Chapter 2
MATEO
By the time the guys filter in I’ve already done more laps than I can count.
I pull up at the boards, take a water bottle from Chen when he offers it, and watch the rest of the team spread across the ice.
Barrett is doing that thing where he stretches for about forty-five seconds and then declares himself ready.
It’s all normal and familiar. Mine, in the way that a captain’s team is his even when it’s driving him insane.
“You look terrible,” Barrett says cheerfully, one of our defencemen.
“Early morning.”
“You’re always here early… hence looking terrible.”
He grins and skates off before I can say anything else, which is probably for the best.
Calloway blows the whistle and we run drills - breakouts first, then transition work, then a half-ice scrimmage that gets loud fast. I lose myself in it the way I always do, the way that’s always been the best thing about practice: everything narrows.
For forty minutes I forget about scouts or contracts or the faint lag in my left edge. I’m just playing.
It’s only when Calloway calls a water break that I see her.
She’s sitting in the third row of the bleachers, slightly apart from the assistants and the equipment guys who’ve gathered at the far end.
Just sitting there, watching. She has a notebook open on her knee but she isn’t writing in it.
She’s watching the ice with an expression I can’t quite read from here.
My first thought is that she doesn’t look like a hockey person.
Not because of anything I could articulate. She’s dressed practically enough - dark jacket, hair pulled back. But there’s something in the way she’s sitting, in the stillness of her, that doesn’t match the loud, perpetually-in-motion energy of everyone else in this building.
My second thought is that she’s stunning - pale with pretty features, light hair scraped back under a dark headband. Even from this distance there’s a quality to the way she holds herself, straight-backed and precise, with perfect posture. She’s more like a dancer than a hockey player.
Which is - fine. Noted. Moving on.
Mercer, beside me, has also noticed.
“Who’s that?” he asks, with the subtlety of a man who has never once in his life been subtle.
“Skating coach,” I say.
“Seriously?” He stares up at her. “She doesn’t seem like-”
“She’s a professional figure skater.” I take a long drink of water. “From Sweden. Calloway told me this morning.”
“Huh. And she’s going to coach us?”
“Apparently.”
“Does she even know what hockey is?”
“I’d assume so.”
“But like-”
“Mercer.”
“What?”
I don’t answer, because I don’t have an answer that isn’t only me saying I don’t like it either and yes I’ve already had this exact conversation with myself at 6am.
Instead, I watch Calloway skate to the boards and lean over them, talking to one of the assistants, and then he straightens and looks up at the bleachers.
She’s already moving.
She comes down the steps without hurrying, tucking the notebook under her arm, and there’s that stillness again even in motion - unhurried and deliberate.
She picks her way down to ice level and Calloway meets her at the gate.
They talk quietly. I’m too far away to catch it.
I can only hear the low murmur of voices.
Calloway nods once or twice and she says something that makes him smile, which is a bigger deal than it seems because Calloway almost never smiles before noon.
“She’s tall,” Ward observes from my other side.
“You’re literally doing play-by-play right now,” I say.
“Just saying.”
She doesn’t look our way. Not once, during the whole conversation with Calloway, does she even glance out at us. She’s listening to Calloway, nodding occasionally, and every few seconds her eyes go back to the ice like it’s the only thing in the building that actually interests her.
I understand that, actually. I don’t want to understand it.
Calloway straightens up and turns to face the ice.
“Alright,” he calls out, and the low buzz of conversation dies. “Gather in.”
The whole team gathers quickly, loose and sweaty and looking at Calloway wondering what’s going on.
She’s standing a little behind him and to the side, giving Calloway his moment. Her eyes move across the group and they land on me. There’s nothing in them except clinical attention.
She’s assessing us.
All of us. But she’s starting with me.
I hold eye contact for a long moment to make it clear I’m not intimidated.
“Boys,” Calloway says, “this is Elida Eriksson. She’s joining our staff as a consultant.
She’ll be working primarily with the women’s program, but she’ll also be running skating sessions with this group going forward, and I expect you to treat those sessions the same way you treat every other hour of practice.
