3. Captain Energy #3
Cole nearly wiped out trying not to glance at Talia on his way off the ice.
Noah caught his elbow, steadied him, and got a muttered thanks.
By the bench, Coach peeled off one glove and crooked two fingers at Noah. Stay.
Of course.
Noah coasted over, dragging tired legs, and reached the boards just as Talia finished with the assistant and turned.
Up close, she looked colder than the rink and more tired than she wanted anyone to know.
Faint shadows under her eyes. A strand of hair loosened near one temple.
Her mouth was set in concentration, not severity, though most people on sight alone would never know the difference.
Coach said, “Mercer can walk you through how the guys actually use the study area between sessions. If your concern is whether procedure matches practice.”
Noah looked at him. Coach looked back with all the serenity of a man outsourcing two problems at once.
Talia’s gaze flicked between them. “If he has time after practice.”
She said it like she meant it. Not a demand. A choice. She would ask, not presume. That should not have mattered. It did.
Noah hooked his gloves under one arm. “I have time.”
Coach nodded once, mission accomplished, and pushed away before either of them could object.
Noah and Talia were left at the boards with the whole rink emptying around them.
Up close, the cold had pinked her cheeks. He could smell outside snow in the wool of her scarf, undercut by something cleaner he couldn’t name. “You really know how to make an entrance,” he said.
Her brows lifted. “I walked through a door.”
“You froze half my bench on sight.”
“That seems like a cultural issue.”
He huffed a laugh despite himself and pushed open the gate. “You here to arrest our whiteboard?”
“I’m here to observe academic support practices connected to athletes under review.”
“See? Arrest language.”
She stepped carefully over the threshold to the rubber flooring by the bench, eyes moving immediately to the sign-in clipboard, the posted schedule, the stack of study-hall forms. “Your teammates are behaving as if I brought zip ties.”
“Some of them think clipboards are worse.”
“They should try honesty. It’s much less paperwork.”
Noah leaned his hip against the boards, suddenly too aware of sweat cooling under his gear and the fact that he probably smelled like ice, rubber, and exertion. “You always talk like every sentence is evidence?”
“You always answer questions with more questions?”
“Only when cornered.”
“Interesting choice of word.”
He looked at her, and there it was again—that bright, combative edge between them that never tipped into flirtation safely because it was already carrying too much voltage.
Chemistry through collision. He’d known women who wanted the version of him everybody else got: smiling, easy, broad-shouldered certainty.
Talia didn’t seem remotely impressed by that package.
She pushed. He pushed back. Somehow that felt more dangerous than being admired.
She lifted the clipboard. “Who verifies these?”
“Usually player services coordinator, then academic support.”
“Usually.”
He heard it. “You’re going to circle every weak adverb in my speech, aren’t you?”
“If necessary.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with his untaped hand. “It depends on the day. Travel messes with timing. Guys sign in before lift sometimes, or after class, or on the way to video. If the coordinator’s tied up, things get entered later.”
“And later is where records become vulnerable.”
“Yes,” he said, before he could sand the answer down.
Her eyes came to his face. Just for a second, something softened there. Not approval. Recognition, maybe. That truth spoken plainly cost him something.
She wrote a note.
He should have been irritated. He was. He was also absurdly aware that she listened like it mattered when he stopped performing.
From the tunnel behind them came the clang of sticks tossed into bins and somebody yelling for more clean towels. Normal locker-room noise. Home. Yet Noah felt curiously exposed standing there with her while the rink emptied around them.
Talia set the clipboard back down. “I’ll need to review the tutoring access logs tied to this space.”
“I figured.”
“And I’ll continue the recurring check-ins Monday and Thursday.”
“Can’t imagine my excitement.”
Her mouth twitched. “You hide it well.”
He looked at her over the top of the boards. “Do I.”
The words came out lower than he intended. Tired. Too honest around the edges.
Something shifted in her expression. She seemed to hear what was underneath them, not just on top.
The public version of him would have smiled there, maybe turned the line warmer, easier.
Instead he was standing in half-unlaced skates with his thumb throbbing and a season threatening to become a court case, and all he had left was bluntness.
Behind his ribs, strain cinched tighter.
She glanced toward the tunnel where players were still filtering out. “Your room needs you.”
It was such a precise sentence that it nearly undid him.
Not you should go. Not we’re done. Your room needs you. As if she had already identified the exact shape of the burden and chosen not to romanticize it.
Noah looked away first, toward the ice, scored up now from two hours of drills. “Yeah.”
“Mr. Mercer.”
He turned back.
Her voice was quiet enough that only he could hear it over the rink’s after-noise. “Keeping them calm is not the same as keeping them safe.”
For one hard second he couldn’t breathe right.
Because she was right. Because he knew she was right. Because the difference between the two felt like the space between the man everyone asked him to be and the one he wasn’t sure how to survive as.
He gave her the only answer he had. “Tell that to the people who let them get this far without saying no.”
Her gaze held his. “I am.”
Then she stepped back from the boards, drew her coat tighter against the cold, and walked toward the tunnel without waiting for permission, attention, or escort.
Noah stayed where he was a moment longer, gloved hand curling against the top rail, watching the doorway swallow her.
Behind him the locker room door banged open and Dylan shouted, “Mercer, are you coming or are we letting the feds take your stall too?”
Laughter spilled out after it, rough and young and needing him.
Noah pushed off the boards.
By the time he reached the tunnel, his face was back where it belonged. Easy. Steady. The one that kept everybody else breathing.
But under the smile, with the rink cold still in his lungs and Talia’s words lodged like a splinter under skin, he had the sick, certain feeling that damage control was no longer another way of saying leadership.
And if he didn’t figure out the difference soon, the season was going to make the choice for him.