Chapter 10
Logan
The flashbulbs pop like tiny lightning strikes as we step from the limo.
I squint against the barrage, feeling my smile freeze into the practiced expression I learned over years of media training.
Beside me, Reese’s hand tightens in mine, her burgundy gown catching the light as she steps out with more grace than I feel.
My bow tie goes from snug to constricting in a heartbeat—the same heartbeat that’s supposed to keep me steady at a podium in under an hour.
“Mr. McCoy! Over here!”
“Logan, who’s your date?”
“Mac, look this way!”
The week since I asked Reese to come with me has been a blur of practices, film, and a couple of quiet nights at my place.
Now, at the entrance to the Chicago Grand Ballroom with photographers tracking every movement, reality hits.
This isn’t dinner on my couch. This is a headline waiting to write itself.
“You okay?” Reese whispers, her thumb brushing my knuckles.
I nod, not trusting my voice. She looks unbelievable—dark curls swept up to expose the curve of her neck, that gown fitting like it was sewn on her. The sight should settle me. It doesn’t. It just raises the bar for how I want to show up with her on my arm.
We move through the gauntlet, my hand at the small of her back.
Inside, crystal chandeliers pour light over black tuxedos and jewel-toned gowns.
Old Chicago money mingles with new money in borrowed tuxes.
Ice sculptures drip at the edges. Someone decided we needed life-size crystal hockey figures; they’re losing a slow fight against the room’s heat.
“It’s beautiful,” Reese says, taking it in. Her quiet wonder steadies me.
“Not as beautiful as you,” I say, and it’s not a line. Her cheeks warm, a quick pink.
“You clean up pretty well yourself, Handsome,” she says, straightening a bow tie that doesn’t need it. The touch snaps my focus back where it needs to be.
The team’s PR director beelines over with a clipboard. “Logan, you’re table one with ownership and Coach Martinez. Speech at 8:45, right after the main course.” Her gaze lands on Reese. “And you must be…”
“Reese Thompson,” I say before she can turn it into a quiz. “My date.”
There’s a flicker—surprise, realization, then a professional smile. “Lovely to meet you, Ms. Thompson. We’ll update the place cards.”
As she pivots away, Reese squeezes my hand. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“First wave,” I say, smiling. “There are always more.”
We head to the bar. I order a scotch, get Reese a chardonnay. The first sip warms my throat and then settles in my chest. Across the room, my guys are packed in near a floral arrangement that looks like it could eat someone. Benny spots me and elbows Kovy, and now the whole pack turns.
“Here we go,” I murmur. “Meet the children.”
Reese smiles. “I manage actual children. This should be a breeze.”
They descend in a cheerful wall of cologne and chaos. Benny gets there first, clapping my shoulder hard enough to slosh my drink onto my hand.
“Mackie finally brings a date,” he announces. “Ben Peterson, but it’s Benny or Petey to everyone with good taste. As you can see, I’m the best-looking one.”
“Delusional,” I tell Reese.
She shakes his hand, unbothered. “Reese. And I’ve seen the team photos. There’s competition.”
The guys howl. Kovy slides in, tux a little too tight on purpose, grin sharp.
“You are brave woman,” he tells Reese, in his Russian-English way. “This one will sweat through tux before speech. Always.”
“That was one time,” I say. Heat crawls up my neck anyway. He’s not wrong.
“Try not to puke on your shoes, Mac,” Schmitty calls, pantomiming a faint at an invisible podium. The circle erupts.
“My money’s on mild collapse,” Petey adds, checking his watch. “T-minus forty minutes to eloquence.”
I roll my eyes, but the corner of my mouth twitches up.
Schmitty catches it and doubles down. "Remember when Mac tried to give that speech at the Boys and Girls Club dinner?
Sweated through his jacket like he'd been on the ice for a triple-overtime.
" Reese's eyes dance between us. She leans in, voice dropping conspiratorially: "So what you're saying is I should've packed him an extra shirt tonight?
" Kovy snorts his champagne and Petey high-fives her without hesitation. Five minutes in, and they’ve adopted her like a little sister.
Pride pushes the nerves to the back row. Watching her with them, easy and quick, I realize how much I’ve kept lines between worlds. I’ve never invited anyone to stand in this circle and be seen.
Across the ballroom, the coordinator taps her watch at me. Time. The relief evaporates like it was never here. Reese notices. She threads her fingers through mine.
