Chapter 1 Sienna #2
She began tidying the counter in earnest. Tape rolls back in the drawer.
Scissors in the sterilisation tray. The kinesiology strips she'd over-cut went into a labelled ziplock bag because she couldn't bring herself to waste them.
The familiar rhythm of it settled her pulse back down.
This was what she was good at. Order. Preparation.
Making sure every contingency was covered so nobody got hurt on her watch.
Her own tennis career had ended because someone hadn't done that.
A coach who'd pushed her through a stress fracture at nineteen, a tournament doctor who'd cleared her to play when she shouldn't have been standing.
She'd torn three ligaments in her ankle and spent fourteen months in rehab and never competed again.
She carried that lesson into every tape job, every assessment, every decision about whether a player was fit to return.
She would never be the reason someone's career ended.
She finished packing her medical bag with efficient hands and slung it over her shoulder. The kit was heavy with ice packs, elastic bandages, and the portable ultrasound unit she carried to every game. Familiar weight. Grounding.
The corridor leading to the arena was already thick with traffic.
Coaching staff in Valkyries polos moved with purpose, tablets in hand.
Media personnel passed with cameras balanced on shoulders, trailing thick cables that snaked along the baseboards.
A group of early-access sponsors with lanyards around their necks were being ushered toward the corporate boxes by a woman in a blazer who looked like she worked for Astoria.
The lighting shifted as Sienna walked, from the harsh brightness of the back halls to the warmer ambient glow near the arena entrance.
The noise rose with every step: music thumping through the PA system, the low sustained roar of a crowd still filling twenty thousand seats, the vibration of it travelling up through the concrete floor into the soles of her shoes.
She passed a merch stand where a teenager was already wearing a Valkyries jersey with Camille Laurent-Dubois's number on the back.
Two seasons ago, this team had been playing in a rink that smelled permanently of damp and had temperamental heating.
Now Astoria Shepry's arena rose around them like a declaration.
State-of-the-art ice surface, luxury boxes with tinted glass, a sound system that made the building itself feel alive.
Sienna still had moments where the scale of it caught her off guard.
What these women had built. What they were still building.
She rounded the corner near the tunnel entrance and nearly walked straight into Helen Ward.
"Careful." Helen steadied her coffee with one hand, the paper cup listing dangerously.
Not a drop spilled. She was dressed in her usual game-day uniform: dark trousers, a soft grey cardigan over a navy blouse, a calm expression that suggested she'd never been genuinely startled by anything in fifty-five years of living.
Her dark hair, threaded with grey, was cut neatly at her chin.
"You're walking like you're late for surgery. "
"Just trying to get set up." Sienna fell into step beside her as they navigated toward the team seating area behind the bench.
The tunnel opened ahead of them, and the arena unfolded in stages: first the wall of sound, then the cold air carrying the mineral bite of fresh ice, then the sheer visual scale of twenty thousand seats stacked upward into the rafters.
Banners hung from the ceiling and the Jumbotron cycled through player headshots and sponsor logos in bright, pulsing rotations.
"How's the pre-game mood?"
"Focused. Confident." Helen settled into her seat and crossed her legs, wrapping both hands around her paper cup. Steam drifted from the lid. "A little chippy. Mara's been snapping at people since lunch, which is her version of optimism."
Sienna sat down beside her and set her medical bag between her feet. The seats were padded, but the cold from the ice reached them even here, a constant low chill that crept through her trousers. She pulled the zipper of her jacket up another inch.
The ice below gleamed under the overhead lights, freshly resurfaced, the Valkyries' logo brilliant at centre ice.
Both teams were warming up, red and white jerseys weaving around each other in overlapping patterns.
The crack of pucks hitting boards echoed through the space, sharp and percussive.
A Toronto player fired a shot that rang off the crossbar, and the home crowd booed good-naturedly.
She found Elise without trying. Centre ice, skating in wide, easy loops, her stride long and fluid.
Lex Landry was beside her, matching her pace, the two centres moving in tandem.
Lex was younger, more explosive, her skating powered by the raw athleticism that had made her a PWHL sensation.
Elise was different. Smoother. Every stride looked effortless, each push carrying her further than it should have, an economy that came from years of knowing exactly how much her body could give.
Whatever Elise said to Lex made the younger woman grin and bump her shoulder. Elise's laugh carried, barely, above the arena noise. Even from this distance, even through a helmet and full gear, She picked her out of the group without hesitation.
"So." Helen's voice pulled her back. The tone was different now. The one that came with a slight tilt of the head and a careful pause before the question. “How’s your love life? Are you seeing anyone?"
Heat rushed Sienna's cheeks. Instant. Uncontrollable. "No."
Helen raised an eyebrow. "That was fast."
"The answer is simple." She adjusted her glasses and kept her eyes on the ice. "I'm not dating anyone. I don't really have time for that."
Helen made a sound that was not quite agreement.
"What?"
