5. Chapter 6
Dane
Evan McLeod runs his mouth before games.
He flirts, he chirps, he finds ways to make everything about him at exactly the wrong moment.
I've been here two weeks and I already know that.
So when he saw us in the hallway after she told him no and he had to say "Guess you found your escort. ", I stepped in.
That's what I tell myself.
The truth is simpler.
I don't like anyone crowding her.
The locker room is never quiet after practice. Guys are loud by nature. Tape-ripping, stick-banging, music competing from three different phones. I keep my head down and start unlacing my skates.
It takes about four minutes before I feel it.
Eyes.
I look up. Some guys across the room glance away fast. Richie Mullins doesn't. He looks at me, just raises an eyebrow then goes back to his tape job.
They heard.
Of course they heard about Evan and my conversation.
Practice the next morning runs long. Specifically, it runs long for me.
Coach Ellison blows the whistle at the end of the team's normal session and tells everyone to hit the showers. Then he looks at me.
"Kincaid. You stay."
Nobody says anything. Nobody looks at me. They just file off the ice like it's completely normal, which tells me it's not.
For the next twenty minutes, he runs me through defensive drills that would make a twenty-two-year-old's legs burn. Edge work. Gap control. Skating backwards at full speed while he fires pucks at angles that make no sense.
He doesn't say it's punishment. He doesn't have to.
I don't complain. I take every rep and I don't let him see that my lungs are on fire by the end. I skate back to center ice when he blows the final whistle and I stand there, chest heaving, and wait.
He looks at me for a long moment.
"You're done."
That's it. He skates off.
McLeod must be dropping gossip in the Coaches ear.
I'm still in my gear when Jimmy Sullivan, walks through the locker room and hands me a note Mara wrote. She wants five minutes. Training room, after the rink clears.
The locker room is almost empty.
I consider saying no. Then I pull off my helmet, pads and go.
She's pacing near the training room door, arms crossed, hair pulled back. She's in her work clothes. Pink leggings, gray pullover, the lanyard with her ID badge. She looks so put-together. She always looks put-together. We step inside.
Her jaw is tight.
"You should know," she says, "that two people came up and asked me this morning if something is going on between us. Someone spreading gossip."
"What did you tell them?"
"I told them no." Her eyes hold steady on mine. "Because nothing is."
I lean against the wall. "Okay."
"Okay." She pauses. "That's it? Just okay?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to understand that what you did yesterday makes things harder for me." She keeps her voice low, controlled. "I handle Evan. I've been handling Evan. I don't need backup and I don't need anyone making it look like there's a reason for backup."
She's not wrong. I know she's not wrong.
"He wasn't moving," I say.
"I know."
"You told him no twice."
"I know that too." She drops her arms, and for just a second the composure slips.
Not much. Just enough. "Dane. I'm the coach's daughter and I'm on the staff payroll and I work in a building full of people who are watching everything I do.
If you step in every time a guy gets too close to me, what does that look like? "
"Like you have someone in your corner."
"Like we're together." She says it flat. Final. "And we're not. We can't be. So don't do that again."
I look at her. She means it. Every word.
And she's right. I hate that she's right. She's thought it through from every angle I haven't, because she lives at this rink in a way I don't. She has something to lose here that I never considered when I opened my mouth in that hallway.
"Understood," she says. then nods, once, and turns her back to walk away.
"Mara."
She stops.
"For what it's worth." I push off the wall. "I'd stand up for you again."
She doesn't answer. She walks away, and I watch the space she leaves behind, and I don't try to fill it.
The afternoon is a grind. Film session, weight room, another half hour of conditioning notes from the assistant coach. I keep my head in it. That's the only move I have right now. Stay busy, stay focused, don't think about the way she looked at me in that hallway. That’s almost impossible.
I'm heading for the exit, when I hear my name.
"Kincaid."
GM Cal Bowman comes out of the side corridor near the front offices. Always polished. Suit that fits, not a crease out of place. He's got the kind of smile that never quite touches his eyes.
"Got a minute?"
It's not a question.
I stop. "Sure."
He falls into step beside me, just casually enough that anyone watching would think it's friendly. I don't think for a second that it's friendly.
"Good practice today," he says. "Ellison ran you hard."
I don't respond.
"Ticket sales are up ten percent since you stepped on the ice." He glances at me sideways. "You're moving product, Kincade. People want to see you play. They think things will turn around."
"Great."
"It is great." He lets that sit for a second. "Which is exactly why I want to make sure we protect it."
Here it is.
"Protect what?" I keep my voice even.
"The story." He slows, turns to face me.
"You're a cornerstone in this rebuild. That's the narrative.
Gruff veteran, experienced, new city, winning the crowd back one game at a time.
It's good. It's clean." He checks something on his phone while he talks, like the conversation is barely worth his full attention. "Clean is the key word."
I look at him.
"The coach's daughter is staff," he says. "She's a professional and so are you. I know that. But optics have a way of getting messy fast, especially in a market that's looking for something to talk about." He uses my first name exactly once. "Tickets are up, Dane. Let's keep it that way."
I don't say anything. Not because I don't have words. I have plenty.
I just know which fights to pick.
"Are we clear?" he asks.
"Crystal."
He nods, satisfied. Claps me once on the shoulder like we've just agreed on something. Then he turns and walks back toward his office.
Someone is spreading some kind of gossip to get him involved.
“Tickets sales are up since you arrived.” That's all I am to him. A number on a sales report.
The coach sees me as a threat. The GM sees me as product inventory. And somewhere down the hall, Mara is telling herself that rules keep people safe.
Nobody in this building sees me as a person.
Except her.
Every time she snaps at me, every time she corrects my form or holds her ground or tells me exactly what she thinks without softening it first, she's treating me honesty and respect.
I don't know what to do with that. But I know what I wish I was doing with her.
I push through the exit door into the cold St. Louis evening, and I tell myself again that I need to be a pro and keep it about the team.
I'm getting worse at believing it.