3. Chapter 4
Dane
Monday starts with yoga and then later a two-hour practice at four. I stick around after to keep building my edge.
Everyone has left and I'm still here at seven o'clock, stick in hand, running the same drill I've run a thousand times. Shot, retrieve. Shot, retrieve. The sound of the puck hitting the boards echoes in the empty arena like a drumbeat.
No audience. No Coach Ellison watching me like I'm a grenade with the pin half-pulled. No GM texting my agent about "optics."
Just me, ice, and the ugly truth I've been skating circles around all day.
I care what the coach thinks.
I don't want to. The man made it clear I wasn't his pick. He called me an "adjustment." Like I'm a thermostat setting and not a twelve-year veteran who dragged two franchises out of the basement. I've been traded before, four times, and I've never once let a coach's opinion follow me home.
But his voice keeps showing up in my head anyway.
Stay away from my daughter. How can I.
I fire the puck so hard it bounces off the back boards and skips halfway across the ice.
The worst part isn't the warning. It's that I didn't argue.
I just nodded like a man with something to prove, and the whole drive home from rink tonight I kept replaying the look on Mara's face during yoga.
The second she adjusted me. How her eyes went sharp and then, just for a second, something else.
I'm not imagining it.
I wish I were.
I line up for another shot and hear it. The side door scraping open.
My head snaps up.
Mara Ellison walks in like she owns the place.
She doesn't see me at first. Her long blonde hair is loose, way past her shoulders, and she's in a zip-up hoodie and leggings, not her work clothes. Off the clock but looking so hot she could melt the ice.
She's got her phone light pointed at the floor and she's heading straight for the benches near the boards. Clearly looking for something, not expecting company.
Then she looks up.
She stops.
"You're still here." Not a question. More like an accusation.
"It's a rink." I skate slowly toward the boards. "People skate in rinks."
"At seven at night."
"I work better without an audience."
She holds my gaze for a beat, then turns back to the bench area. She lifts a bag from underneath the boards. Small, purple, the kind figure skaters use for blade guards. She tucks it under her arm.
"Tessa left her bag. I told her I'd grab it." She doesn't look at me when she says it. "I didn't think anyone would be here."
"I could leave."
"You don't have to."
She's already moving toward the door.
"Mara."
She pauses. Doesn't turn around.
"The drill you ran this morning," I say. "The hip opener. The sequence before the lunge."
“What about it?"
The adjustment you made this morning. I've been doing that sequence for two years with a different entry. Mine's faster. Works better for bigger frames."
She turns. Here we go. "The sequence is designed for hip mobility, not speed. Bigger frames need more range, not less."
"I've got the range."
"You have the strength," she says. "That's not the same thing."
I lean on the boards. "Come show me, then."
The silence that follows is thick enough to skate through.
"I'm not your personal trainer right now."
"I know." I hold her eyes. "I'm asking anyway."
She should say no. She knows she should say no. I can see the calculation happening. The same way she calculated every move this morning, every adjustment, every careful distance she kept between herself and anything that might complicate her life.
But she sets the bag down on the bench.
She steps onto the ice in her shoes, which is bold, and walks along the boards to the access gate. I hold it open. She comes through without touching me, which she's very deliberate about, and walks to the center circle.
"Stand here." She points to the dot.
I skate to it.
She positions herself a few feet in front of me, facing me, and demonstrates the entry. Arms out, hips square. Clean. Controlled. Even in shoes on ice she doesn't wobble.
"The hip has to load here first." She taps her right hip. "Before the knee moves. If you go to strength first, you skip the load, and over time that's how you blow out your SI joint."
"I haven't blown anything out."
"Not yet." She looks up. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-three."
"Right."
That lands harder than she probably meant it to. I shift my weight.
"Show me the entry again," I say.
She does. I watch her hips this time, really watch, and she's right. The sequence she uses is smarter than what I've been taught. I just don't love admitting it.
"Now you." She steps back.
I run the sequence slow. She watches, and her face does the thing it does when she's dialed in. It goes still and focused, like she's reading something only she can see.
