Chapter 10 Elise
ELISE
The locker room was loud with pre-game energy and Elise had no business being in it.
She stood near the door with her back against the wall, watching the team prepare.
Lou sat on the bench with her head down, elbows on her knees, in the still, focused silence that meant she was running the game through her head.
Camille was taping her own stick, tongue between her teeth, moving with quick, expert hands.
Frankie was pacing the narrow aisle between the lockers, bouncing on the balls of her feet, too wired to sit.
Dani was already dressed, leaning back with her goalie pads on and her grey eyes closed, breathing slowly.
Rowan was re-lacing her skates for the third time, her light hair pulled back tight.
Lex was stretching in the centre of the room, her legs spread wide on the floor, folding forward effortlessly. She'd never had to worry about a torn labrum. Her dark hair fell across her face and she pushed it back with one hand and caught Elise's eye and grinned.
"You good, Moreno?"
"I'm great."
She was not great. She was standing in a locker room she used to own, wearing jeans and a team zip-up instead of pads and a jersey, watching her teammates prepare for a game she couldn't play.
The room smelled of deep heat and stick wax and the metallic edge of arena air that she used to inhale like oxygen.
Music thumped from Frankie's speaker, bass-heavy and driving, the pre-game playlist she'd been using since the qualification season.
Elise had come because Mara had asked, and because she was trying to be the steady, supportive teammate everyone expected her to be. But the steadiness was a performance.
Elise had barely slept. She'd lain in bed watching the candles burn down to nothing, replaying the flinch. Sienna pulling away, sharp and full-body, as if Elise's mouth had been a threat instead of an invitation. I can't. You're my patient.
The worst part was that she believed Sienna had felt it too.
The closeness on the sofa had been mutual.
Both of them leaning in. Both of them choosing to sit that close.
And Sienna had still pulled away, because she was someone who would always choose what she'd decided was right over what she wanted.
Which meant the feeling was real and it didn't matter. And now Elise had to sit three feet from her on the team bench and pretend everything was fine.
"Moreno." Mara appeared in the doorway, sharp-eyed and focused. "Team bench. Let's go."
The arena was packed. The Valkyries' second PWHL season had brought bigger crowds, louder noise, more energy.
The lights were bright on the ice, the surface gleaming and unmarked, and the boards rattled with the bass of the music pumping through the speakers.
Elise walked out of the tunnel and through the bench door, and the cold hit her face and the smell of the ice hit her lungs and both of them made her chest ache.
She'd been standing at the end of the bench, looking for a seat that wasn't next to the medical staff, when Mara came through behind her.
"Move up," Mara said, gesturing past Elise toward the far end. "I need the end seat for substitutions."
Elise moved up. And up. Past Helen, who was sitting with a clipboard and a thermos. Past the assistant coach, who was studying a tablet. To the only remaining seat on the bench, which was directly beside Sienna.
Sienna was already in her usual seat, in her team jacket and dark trousers, medical bag beneath the bench, her glasses catching the arena lights.
She was looking at her phone when Elise sat down and she glanced up and their eyes met and the expression on her face was a masterclass in controlled neutrality.
"Hi," Elise said.
"Hi."
One syllable each. Professional. Adequate. The distance between them was approximately eighteen inches of cold bench and an ocean of awkwardness.
Elise sat down. Her thigh settled close to Sienna's, close enough that heat radiated through the fabric of Sienna's trousers.
She shifted away, fractionally, and then felt stupid for shifting, because shifting implied that the proximity bothered her, which implied that she was still thinking about last night, which she absolutely was but didn't want Sienna to know.
The game started. The puck dropped and the arena roared and the Valkyries came out fast, pressing Montreal into their own zone from the first shift.
Mara was on her feet immediately, shouting adjustments, her voice carrying over the crowd noise and expecting to be obeyed.
Helen watched from her seat with quiet, analytical focus, her pen moving across her clipboard in small, tight notes.
