17. Chapter 18
Dane
The locker room is starting to get that we can do this thing feeling. I've been in enough locker rooms to know when hope has left the building.
This one's been bad since I got here but now that it’s turning around.
We’re close to making the playoffs and all these distractions, rumors need to stop. I know I have to confront and put this to rest before tomorrow’s must win game.
I text the group chat at nine Wednesday night. Players only. Film room. Ten o'clock AM. No explanation. No "please." Twenty minutes later, the read receipts pile up like dominoes.
They show up. All of them.
My old college buddy, now a cyber security analyzes was able to geo-track the phone number of the anonymous texts back to McLeod’s apartment.
I connect my phone to the projector.
"I'll keep this short," I say.
Nobody moves.
I pull up the first screenshot.
It's a message from Evan to a guy named Cass, dated four days before the blog post hit.
Kincaid's been sneaking around with Coach's girl. Bet that's worth something to someone. You know any sports reporters?
The room dead quite.
"This is how the blog story happened," I say. "Not a leak. Not bad luck. Him."
Evan's easy expression is gone.
"That's out of context," he says. "I was venting to a friend."
"Second one."
I click to the next.
A different conversation, same week. Evan describing he saw us going into the equipment room.
"Third."
This one's older. The night Evan told the locker room I was "messing around with a staff member" before anything had even happened.
"And these."
I pull up the traced numbers side by side. Two separate texts sent from the same phones. One to Mara. He’s nothing but trouble. One to me. Back off, She's not yours.
"Same source," I say. "Both of them. My buddy verified."
I put my phone down.
"He killed her contract. This gave Bowman the excuse he needed to threaten to pull her from the conditioning program, and Bowman took it. That's on Evan. Not on the press, not on the rink staff, not on me." I look straight at him. "On you McLeod."
The silence runs about ten seconds.
Then Riley, our starting left winger who doesn't talk much, says, "What the hell, Evan."
It goes fast after that. Not loud, not ugly, just the slow, certain weight of a room full of people deciding what they think of you.
Evan talks. He uses words like misunderstood and I never thought it would go that far. A few guys listen. Most don't.
He's smaller than he was when he walked in. Something about his posture, the way his shoulders curve inward, strips the performance off him entirely. Not rage underneath. Just smallness.
I don't stay for the rest of it.
I've got one more stop.
Coach Ellison's office door is open. He's at his desk with a red pen and a printed depth chart, same before every game. He doesn't look up when I knock.
"Kincaid."
"Got a minute?"
He sets the pen down. Leans back. The look he gives me isn't hostile. It's careful.
I close the door.
"I'm not here to negotiate," I say. "I'm not here to ask for anything. I just want to say something, and then I'll go."
He doesn't tell me to leave, so I keep going.
"I made your job harder from day one. I know that.
You didn't want me here, and instead of proving you wrong, I spent the first month proving you right.
" I hold his gaze. "The stuff with Mara.
I knew the position it put her in. I told myself I was being careful.
I wasn't careful enough. She paid for it. "
He's quiet. Still watching.
"I should've come to you directly instead of going around you. I should've had that conversation before it became a problem." I pause. "I didn't. That's on me. No excuses."
The clock on his wall ticks.
"Is that it?" he says.
"One more thing."
I pull out my phone. Open the email draft I wrote the night she showed up at my door in the rain. The one I opened, wrote, and closed without sending. I turn the screen toward him so he can read the subject line.
Trade Request — D. Kincaid.
"I wrote it a week ago," I say. "I haven't sent it. I won't, unless you think it's the right call. If having me on this roster keeps making her situation harder, I'll request out. You have my word."
His eyes go to the screen, then back to my face. He was sitting back. Now he leans forward. Both elbows on the desk, closer, like the draft on that screen is something real he needs to account for.
He's quiet for a long time.
"You'd actually do that," he says. Not a question.
"Yes."
He looks at the phone screen again, then back at me. He picks up his pen, clicks it once, sets it down again.
"She came to see me," he says finally.
I don't respond.
"We had dinner. Said things I didn't want to hear." He exhales through his nose. "She was right about most of them."
I wait.
"I built something here," he says. "This team. This program. Twenty years of work, and every time I think I've got it stable, someone moves the ground under me. I don't like things I can't control."
"I know."
He looks up sharp.
"You two have that in common," I say. "The control thing."
He stares at me for a beat. Then something passes through his expression that almost looks like dark humor. Almost.
"Sit down, Kincaid."
I sit.
He doesn't say anything for a moment. Just looks at the depth chart on his desk like the answer's somewhere in the lines.
"She's got a contract now," he says. "Her terms. Bowman signed it." He says it like the fact still surprises him. "She didn't ask me for help. Didn't tell me until after."
"She's good at handling things herself."
"She shouldn't have to be." His voice drops. It's the first real crack I've heard from him. "That's what I got wrong."
The room gets very still.
"I'm not going to tell you it's fine," he says. "It's not fine. She's my daughter. You're my player. The optics are a disaster and half this building was talking."
"I understand."
"And I don't trust you yet."
"I know that too."
He looks at me the way he looks at a guy on the ice who hasn't proved himself yet. Direct. Measuring. Not mean, just honest.
"I had a guy like you once," he says. "Junior league. Biggest talent I ever coached. Couldn't get out of his own way. Every time things got real, he blew it up because blowing things up felt safer than staying." He pauses. "You remind me of him."
I don't say anything.
"He retired at twenty-nine," Coach says. "Never won anything."
The weight of that lands exactly where he meant it to.
He picks up his pen again. Looks back at the depth chart.
"I'm not making any decisions today. About you, about Mara, about any of it." He doesn't look up. "But I'll tell you what I told him when he still had a chance to do something different."
He marks a line on the paper. Sets the pen down.
"We are so close now, win the next game," he says. "Prove you're not here to burn everything down."