7. Lucy
LUCY
NOW
The Frosthawks plane felt more like a flying hotel than an airplane.
Wide leather seats stretched in pairs along both sides of the cabin.
Warm red accent lighting glowed beneath polished wood panels.
Somebody had already stolen three of the team blankets.
Zee was currently spread across two seats he absolutely did not pay for, arguing with Marco about whether a hot dog technically qualified as a sandwich while Jonah sat across from them looking like a man reconsidering every life decision that had brought him here.
We were headed to New York. Big road game. National coverage.
The first trip after Alois won his court case and got cleared to return.
Everybody had spent the last week talking about that.
The media. The league. The suspension. The fake relationship circus that somehow had Alois and Bea traveling together looking one passive-aggressive comment away from committing homicide.
Normal stuff.
Frosthawks stuff.
I should have been focused on hockey.
Instead, I was halfway through a protein bar and pretending not to listen to Marco explain the proper way to flirt with flight attendants when the cabin door opened.
I barely looked up.
Then I froze.
Lucy stepped onto the plane.
For a second, my brain completely stopped working.
Not because I hadn't seen her lately.
I had.
Three or four times a week at minimum since the blowup in her office. Hallways. Meetings. Arena offices. Occasionally standing outside Sarah's office looking like she was actively questioning every career choice she'd ever made.
That wasn't new anymore.
The surprise was seeing her here. On the plane. Traveling with the team.
In my world. Or at least the version of it I'd spent the last eight years living inside.
Lucy paused near the entrance while one of the travel coordinators handed her a folder.
Her dark auburn curls fell over one shoulder. A cream sweater disappeared beneath a charcoal blazer. Slim black trousers. Practical boots.
Professional.
Controlled.
Composed.
The exact opposite of how I suddenly felt.
"What?" Jonah asked from across the aisle.
I realized I'd stopped chewing and my mouth was slack open. "Nothing," I choked as I forced a dry, large bite to go down.
His eyes narrowed.
I pointed at Marco. "He's talking again."
"Fair."
Across the cabin, Marco was still speaking. Nobody appeared to know what about. Not even Marco.
Lucy thanked the coordinator, accepted a folder, and started moving down the aisle.
Every conversation within ten feet of her immediately shifted. Not because anybody was intimidated. Because people liked her, a little too much for my taste.
A few weeks ago she'd barely known where half the offices were. Now equipment staff waved. Operations personnel greeted her by name. Keith trusted her. Sarah trusted her. Hell, my coach trusted her.
She fit.
I hated how much that realization bothered me.
Lucy stopped beside Bea's seat. The two women exchanged a few quiet words. Bea looked exhausted. Alois looked like he would rather have been punched than participate in office chitchat.
Business as usual.
Then Lucy continued down the aisle.
And immediately discovered a huge problem.
There was only one seat left.
Unfortunately for me, it sat almost directly across from mine.
I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them again, the seat had not magically disappeared. Neither had Lucy.
"Well," Marco announced loudly from three rows away, apparently spotting her at the exact same moment. "This flight just became significantly more attractive."
Lucy didn't even look up. "Good afternoon, Marco," she sighed.
The man actually put a hand over his heart. "I love when you say my name."
"That feels like something you should keep to yourself," Lucy hissed under her breath.
Jonah barked out a laugh. Zee nearly choked on a pretzel. Marco looked delighted. I wanted to throw him through the emergency exit.
Lucy reached her seat a moment later. The one directly within my line of sight. The one I was now going to spend the next three hours pretending not to stare at.
Fantastic.
She slid into the leather chair smoothly and immediately reached into her tote bag. A book appeared.
I stared. Then stared some more. Because apparently my life was a joke.
Three weeks.
Three weeks of seeing her around the arena.
Three weeks of pretending I didn't notice things.
And somehow this hit harder.
The book wasn't special. It wasn't even a book I recognized.
It was the fact that she opened it before we'd even finished boarding. No phone. No laptop. No scrolling. Just reading.
Exactly the same way she'd done it when we were sixteen. When she'd spent entire afternoons curled into coffee shop chairs while I tried unsuccessfully to distract her every six minutes.
The memory arrived unexpectedly. Sharp enough to sting.
Lucy crossed one leg over the other and disappeared into the pages without a second thought.
Like she couldn't feel me looking. Like she didn't know.