Sienna was still. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the ice and her body language so carefully neutral that it was screaming.
She wasn't leaning toward Elise. She wasn't leaning away.
She was occupying her exact allotment of bench space as if she'd calculated it to the centimetre.
They didn't speak. The crowd noise and Mara's shouting filled the space where conversation might have been, and Elise was grateful for it.
She kept her gaze forward, on the ice, tracking the play, reading every system the Valkyries ran and reading the adjustments in real time.
First line was pressing high. The forechecking pattern was aggressive, two players deep, one hanging at the blue line.
It was working. Montreal's defence was under pressure and their transitions were sloppy.
The first period was tight. Montreal were organised and disciplined and their goaltender was sharp.
Camille had two shots that went wide and Lou broke up three rushes with a physical authority that made the Montreal forwards visibly reconsider their life choices.
Frankie was everywhere, all energy and aggression, throwing her body into checks with nothing left to prove.
And Lex. Lex was brilliant.
She was playing centre, Elise's position, and she was playing it with a speed and creativity that made the Montreal defence look slow.
She won faceoffs. She made passes that split defenders.
She drove to the net with a relentlessness that drew penalties, and on the power play she set up Camille for a one-timer from the left circle that rattled the crossbar and made the crowd gasp.
Elise watched all of it and tasted copper.
It wasn't jealousy. She respected Lex's talent and always had.
But watching someone play your position better than you play it, while you sit on the bench in civilian clothes with your arm in a sling, was a specific kind of agony that no amount of respect could soften.
Every shift Lex played was a question: do they need Elise Moreno at all?
"She's having a good game," Sienna said quietly.
Elise looked at her. Sienna's eyes were on the ice, but the comment was directed at Elise, and there was a carefulness in her voice, an awareness that the observation might sting.
She was acknowledging the difficulty without pretending it wasn't there.
It was the same thing she'd done at Lavender's, and in the medical suite, and in every moment when Elise's fear surfaced and Sienna met it honestly instead of with platitudes.
"She is," Elise said. Her jaw was tight.
Their thighs were close again. Elise hadn't moved back and Sienna hadn't moved away and the heat between them was distracting.
Every time Mara shouted and the bench shifted, their legs pressed together through the fabric, a brief, electric contact that sent heat up Elise's spine.
She kept her eyes forward. On the ice. On the game.
On anything other than the woman sitting eighteen inches to her left who smelled of clean perfume and who had rejected her less than twenty-four hours ago.
The second period, Lex scored. A beautiful goal, a deke around the Montreal centre and a wrist shot, top corner, glove side.
The arena erupted. The bench erupted. Mara punched the air with both fists and then caught herself and smoothed her expression back to professional, but the grin leaked through anyway.
Elise clapped with her good hand against her thigh and the sound was hollow.
Lex scored again in the third, on the power play, from the slot. Camille's cross-ice pass hit her tape and Lex one-timed it into the bottom corner before the goalie could set. Two goals and an assist. A dominant performance in the position Elise used to own.
The Valkyries won three to one. The third period was comfortable, the team controlling possession, Montreal chasing shadows.
When the final buzzer sounded, the players poured off the ice in a wave of celebration, sticks raised, grins wide.
Lou grabbed Camille around the waist and lifted her off the ice, and Camille shrieked, and Frankie jumped on both of them, and Dani stood in her crease with her arms folded and a small, satisfied smile.
Lex skated past the bench and banged her stick against the boards and caught Mara's eye, and the look between them was private and electric and brief, and Mara's face softened into an expression that was almost a smile.
"Good game," Elise said to no one in particular. She stood up and her legs were stiff from sitting and her shoulder ached from the cold.
"Are you okay?" Sienna's voice was quiet, just for her.
"I'm fine."
She wasn't fine. She was frustrated and sad and confused and her thigh still burned where Sienna's had pressed against it, and she needed to get out of this arena before the gap between the team she belonged to and the bench she was sitting on swallowed her whole.