6. Jamie #2
I step out of my car in the Climate Pledge Arena parking garage, the early morning sun already warming the concrete beneath my feet.
The off-season should mean quiet mornings, slow starts, and the kind of lazy days that stretch out like a well-earned reward, the sort of unstructured hours that feel like an apology from the universe after nine months of grinding.
Instead, I’m here, dressed in a team-issued polo and a pair of dark jeans that suddenly feel too formal for what I assumed would be a quick in-and-out meeting.
My agent, Marcus, falls into step beside me as we make our way toward the arena entrance, his expression carrying that particular brand of carefully cultivated neutrality that means he already knows something I don’t and has decided not to tell me yet.
“You good?” he asks, voice low.
“Peachy,” I mutter, rolling my shoulders to ease the tension already there. “Absolutely thrilled to be spending my summer morning in a conference room instead of on my couch.”
Marcus chuckles, the sound dry and entirely too knowing. “You know how this works. They call, you show up. It’s the price of being the reliable one.”
I do know how it works. I’ve spent my entire professional career being the guy who shows up, who answers the call, who doesn’t make waves or ask for exceptions or give anyone a reason to look at him sideways.
It’s served me well. Kept me steady, kept me safe, kept me out of the sort of headlines that follow you long after you’ve moved on.
Right now, though, with the weight of my family’s first real summer together in Seattle pressing warm and insistent against my ribs, the last thing I want is to be pulled into something that’s going to eat up every spare hour I’ve managed to carve out.
We step through the player entrance, the familiar scent of ice and disinfectant hitting me like a sense memory.
The arena is quiet this early, the usual hum of activity completely absent.
It’s strange, walking these halls without the distant echo of skates or the rhythmic thud of pucks against boards or the scattered chatter of teammates running drills.
The whole place feels emptied out. Like a body without a heartbeat, familiar in its architecture but fundamentally wrong in its stillness.
Marcus leads me toward the executive wing, his steps unhesitating. “They’re partnering with some film production,” he says, voice casual in the way that means he’s downplaying something. “Using the facilities for shooting. They want player involvement to add authenticity to the project.”
I exhale slowly through my nose. “Of course they do.”
He glances at me, one eyebrow arching just slightly. “You’ll be fine. It’s probably just some promotional material. A few photos, maybe a sit-down interview. You’ll be out of here before lunch and back at your parents’ pool before you know it.”
I nod, because it’s the easier thing to do, but the tension sitting low in my gut doesn’t ease.
I should be at my parents’ house right now, sitting in the backyard with a plate of my mother’s pancakes and a cup of coffee going cold beside me in the sun.
I should be helping Tazja map out potential locations for her new shop, listening to her talk about layouts and lighting and the precise shade of cream she wants for the walls.
I should be sitting across the kitchen table from Jacques while he complains loudly and at length about his upcoming senior year and all the ways it’s already threatening to ruin his life.
Instead, I’m here, walking toward a room full of people who have already decided they need something from me.
The conference room door is already open when we arrive, the low murmur of overlapping conversations spilling out into the corridor.
I step inside and let my eyes move across the room automatically, team executives in their usual cluster near the windows, PR staff with their laptops already open, a handful of unfamiliar faces I clock immediately as production people.
I’m mid-scan, already cataloging exits and calculating how quickly I can extract myself from whatever this is, when my gaze lands on him and stops dead.
Cyaire Reed.
He’s sitting near the head of the table, one long leg crossed loosely over the other, his posture the particular kind of relaxed that takes conscious effort to maintain.
He’s dressed in dark jeans and a simple black Henley, the fabric fitted enough to suggest the lean muscle beneath without announcing it.
His hair is freshly cut, edged with the kind of precision that costs money and looks effortless, and he’s clean-shaven, his jaw sharp in the overhead lighting.
Those eyes, those particular, infuriatingly familiar brown eyes, are fixed on something across the room, giving away exactly nothing.
For a moment, the entire room goes quiet in my head and I forget how to breathe properly.
Two months. Two full, deliberate months of hockey and focus and the careful, methodical work of convincing myself that the man from New York was nothing more than a memory.
A moment in time that had existed in a specific context, mattered only within that context, and had no business following me into the life I’d built since.
I’d moved on. I’d won the Stanley Cup, celebrated with my teammates until my voice gave out, spent proper time with my family for the first time in years.
Cyaire had receded, if not entirely forgotten, then at least filed somewhere I didn’t need to access regularly.
Now he’s here. Sitting at the head of a table in the middle of a meeting that apparently involves me directly, looking like he belongs in this room more than I do.