconds away from the tunnel. Seconds away from the roar. Seconds away from war.