Chapter 8
Sunlight caught the steam rising off Elise's mug, turning it gold above the counter.
Elise was at the kitchen counter in joggers and an old Valkyries hoodie, scrolling her phone with one hand and eating a piece of sourdough with the other.
Toast and black coffee hung warm in the air.
Outside, the sky was a flat, pale blue, and Lex could hear seagulls screaming at each other over scraps in the parking lot below.
"Morning." She pulled a mug from the shelf and poured coffee, leaning against the counter. The mug was warm between her hands. The coffee was too hot to drink and she held it against her collarbone, letting the steam curl against her throat.
Elise looked up. "You were out late."
"Coaching session ran long." She pulled the coffee mug closer, wrapping both hands around it.
"Must have been a productive session. You came in looking like someone had scrambled your brain."
Lex took a sip. Too hot. She set the mug down. "We talked. About things that weren't hockey."
Elise put her phone down and turned to face her fully, dark eyes sharp with interest. "Things like what?"
"The photoshoot. Feminism. Sports, women's bodies, who gets to decide how we present ourselves.
Then it just kind of drifted. Her family.
My family. The stuff that shaped us." Lex rubbed the back of her neck.
The soreness from yesterday's practice was still there, a dull knot below her hairline.
"She's different when it's just the two of us. Less armored. She actually listens."
"So you had a real conversation." Elise set her toast down on the counter.
"Yeah."
Elise studied her. Her expression was careful, the careful that meant she was choosing her words.
"There's a thing between you two," she said. Not a question.
Lex looked at the counter. There was a scratch in the laminate, a pale line in the dark surface, and she traced it with her thumbnail. "Maybe."
"Maybe." Elise's eyebrows lifted a fraction.
"Okay. Yes. There is. But it's not going to go anywhere.
She's my coach. She's twenty years older than me.
She'd rather eat glass than cross that line, and honestly, I don't think she even knows what she wants from me.
One minute she's looking at me like I'm a problem she needs to solve.
The next she's telling me about growing up in Canada and how her father never came to a single one of her games.
That's not flirting. That's just a person opening up because she's lonely and I happened to be there. "
Elise picked up her toast and took a deliberate bite, chewing slowly, watching Lex with an expression that was equal parts sympathy and skepticism.
"What?" Lex set her mug down harder than she intended. It clacked against the counter.
"Nothing."
"That's not a nothing face. That's an I-have-opinions face."
"You came home last night looking like you'd been hit by a bus. And now you're standing in our kitchen trying to convince yourself it doesn't mean anything?" She tilted her head. "That's exactly what people do when it means a lot."
Lex opened her mouth, closed it, and drank her coffee. It burned her tongue and she didn't care.
"It probably won't go anywhere," she said again.
Elise smiled, picked up her phone, and went back to scrolling. The skepticism was still there, quiet and immovable, like a tide mark on a sea wall.
Practice was a grind.
Mara ran them through defensive cycling drills that had every player gasping inside twenty minutes. Lex threw herself into the work, her edges cleaner than a month ago, her reads improving. The system was clicking. When she played within it, the hockey was beautiful.
Thirty minutes in, a loose puck squirted free at center ice. Her legs fired before her brain intervened, chasing, and she snapped a wrist shot that Dani barely gloved. Gorgeous play. Complete abandonment of the coverage assignment.
"Landry." Mara's voice was ice. "What was your assignment?"
Lex knew the answer. She skated back to position and said nothing.
"Run it clean or sit down."
The words stung. But last night had changed the equation. Sitting in Mara's office, watching the armor come down piece by piece until the woman underneath was visible. That version of Mara had trusted Lex with her real self. Defaulting to defiance now felt like betraying that trust.
She ran the rest of practice without breaking formation.
It took everything she had. The instinct to chase and improvise screamed for release, but she held it.
Because the look in Mara's eyes wasn't anger.
It was the same look her mother used to give her when she stayed out past curfew: I expected more from you and you let me down.
And that was the thing Lex couldn't stand.
