Chapter 14
Calder
The morning came in fragments—light cutting through cheap blinds, the smell of burnt dust from the old radiator, the echo of her name in my head. My mouth still carried her. Smoke and whiskey and guilt.
I sat up too fast, sheets sticking to my skin, pulse thundering in my throat. The room looked the same—unmade bed, duffel in the corner, coffee stains on paperwork—but nothing felt right inside me.
“She’s just a player,” I muttered, voice raw. The words didn’t hold.
Steam hissed from the shower. I let it run until the mirror fogged over, but the reflection that stared back still looked like a man who’d crossed every line he used to draw in ink. Coach Shaw. What a joke.
I slammed my fist against the counter, more sound than pain. The cracked soap dish hit the tile. “You stupid bastard.”
I almost walked to the cabinet. The bottle sat behind the cereal box, half-empty and whispering my name. Familiar comfort. Instant silence. My fingers grazed the edge of the cupboard door—then stopped.
Not again. Not for this.
I turned away and flipped open the laptop instead. The screen blinked to life with yesterday’s footage queued up: Crestwood vs. Lakeshore. A shaky win. Her win, if I was honest. She’d clawed it back from disaster.
I scrubbed through the first period—my own voice barking orders from the bench, her skating cutting through noise like a blade. I paused when the puck hit her stick. Quick hands. Clean pass. I should’ve been proud. I was proud. That was what made it worse.
“Just a player,” I growled and typed it into the margins of my notes like a warning.
I started redrawing drills. Lines, zones, rotations.
Ten, twenty, thirty plays before I stopped counting.
The routine steadied my breathing. The rhythm scratched against the part of me still raw from the night before.
I heard her voice in pieces—every curse, every gasp.
Shoved them down, replaced them with diagrams.
Backcheck coverage. Two-on-one transitions. Penalty kills. Easy things that made sense when nothing else did.
I rewound the third period and watched her again. The rebound, the assist, the small nod after the final buzzer. No smile—just that steady, burning focus. She didn’t need me ruining what she’d built. Didn’t need my hands anywhere near her story.
I closed the laptop, leaned back, rubbed my jaw until it hurt. The ghost of her laugh still lived there somewhere under the bruising. Pathetic.
Another voice, quieter now, You don’t get to want this.
I looked at the wall clock. 6:47 a.m. Ice time at nine. That gave me two hours to turn back into the man everyone expected to show up. The one who knew better.
“She’s just a player,” I repeated, pacing the length of the room. “Just a fucking player. Get your head back in the game.”
The words finally rang solid. Cold enough to hold onto. I grabbed my clipboard and keys and left before doubt could follow.
The locker room door clanged shut behind me and the noise swallowed the voice in my head. I hit the ice before the girls finished lacing up, whistle between my teeth, stopwatch in hand. A plan already laid out, every minute accounted for—no space for conversation, no space for her.
They trickled out, laughing, jostling. Then she stepped through the bench gate, helmet under her arm, cheeks pink from the cold. I looked past her, not at her.
“Warm-up laps. Ten. Go.”
The whistle sang and they scattered like startled birds. I watched every stride but never lingered where my eyes wanted to. Every time her line swung past the glass, I checked my watch instead. Professional. Detached. The picture of discipline.
Kira was sharp enough to catch on. She kept glancing between us when I barked correction. The kid had a fox’s smirk—like she’d found a secret. I made sure she didn't.
“Harder transitions!” I shouted. “If you’re breathing easy, you’re doing it wrong!”
I stalked the boards, clipboard raised, notes scribbled without meaning. Billie’s voice carried through the rink—commands to her line, quick, sure. She was better today. Cleaner, faster. Of course she was. She’d always push harder when someone stopped looking.
“Scrimmage,” I called. “Fifteen minutes, short shifts!”
Helmets tilted, sweat streamed, no one questioned the sudden change. I blew the whistle again before silence could open any space for memory.
From the corner of my eye, I saw her skate backward across center ice, stick tapping rhythm on the blade.
She wanted direction. Feedback. I gave none.
Called out other names instead. Good pass, Kira.
Smart pivot, Hannah. I left her hanging in the middle of the play, exactly where I stood inside my own head.
The team noticed. The ice had a tension under it, a current that made every glide stiffer. I felt it and ignored it, pushing drills faster, shorter, meaner. Breath turned into mist and I pretended I couldn’t see hers.
