Locked Overnight with My Rival

Chapter 1. Mads

The night air in Oslo bites at my face as we head for the train, equipment bags dragging behind us. Another loss. Not just any loss—the kind that exposes every crack, makes coaches clench their jaws, and has teammates avoiding eye contact.

Worse, it came against the Folgefonna Jagerfly, a Norwegian team that sounds like a budget airline and usually plays like one.

My shoulder aches from a third-period collision, but it’s nothing compared to the migraine building behind my eyes.

Ahead of me, Roman is doing what captains do, patting guys on the back and saying things that won’t fix anything but at least acknowledge the mess.

I keep my gaze locked on the back of his jacket, ignoring the guy smoking at the edge of my vision—the asshole I’m blaming for this entire shitshow.

I don’t let myself look at him properly, because one wrong glance and I’ll walk over there and punch him straight in the face, which would be a great way to get myself benched before Copenhagen.

Coach already has enough to be pissed about, and I’m not giving him one more reason.

It’s my hometown. I need to be on the ice for that game, especially after tonight.

I feel like shit. Makes sense, since I played like shit.

The guys are hunched into their coats, earbuds in, shutting themselves into their own private misery.

I can’t blame them. The wind cuts down the platform hard enough that snow feels like only a matter of time, and I turn my collar up against it.

Two months ago, I was looking forward to this European swing. Now I just want it over.

“Hey.” Roman appears beside me, his voice low enough that only I can hear. “You good?”

I give him the nod he’s looking for. Neutral. Controlled. Nothing that says I’m about to spend the whole night replaying every bad read, every screen I lost track of, every shot I should’ve had.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I look Danish.”

It’s an old joke between us. My standard answer whenever he tells me I look too serious.

Roman doesn’t laugh this time. His eyes are tired in that captain way, like he’s been taking in everyone else’s frustration all night and pretending it isn’t getting to him. “Toledo’s pissed about you and Chris tonight. Just a heads-up.”

I snort. “When is he not pissed about something?”

“Fair.” He squeezes my shoulder once, then moves on to the next guy down the line.

Sam appears a moment later, dropping his duffel at my feet with a theatrical groan. “If I have to hear one more Norwegian tell me how we should’ve run that power play, I’m throwing myself on the tracks.”

“You said that in Helsinki, too.”

“This time I might.” He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in every direction. “I really might, Maddy.”

“You’d make a mess.” My mouth twitches despite everything. Sam could get a laugh out of you at your own funeral.

“A beautiful mess,” he says with a sigh. “They’d write songs about it.” Something to my left catches his eye, and his expression shifts. “Heads up. Smokey the Bear, weak side.”

I don’t turn. I smell Rodriguez before I see him, Marlboro smoke cutting through the cold night air. My jaw tightens automatically.

Sam, as always, fills the silence. “Hey, Rodriguez. Didn’t you quit after the last game?”

Rodriguez gives him a deadpan look, like the question isn’t worth answering. He doesn’t even glance at me, which somehow pisses me off more than if he did.

Typical.

Christopher Rodriguez is a problem I wasn’t expecting to have this season.

When management signed him from the Redside Wraiths, I didn’t need a scouting report to know who he was.

The Wraiths have been our biggest rivals for years, and last season they beat us in the final, took the Cup, and left us standing there like idiots while they celebrated.

Rodriguez had been one of their alternate captains, which made the whole thing even weirder. Guys don’t usually walk away from a team right after winning a championship unless there’s a reason, but apparently I was the only person in the locker room rude enough to wonder what his was.

I didn’t deal with Rodriguez much on the ice when he was still with the Wraiths.

I’m the goalie. He’s a defenseman. Most of what I knew came from watching him kill plays before our forwards even had time to get excited.

He’d get a stick in the lane, seal a guy off along the boards, make one short pass under pressure, and suddenly our whole rush was dead.

He had been good for them. Annoyingly good. Which only made his sudden transfer feel more suspicious.

The coaches, of course, act like he fixed our entire blue line by walking through the door. They give him the kind of respect I had to bleed for, which would be annoying enough if the rest of the team hadn’t immediately bought in. They trust him. They play well with him.

I don’t.

Somehow, with him in front of me, I make more mistakes. But it’s not because I’ve suddenly forgotten how to stop a puck. The guy is impossible to play with. Reading him is like trying to crack The Da Vinci Code while six ounces of vulcanized rubber tries to take your teeth out.