Helen tilted her head, her tea cradled in both hands. "Nothing. Just that you said the same thing when I asked you six months ago. And six months before that."
Sienna's jaw tightened. "Because the answer hasn't changed."
Below them, a whistle blew. Both teams reset for a faceoff near centre ice.
"You work 9-5 except game days and live alone in a one-bedroom apartment." Helen sipped her coffee. Unhurried. "I think you have the time."
"I have early mornings. And game days are unpredictable. And I'm still settling into Phoenix Ridge." She was running out of excuses. She could hear it, and so could Helen.
"You've been here fourteen months."
Sienna wrapped both hands around her coffee cup. "I'm a slow settler."
"And I don't..." Sienna trailed off. She didn't know how to finish the sentence honestly. I don't think anyone would choose me. I don't trust myself to get close to someone without it going wrong. I don't know how to be wanted.
She pushed her glasses up with one finger. "I'm fine on my own."
Helen let the silence sit. She was infuriatingly good at that, holding space without filling it, leaving room for Sienna to hear her own words and decide if she believed them. After a moment, Helen said, "Mara mentioned Lavender's is doing another womens event this month."
"I'm not going to a bar event."
On the ice below, a player fired a shot into the boards with a crack that echoed up to the rafters.
"Why not?"
Sienna tore the corner off her napkin, folding it into a small square between her fingers. "Because I don't drink."
“It’s a cafe-bar. They serve food and coffee also.” Helen took a sip of her own tea, watching Sienna over the rim.
"I eat at home."
Helen laughed, a warm sound that briefly softened the arena's hard edges. Sienna's mouth twitched into a reluctant smile. "You're the most socially avoidant physician I've ever met. And I've met a lot of physicians."
Sienna opened her mouth to protest and then closed it, because Helen wasn't wrong.
She looked down at her hands, resting on top of the medical bag in her lap.
Neat nails, no rings, the faint crease of a scar along her left thumb from a scalpel slip during residency.
Capable hands. She'd been told that once, by a woman she'd dated briefly in her early thirties.
You have very capable hands, and then nothing had come of it, because Sienna had gotten busy and stopped returning calls and the woman had eventually stopped trying.
That was the pattern. It had been the pattern for her entire adult life.
Interest, followed by withdrawal, followed by silence.
She told herself it was professionalism, the focus and discipline she'd built her life around.
But the truth, when she sat still long enough to hear it, was simpler and uglier than that.
She didn't believe anyone would want to stay.
On the ice, the warm-up was winding down.
Both teams clustered near their respective benches, sticks tapping the ice in pre-game rituals.
The noise in the arena was reaching a fever pitch, twenty thousand people settling into seats, conversations layering over music, the whole building humming with anticipation.
And there it was. The image from the medical room, pushing back into Sienna's mind the moment her attention wandered.
Elise, walking through the door. Sports bra and compression shorts and that easy, unhurried confidence.
The strong line of her jaw. The definition in her arms. The way her eyes had caught Sienna's across the room, direct and warm, as though Sienna was someone worth looking at.
As though Sienna was someone who mattered outside of the tape and the ice packs and the medical assessments.
She pushed it down. She was good at pushing things down.
Had spent years perfecting it, packing away every inconvenient attraction and filing it under things that aren't for you.
Her mother had taught her that, without ever saying it directly.
Discipline. Focus. The quiet, iron-clad expectation that feelings were private and inconvenient and best managed alone.
Sienna had absorbed that lesson so thoroughly it was indistinguishable from her own personality now.
She didn't even know where the teaching ended and she began.
Elise Moreno could have anyone in this city. She was thirty, beautiful, a professional athlete at the top of her game, funny in a way Sienna only caught after the moment had passed. Half the queer women in Phoenix Ridge probably knew her name.
Sienna was forty-one. She wore rectangular glasses and cut too much kinesiology tape when she was nervous and couldn't take a compliment without blushing like a teenager.
She was the team physician. She was supposed to keep distance.
She'd built her whole career, her whole life, on keeping distance.
And it had worked. For years, it had worked perfectly.
Until this team. Until this woman.
She crossed her arms and dug her fingers into her biceps, pressing the thought back down where it belonged.
The arena smelled of cold air and popcorn and the faint chemical sweetness of the ice surface.
Below, the players gathered in a final huddle near the bench, gloves touching, helmets low.
Elise was at the centre of it, one arm slung around Lou's shoulders, the other around Lex's. Talking to them.
The buzzer sounded. The arena lights dimmed, and the Jumbotron blazed to life with the player introductions. The crowd surged to their feet, a wave of noise that pressed against Sienna's chest.
Helen leaned over. "You're blushing, by the way."
"It's warm in here."
"It's an ice rink."
Sienna said nothing. The Valkyries skated out into the spotlight, red jerseys blazing under white lights, and the crowd erupted.
Her eyes tracked them all, every single player on the ice.
The puck dropped. Ninety minutes of watching Elise Moreno skate, and the problem wasn't going anywhere.