Like I wasn't sitting twenty feet away having a completely abnormal reaction to seeing my ex-girlfriend for the first time in an environment where she absolutely did not belong.
Lucy turned a page.
Then another.
Then another.
Completely oblivious. Or pretending to be. And if she was pretending, she was a hell of a lot better at it than I was.
I sank deeper into my seat and glanced toward the window. New York suddenly felt a very long way away.
The plane began taxiing a few minutes later. Seatbelts clicked. The cabin lights dimmed slightly.
Outside, snow drifted across the runway beneath floodlights.
The flight settled into the strange rhythm road trips always found eventually.
Conversations faded into scattered pockets throughout the cabin.
Somebody started a card game near the back.
Zee lost spectacularly within twenty minutes and somehow insisted everyone else had cheated.
Marco declared himself an innocent victim of jealousy before Jonah calmly pointed out he'd been keeping two extra aces in his hoodie pocket the entire time.
I laughed because everyone else did. It sounded convincing enough.
Across the aisle, Lucy never looked up from her book. She read through takeoff. Through the meal. Through the turbulence over Pennsylvania. She even read while Marco wandered over under the obvious excuse of asking whether she needed anything from the snack basket.
"I've been told I'm an excellent travel companion," he announced, leaning one shoulder against the back of her seat.
Lucy marked her page with one finger before looking up. "By whom?"
"Myself."
"Very credible source."
"I also make exceptional conversation."
"I hadn’t noticed."
Marco grinned like she'd complimented him instead of politely insulting him. "You wound me."
"You’ll recover."
"You think so little of me."
"I think exactly enough of you."
As the shutdown soaked through Marco’s thick skull, Lucy returned to the cream pages of the worn paperback. A slight smirk settled onto her lips briefly. A look I hated to miss but I soaked it in while it lasted.
Jonah shook his head from across the aisle. "Marco."
"What?"
"Leave the poor woman alone."
"I am networking."
"You're flirting."
"I contain multitudes." Marco finally surrendered with an exaggerated sigh before wandering back toward our side of the cabin.
"She's terrifying," he whispered dramatically as he dropped into his seat.
"She's reading," I muttered.
"Exactly."
I stared out the window before anyone noticed I'd answered too quickly.
The city lights below blurred beneath the wing.
Somewhere in the reflection, I caught Lucy turning another page.
I hated that I noticed.
I hated even more that nothing about her looked forced.
She wasn't trying to impress anyone.
She wasn't trying to fit in.
She simply occupied the space with the same quiet confidence she'd always carried.
The difference was everyone else saw it now too.
By the time we landed, my shoulders already felt tighter than they had before we'd taken off.
I grabbed my carry-on from the overhead compartment just as the aisle bottlenecked near the front of the plane.
Bodies compressed together. Equipment bags. Winter coats. People impatient to sit around on another bus instead.
Lucy stepped forward at the exact moment I did. There wasn't room for either of us.
I turned sideways instinctively.
The back of my hand brushed lightly against her hip. Barely anything. A fraction of a second. Her hip beneath my knuckles
She gaze snapped to my hand.
"So sorry," I stammered automatically.
"It's fine."
That was it. Two words. Polite. Forgettable.
Except my body apparently hadn't received the memo. Heat shot through me so suddenly it felt like somebody had driven a skate blade straight through my ribs.
Jesus Christ.
I clenched my jaw hard enough to make it ache.
Eight years, and one stupid brush of her hip had my brain acting like I was a teenager again.
I stared straight ahead until the line started moving.
Get it together.
She isn’t your Lucy anymore.
She isn’t the girl who used to steal fries off your plate and pretend she hadn't.
She isn’t the girl who fell asleep against your shoulder during road trips home from debate tournaments.
She isn’t the girl who called you Ty like it belonged only to her.
Now she is Lucy Thomas, Acting Head of Player Operations. Nothing more.
The rest of the day became one long, aggravating stretch of almosts.
Almost looking at her.
Almost speaking to her.
Almost forgetting she was there until I heard her voice from three rows away, calm and professional as she answered a question from one of the travel coordinators.
By the time we got off the plane, loaded onto the buses, checked into the hotel, dressed for the arena, and made it through every carefully timed obligation leading up to puck drop, I had seen Lucy more than I had spoken to her.
Which was probably for the best.
She moved through the organization like she had been built into it. Not the locker room. Not the bench.