"Stop." She steps forward. "Right there."
She puts her hand on my hip. Flat palm, deliberate, professional. Repositioning me. The same way she did in the training room.
But we're alone now.
The arena is quiet except for the hum of the refrigeration system and the sound of my own breathing.
Her hand is still on my hip.
"You're loading to the left," she says. "You favor your left side, probably from years of playing defensive position. You need to."
"Mara."
She goes still.
I don't move. I don't touch her but I want to. I just let the word hang there, the way she said my name earlier, and wait.
"Don't," she says quietly.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're." She pulls her hand back. Steps away. "You're doing the thing where you make me feel like I want to be here."
"I'm just standing here."
"Dane." Her voice is sharp, but the edge is thin. Like it costs her something. "Back up."
And here's the thing.
I do.
One step, then another. Hands up where she can see them. Not because she scares me, and not because I have to. Because she asked. Because I want her to know the difference between a man who takes what he wants and a man who waits until it's offered.
She watches me back up and something changes in her expression. Her chin drops, just slightly. It's not relief exactly.
She goes back and picks up Tessa's bag from where she set it down.
"Good night, Dane."
She walks to the door without looking back.
I stand in the center circle and watch her go.
The door scrapes shut.
I stay on the ice for another five minutes, not moving, just breathing, leaning on my stick. The cold does nothing for me tonight. I'm already burning inside knowing how badly I want her.
My apartment is fifteen minutes from the rink.
I know exactly how long it takes because I counted every red light, every stop sign, the whole drive home with her hand print still living on my hip like it's tattooed there.
My apartment is dark when I get home. Small. Furnished like a hotel. Generic couch, generic bed, generic prints on the walls. I haven't unpacked most of my stuff.
I drop my bag by the door, peel off my jacket. Head straight for the shower.
The hot water should help. Loosen the knots in my shoulders, wash away the sweat and frustration. But all it does is give me space to think.
Her voice: Stop.
The way she looked at me when I did. Not relieved, not grateful. Something else. Something hungry and conflicted and utterly controlled.
I brace my hands against the tile, let the water beat down on my neck.
Don't.
But I'm already replaying it. Yoga class. Her hand adjusting my stance. The way she moved around the room, all quiet authority and deliberate grace. How she shut down McLeod's flirting without even breaking stride.
How she didn't shut me down. Not the same way.
I wrap my hand around myself, already hard from the memory alone.
In my head, she doesn't walk away. In my head, when I step back, she follows.
"Tell me what you want," I'd say, and she'd look at me with those sharp, assessing eyes. The ones that see through every defense I've ever built.
"You," she'd whisper, and it would break something in me. "But you have to earn it."
I stroke faster, chasing the fantasy. Mara pushing me against the boards, her hands fisted in my jersey. The taste of her mouth. Demanding, uncompromising. The way she'd take control, the way I'd let her.
"Show me," she'd say, voice low and certain. "Show me you can satisfy me."
And I would. I'd do whatever she asked. Slow when she wanted slow, hard when she wanted hard, still when she needed me to wait.
I imagine her beneath me, yoga pants stripped away, those lean thighs wrapped around my hips. The sounds she'd make. Quiet at first, until I found the right angle, the right rhythm, and she'd finally let go.
"Dane," she'd gasp, and the way my name would sound in her voice, broken, needy and satisfied.
I come hard, fist braced against the tile, her name barely bitten back.
The water runs cold.
Reality comes crashing back. Frustration. The sharp awareness that I just jerked off to the coach's daughter, the one woman in this city I absolutely cannot have.
Stay away from my daughter.
Coach Ellison's warning echoes in my skull. Clear. Unambiguous.
I turn off the shower. Dry off. Pull on boxers and collapse onto the bed without bothering with the lights.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I almost ignore it. It's past midnight, probably just spam. But something makes me reach for it.
Unknown number. A one text:
Back away. She's not available.
I sit up, ice flooding my veins.
Someone’s watching.
And whoever it is, they're making sure I understand: this isn't just her father's warning anymore.