When the scrimmage ended, I blew one last shrill note and walked straight off the ice. Clipboard tight under my arm, throat dry.
If I ignored it long enough, maybe it would undo itself. Maybe she’d fade back into the crowd like another jersey, another player. I almost believed it—until her laugh echoed off the glass and followed me down the tunnel.
The phone lit up before I made it past the locker room doors. Gideon Strong.
Of course. The one name guaranteed to kill whatever scraps of calm I had left.
I hit accept and leaned against the concrete wall, still holding my whistle. “You calling to congratulate me, boss? Team didn’t embarrass themselves today.”
“That’s not why I’m calling.” His voice carried that measured calm that meant something bad waited beneath it. “I’m hearing things, Calder.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Things?”
“Whispers. About you being distracted. Off your game. Sound familiar?”
I turned toward the empty rink, where skate marks still scarred the ice. “You know how rumors work,” I told him. “People need to talk about something.”
“Usually because there’s something to talk about.”
Silence stretched until I could hear the hum of the compressors below the ice. My jaw locked. “I’ve been focused. Every drill logged. Every stat improving.”
Gideon exhaled, a slow drag through his nose. “Focused doesn’t always look clean from the outside. A couple of scouts reached out—asked me if you were drinking again.”
My stomach dropped, sudden and stupid. “You tell them no?”
“You tell me no.” His tone went sharp, like steel on steel. “Is there a problem I should know about?”
I stared at my reflection in the glass. Eyes bloodshot, hair slicked back with leftover sweat. “No,” I said.
He didn’t buy it, but he didn’t call me out either. “Then tell me why a reporter from The Ice Line called my office asking about you. The same one who ate you alive after the suspension.”
I felt the floor tilt. “Sullivan?”
“That’s the one. He’s sniffing around Crestwood. Says he’s ‘writing a feature on the league’s development programs.’ Which is bullshit. He’s digging for dirt.”
I swallowed hard. “You think he knows something?”
“I think he’s looking for something. And if there’s anything you’re not telling me, now’s the time, Calder.”
For a second, I almost said it. Every word of it: the girl with fire in her eyes, the one I now have to coach like she doesn’t exist. But the words jammed in my throat, too heavy to drag out.
“There’s nothing,” I said. “Just work. I give you my word.”
Gideon paused long enough to let the lie hang between us. “Make sure it stays that way.”
The call clicked dead.
I stayed there, phone pressed to my ear, until the screen went black. Distracted. Off my game. The words echoed around the locker room, bouncing off steel and tile. Outside the glass, the rink lights dimmed, leaving the ice in shadow.
I slid the phone into my pocket and tried to breathe past the weight in my chest. Sullivan prowling around meant one wrong look, one overheard word, and the rumors wouldn’t stay whispers.
I’d thought I could manage it—keep it buried under drills and discipline. But Gideon’s voice still rang in my head, colder than the rink air.
If there’s anything you’re not telling me.
There was. And it had a name.
The walls pressed in on me, the call with Gideon still echoing, so I pushed out of the office before I could talk myself into another lie. The low roar of blades on ice filled the hallway—steady, alive, cleansing in a way I didn’t deserve.
I stepped into the rink; the chill bit through my shirt. They were still scrimmaging. Sam must’ve kept the pace after I stormed off. Smart move.
And there she was.
Billie burned down the ice like nothing outside those boards touched her. The puck stuck to her tape as if she bent gravity. She cut through two defenders, flipped it cross-ice, set up a one-timer so clean it silenced the bench for half a second before the celebration broke out.
I stayed half-hidden behind the glass, hands jammed in my pockets, pretending to study spacing. Lie number forty-something today.
Every time she pivoted, the cold light caught her eyeshield, flashing silver. She didn’t look at me once, and somehow that hit harder than the stare she’d given me last night before walking away.
She wasn’t skating angry. She was leading.
Between shifts, she crouched beside the freshman winger—girl barely eighteen—showed her how to shift weight through the turn.
Pointed, demonstrated, made the kid laugh.
Then she smacked her stick on the boards, calling her back into rotation, checking that everyone was set before the whistle went again.
Natural command radiated off her; no ego, no grandstanding, just control born from knowing the game in her bones.
Not good. Worse. Because leaders were rare. Because captains carried programs. And because now I’d seen what she could be, I knew exactly what I’d ruin if I didn’t fix myself fast.