Tonight, he spent sixty minutes proving my point.

From the first period, we were off. It came in stupid little pieces: late decisions, calls that went nowhere, the kind of silence that makes you start inventing answers because the guy in front of you refuses to give you any.

When I did call for something, Rodriguez would wave me off and move the puck half a beat late, like my voice had gotten lost somewhere between his helmet and his brain.

When I waited for him to make himself clear, I got the same blank nothing.

He kept leaving me to fill in the gaps, and every time I had to guess what he was doing, I got more pissed off.

After enough of that, I wasn’t reading the rush anymore.

I was waiting for Rodriguez to make me guess, which is a great way to look like the only idiot on the ice.

They were tiny moments, maybe invisible from the stands, but not from my crease.

He didn’t trust my calls. I didn’t trust his reads.

By the third period, I was snapping at him after every whistle, and Rodriguez kept answering in that flat, infuriating tone that made me look even more unhinged.

Instead of using the stoppages to reset, I was coming out of them more pissed off than before, and once a goalie starts fighting his own defenseman, the other team doesn’t need much help.

Three goals later, a close game had turned into a 4–1 embarrassment, and I already knew which one of us everyone would blame.

“Line up, gentlemen!” Coach Toledo’s voice cuts through the noise on the platform.

He stands by the train doors, clipboard in hand like he’s taking attendance at elementary school.

The team shuffles forward, nobody wanting to be first. I stay back, Sam beside me.

Roman moves to the front, because apparently that’s the captain’s burden.

“Compartment assignments are final,” Toledo continues. “And I don’t want to hear any bitching once we’re moving. No trades, no swaps, no creative interpretations.”

I close my eyes briefly. The train to Copenhagen is an overnight, eight hours in sleeper compartments built for people considerably smaller than professional hockey players.

Usually, on the road, we sort ourselves out—friends bunking with friends, rookies with rookies, everybody finding their comfort zone.

But Toledo’s face says comfort isn’t on tonight’s agenda.

He starts reading off pairs, and the expected patterns emerge. Roman with Sam, which makes sense. They’ve been roommates for three seasons. The rookie wingers together. Defensive pairs mostly kept intact. I wait for my name, expecting Jensen, maybe Eriksson—guys I’ve bunked with before.

“Holm,” Toledo says, his eyes finding mine over the clipboard, “you’re with Rodriguez.”

My stomach drops.

What the fuck?

“Who?” I say, staring at him, because I’m sure I’ve misheard.

“You deaf, Holm?” Coach says, one unimpressed eyebrow lifting. “You’re with Rodriguez. Compartment eleven.”

I stare at Coach. He stares back at me.

“Coach—” I start, trying not to let my frustration show.

Toledo’s expression doesn’t change, but his voice gets that edge I know too well. “Problem?”

There are a dozen things I could say. That Rodriguez and I just proved on international television that we can’t work together.

That putting us in a two-by-three-meter box overnight is asking for trouble.

That there are plenty of other guys on this team I could share with without wanting to throw myself onto the tracks.

Instead, I say, “I don’t think that’s the best arrangement.”

“No?” Toledo’s lips twitch. “You got a better idea?”

“Anyone else,” I say, knowing as I say it that I’ve already lost.

Toledo turns his gaze to Rodriguez. I look at him too. He’s standing two feet from me, completely unbothered.

“Rodriguez, you got a problem sharing a compartment with Holm?” Toledo asks him.

Rodriguez looks at him, then turns to me for the first time since we left the ice. Dark eyes, jaw set, the cold still red across his face.

“I don’t give a shit,” he says.

He’s not angry. Not even annoyed. He looks bored, like I’m not worth the effort of a real reaction.

Toledo gestures between us, as if making a point that I’m the unreasonable one here. “See? He doesn’t give a shit. And you shouldn’t either. Problem solved.”

And with that, he moves on to the next names on his list, discussion closed.

I clench my jaw and glare at Rodriguez, but he’s already looking down at his phone, so my frustration doesn’t get to go anywhere.

Sam gives me a sympathetic grimace and murmurs, “Could be worse.”

I sigh. “How, exactly?”

“You could be stuck with me. I snore.”

“I’d take your snoring any day,” I say.

Sam makes an aww sound. “I love you too, man.”