“Ready to find our table?” she asks, sending the guys a smile that says go sit down, children.
They scatter with parting shots—“Don’t choke, brother!” “We’ll film it!”—and Reese turns my attention back where it belongs. She straightens my tie again because she knows it steadies me.
“Hey,” she says, soft, looking directly in my eyes. “You know exactly what you want to say.”
Her hand on my chest locks me in place—in a good way. I breathe, and the air actually moves.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For being here. For handling them. For making this feel doable.”
Her smile reaches her eyes. “That’s what I do. One step at a time.” She tips her head toward table one. “Let’s go charm the billionaires, then you do what you came to do.”
We walk toward the front. The speech sits in my inside pocket like a paper weight. With her hand in mine, the noise in my head finally drops to something I can live with.
Dinner plates clatter onto trays, the emcee recites a list of donors, and my pulse keeps trying to punch through my collar. I lean toward Reese. “I need a minute.”
She reads me like always. We stand, slide out past a knot of gala donors, and angle toward a service corridor. The noise dulls three steps in. Fluorescents buzz. Somewhere, a dishwasher thunders.
I loosen the bow tie and breathe like it’s a new skill. “Better?” she asks.
“Yes.”
I’ve done interviews with microphones a thousand times. Those are about line changes and systems. This is about me and what I think about something that has almost nothing to do with hockey.
I pull the folded pages from my pocket. The words I’ve memorized look like the wrong language. Responsibility. Mentorship. Community. I believe every sentence. My hands still shake.
“What if they see straight through me?” I ask the tile floor. “What if they hear this and think it’s a PR fueled crock of shit?”
Reese takes the pages from my hands and tucks them into her palm like contraband. Then she turns my face to hers.
“Logan,” she says, clear and calm, the way she probably says a kid’s name when they’re about to cry.
“You’re the man who runs hockey camps for kids every summer back in Hibbing.
You’re the man who stays after games until every single kid who wants an autograph gets one.
The man who showed up at my school and read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to my kids. That’s not a gloss.”
A server barrels by with a tray. Reese steps back just enough to avoid a collision, then steps right back in. She produces a glass of water—I didn’t even see her snag it.
“Drink,” she says, teacher-voice.
I drink. Cold slides through the heat. I give the empty glass back. Her hands smooth my lapels like she’s ironing me steady.
“I don’t deserve you,” I say, not meaning to say it out loud.
“Probably not,” she says, with a wink and an adorable smile. “But I’m here anyway.”
I breathe. My lungs finally cooperate.
“When I’m on the ice,” I say, catching the metaphor and swerving, “there are patterns. Here, it’s all people.”
“People are patterns too,” she says. She taps my pocket. “You know what you want to tell them. And you know who you are.”
The event coordinator appears at the mouth of the corridor, a clipboard clutched like a life preserver. “Five minutes, Mr. McCoy.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Reese takes my hands, squeezing gently. “Find my face if you get lost,” she says. “I’ll be the one smiling like an idiot.”
That earns a real laugh. Tension slips.
“If this goes badly,” I say, “will you fake a fainting spell?”
“I was thinking more interpretive dance,” she deadpans. “But sure. Fainting is on the table.”
“You’re trouble, Thompson.”
“So I’ve heard.” She rises on her toes and kisses me, quick and certain. “Go tell the truth.”
I glance once more at the pages, then fold them and slide them away. “Ready?” she says, offering her hand.
“As I’ll ever be.”
We walk back toward the crowd. The coordinator points me toward the wings. Reese peels off for our table, and I catch the small smile she shoots me over her shoulder. I carry that image up the steps.
The lights are brighter on stage than they looked from the floor. The first row blurs into a band of faces. The microphone squeaks; I wince.
“Good evening,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Thank you for being here for the Blades Foundation.”
The first sentences are stiff. Then I find Reese at our table—chin propped on her hand, the quiet smile just for me—and my shoulders come down a notch.
I talk about Hibbing, about a backyard rink my dad flooded when it got cold enough, about hand-me-down gear and early mornings.
I talk about what a locker room can feel like when you don’t have another place that you feel like you fit in.
The room shifts with me. People lean in.
Coach Martinez’s mouth does something close to a smile.
Sully gives me the smallest nod to go on.
“Responsibility doesn’t come from a jersey or a job title,” I say. “It’s how you show up for people and whether they can count on you.”