The shower was scalding. Lex stood under the water with her palms flat against the tile and let the heat carve into her shoulders and back.
The locker room was loud behind her. Camille was singing a French pop song off-key.
Frankie was telling a story about her dog eating an entire rotisserie chicken off the counter, bones and all, then looking at her with what Frankie described as "zero guilt and maximum satisfaction.
" Lou was laughing so hard she had to sit down on the bench, and even Dani cracked a smile from inside her stall.
"The vet said he'd never seen a dog so unrepentant," Frankie added.
"She wagged through the entire X-ray." Normal sounds.
Team sounds. Sounds that should have made Lex feel like she belonged but instead made her feel like she was watching from a distance, separated from the group by a distance she couldn't close.
She dressed in joggers and a loose tank, shoved her gear into her bag, and slung it over her shoulder. Her hair was still damp, hanging loose around her face, and the cold corridor air hit her neck and shoulders as she pushed through the locker room door.
The corridor was empty. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a flat, institutional glow on the concrete walls.
Her sneakers squeaked on the polished floor.
She could hear the distant sound of the Zamboni running across the ice, the low mechanical drone echoing through the building's bones.
Then she heard the click of claws on concrete.
Goldie came around the corner at a gentle trot, tongue out, tail swinging in wide, sweeping arcs.
Her coat was freshly brushed and she moved with the unhurried confidence of a dog who knew she was universally adored and saw no reason to rush toward anyone.
The red leash trailed behind her, its loop dragging on the floor.
"Hey, girl." Lex dropped to one knee.
Goldie closed the remaining distance and pressed her entire body against Lex's chest, her tail going into overdrive.
Lex buried her hands in the thick fur behind Goldie's ears and scratched, and the dog's eyes half-closed with pleasure.
She smelled like dog shampoo and warm fur, the unmistakable scent of a Golden Retriever who had been lying in a sunlit room.
"Good girl. You are the best girl." Lex's voice went soft in a way she allowed with exactly two categories of being: dogs and women she was sleeping with.
Goldie's tail thumped against her thigh.
The dog pushed her nose into the crook of Lex's neck and snuffled, her breath hot and damp, and Lex laughed.
She'd always wanted a dog. Growing up in Boston, their apartment had been too small and her mother too rigid about mess and noise and anything that disrupted the rigid, performance-focused household she maintained.
Lex had begged for a puppy at eight, at ten, at twelve.
The answer was always no. Dogs were distractions.
Dogs were impractical. Dogs required a kind of unconditional, messy love that didn't belong in a home where affection was rationed and earned.
Goldie rolled onto her side, presenting her belly with the absolute lack of shame that only golden retrievers could pull off. Lex obliged, rubbing the soft fur of her stomach with both hands, and the dog's back leg kicked in a reflexive spasm of joy.
"You're ridiculous," Lex told her. "You know that? Completely ridiculous."
Goldie's tail swept the floor. Her brown eyes were half-lidded and blissful. The leash was still trailing loose, which meant Mara must be nearby. Goldie didn't wander far from her.
The click of boots on concrete confirmed it.
Mara came around the corner and stopped.
She was in her coaching jacket and dark jeans, her ponytail slightly loosened from the day, her cheeks still flushed from the cold of the rink.
Her laptop bag was slung over one shoulder and she had a travel mug in her free hand, and when she saw Lex on the floor with Goldie, her face opened the way it had the night before.
Wider this time. No audience, no team, just Lex on the cold concrete with her dog.
What came through was warm and unguarded, and then she caught it and put it away.
"She got away from me," Mara said. "I set her leash down to grab my bag and she bolted."
"She has excellent taste in escape routes.
" Lex didn't stand up. She kept her hands on Goldie's belly, her knee on the cold concrete, looking up at Mara from below.
The angle put Mara above her, backlit by the corridor lights, and the effect was striking.
The clean lines of her face. The tired blue eyes.
The loose strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail and were catching the light.
Mara looked like a woman who hadn't slept well and was trying very hard not to show it.