Which is to say professionally. Any questions? ”
Silence. I know these guys. They’re brimming with questions, only no one wants to be the one to ask them.
She doesn’t say anything. Not yet. She stands there absolutely composed and looks at the team like she’s already seen everything she needed to see.
But all I’m worried about are the scouts who may or may not come back. I have a season that has to matter and a team that needs to be better than it was last year.
A figure skater from Sweden is not the answer to any of that. I’m feeling annoyed we have to waste our time with this.
I push off back toward the net before Calloway has officially dismissed us, which is probably rude, but there’s a puck near the crease, and I’d rather do something with my hands than stand there and wait to be assessed again.
Behind me, I hear Mercer mutter something.
And then, barely, I hear her voice for the first time - accented and calm - saying something back to him that I can’t catch.
Whatever it is, Mercer goes silent immediately.
ELIDA
I watch them run through their normal drills first. Coach Calloway understood that when I asked to observe what they normally do before introducing my own drills - he just nodded once and called out instructions to get them started, which told me most of what I needed to know about him.
They’re good. That’s the first thing - they’re skilled, competitive, and they work hard. The drills are sharp. The communication is decent.
But.
The skating is functional. It gets them where they need to go, most of the time, and at this level functional is enough to survive.
But functional is a ceiling, and they are bumping against it in ways that are so habitual they’ve stopped noticing.
Weight distribution on crossovers that bleeds speed without them feeling it.
Edge changes that are a fraction late, over and over, in exactly the ways that cost you the play when the play matters most. Transitions where they’re working twice as hard as they need to because the technique underneath has never been properly addressed.
And then there’s him.
I notice him first because he’s impossible not to notice - he’s the one the others orient around, even when they don’t seem to be paying attention to him. When he calls something out, the response is immediate. Calloway already pointed him out as the captain. Mateo Russo.
My second thought - and I’ll allow myself this one - is that he is extremely good-looking in a way that seems almost inconsiderate.
Dark, tall, built for the sport in the way that some people are, like their body was designed with a specific purpose and then handed to them fully formed.
He moves with a natural confidence that seems perfect even if the technical bits aren’t necessarily the best.
But there it is.
The crossovers are competent but not more than that.
The weight transfer is slightly too heavy on the outside edge, which at his speed isn’t catastrophic but it’s inefficient - he’s losing a fraction of power on every stride, which over the course of a game compounds.
His backward skating is actually strong, better than most of the team, and his reading of the ice is excellent - that part’s instinct, and it’s the bit that’s hard to teach.
But the technical foundation underneath all that instinct and drive and sheer physical force?
It’s fine.
For a captain whose team needs to get better, fine is not enough.
I open my notebook again and finally write a few points. Not much. A few observations, some drill ideas, and a starred note about the crossover pattern I want to address.
I’m aware, as I’m writing it, of a thought I probably shouldn’t enjoy as much as I do.
He skated straight back toward the net the moment Calloway introduced me. Didn’t wait, didn’t pretend to. Just - turned and left. He’s already decided what I am and what I can offer and he’s not particularly interested in being diplomatic about it.
I’ve met this kind of person before. Men in sport who’ve got to a certain level and concluded that they therefore understand everything, that their way is the only way, that someone arriving with a different set of tools is an inconvenience at best and an insult at worst.
I spent years being told what I was capable of by someone like that.
But here’s the thing - he’s the captain of a college hockey team. I’m a figure skating champion.
So, no - I don’t hate him, and I don’t want to embarrass him. That’s not what this is. But am I especially looking forward to the moment he has to admit that a figure skater from Sweden has something worth listening to?
I write one more note and close the notebook.
Yes. A little.
Calloway and I speak quietly for a few minutes. He’s pragmatic and he doesn’t waste words. I appreciate that. He tells me the team has been briefed, that my authority in these sessions is equal to his, and that if anyone gives me trouble I should come to him directly.
“Will anyone give me trouble?” I ask.
He considers this with the seriousness it deserves. “Probably not openly.”
“But.”
“But Russo sets the tone. If he buys in, they buy in.”