Chapter 3
Logan
I hate suits.
The collar sits wrong against my neck, the jacket pulls across my shoulders no matter how many times the tailor adjusts it, and the shoes are too smooth on the bottom. Dress shoes feel like I'm skating on glass.
Blake is next to me in the elevator, tugging at his own collar. “You look like you're heading to a funeral.”
“I'd rather be at a funeral. At least at a funeral, nobody expects you to make conversation.”
Blake lets out a shocked laugh. “That’s dark, even for you.”
The elevator doors open on the executive level at MSG. The hallway is wide, carpeted, and lined with framed photos of championship teams. We turn the corner, and the sound of the event hits us. Music, laughter, and glasses clinking.
The sponsor appreciation event is in a private lounge overlooking the arena. One wall is floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the empty ice below, and the bar runs the length of the opposite side.
High tables are scattered throughout the space, draped in white cloth, and navy blue and silver banners with the Renegades crest hanging from the ceiling. Waiters in black move through the crowd carrying trays of champagne and appetizers.
Cole is already here. He's in a charcoal suit, standing near the entrance, shaking hands with a man who is laughing at whatever Cole just said. Cole is good at things like this. When the team named him captain, nobody was surprised. He was born for the C.
The man leads without raising his voice. On the ice, he's the steadiest player I've ever shared a blue line with. Off the ice, he's the same. Nothing rattles Cole Maddox.
I respect him more than almost anyone I know.
Liam arrives thirty seconds after us and immediately takes over the room. That's what Liam does. He walks in, and the energy shifts. He's in a navy suit with no tie, his shirt unbuttoned one button too many, and his hair styled like he just stepped off a magazine cover.
“Gentlemen,” he says, clapping Blake on the shoulder. “Who's ready to schmooze?”
“Nobody uses that word,” Blake says.
Liam laughs. “Duty calls.”
Blake shakes his head. “He's going to end up on a billboard for that sportswear brand.”
“Probably.”
“You want a drink?”
“Yeah.”
We head to the bar. Blake orders a beer, and I order a whiskey, neat. The bartender pours it, and I hold the glass without drinking. The ice in my chest hasn't thawed since the text from Jasmine.
I haven't responded to her. I've typed four different replies and deleted each one. What do you say to the woman you walked away from ten years ago? Thanks for the heads up? Good to hear from you? Nothing I came up with seemed good enough.
The event fills up around us. Wilder Ross, the Renegades' Director of Corporate Partnerships, is working the room with Richard Carter, the team president. Carter is old money and old hockey. Wilder is younger and built for this stuff.
He catches my eye from across the room and gives me a nod. I nod back. That's about as social as I get with the front office.
Thomas Moore, one of the Tier 1 sponsors, is holding court near the window with a group of executives.
He's got a whiskey in his hand and a voice that carries across the room.
I met him at the last event, and he talked to me for twenty minutes about his lake house in Connecticut. I nodded through the whole thing.
Coach Mercer is here, too, which surprises me. He doesn't usually do these events. He's in the corner with Assistant Coach Davidson, both of them looking exactly as comfortable as I feel.
Mercer played defense for fifteen seasons. He gets it. There's a reason he doesn't make us do media training.
When the season started, Cole pulled me aside after our first practice and told me that the organization wanted to name me alternate captain.
I didn't know what to say. The A isn't something you campaign for. It's not something you ask for. It's given to the guys the team trusts, the ones who show up every day and do the work without being told. I've been doing that for six years with the Renegades. I didn't think anyone noticed.
“You earned it,” Cole had said. “Don't overthink it.”
I didn't overthink it. I said yes. But I'd be lying if I said the responsibility doesn't sit heavily on me. The A means more than wearing a letter on your jersey. It means you represent the team. On the ice, in the locker room, and at events like this one.
You shake hands with sponsors and smile for photos. You make small talk with people whose names you'll forget by tomorrow.
None of it comes naturally. I'm not Cole or Liam. I don't have the words or the charm or the ease. But I wear the A, and that means I show up. So I show up.
Blake has drifted off to talk to Theo and his wife, Olivia, who are standing near one of the high tables. Theo is animated as always, his hands moving while he talks, Olivia laughing at whatever he's saying.
I'm alone at the bar, and it's the first time tonight I can breathe. I take a sip of my whiskey and turn to set the glass down, then someone sidles up to me. Her perfume tells me it’s a woman. From the corner of my eye, I catch the woman leaning against the bar, signaling the bartender.
“Vodka soda, please.”
I know the voice. I turn and look at her. Jasmine Bennett. Shock reverberates through me even though she gave me a heads-up that she would be here.
It’s been ten years, but looking at her now, it seems like no time has passed, and yet, she’s definitely changed. She looks nothing like the girl I left and everything like the woman I always knew she'd become.
Her hair is down, black waves falling past her shoulders. She's in a black jumpsuit with a gold belt cinched at her waist and gold earrings that are catching the light. Full lips, dark red lipstick. Heels that put her almost at my eye level.
She's looking at me with those dark brown eyes, and her expression is calm and composed.
She is the most beautiful woman in this room, but that’s nothing new—she always was.
“Logan,” she says and smiles.
“Jasmine.”
“You didn't text me back,” she says in a teasing tone, conveying that she didn’t take it personally.
“I didn't know what to say.”
“You could have started with hello.”
“Hello.”
She laughs and turns away as the bartender sets her vodka soda on the bar. “Hello.”
The event moves around us. Someone laughs near the window, and a waiter passes with a tray.
Liam's voice cuts through the noise from across the room, telling a story that's making a group of executives double over.
None of it touches us. We're in our own pocket of the room, and the rest of it has gone soft at the edges.
“So,” she says. “Ten years.”
“Ten years.”
Her gaze sweeps over me. “You look good.”
“You look—” I stop. Good doesn't cover it. Nothing I can say will cover it. “Different.”
Her head cocks to the side, the corner of her mouth curving with amusement. “Different how?”
“Grown up.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I was grown up at eighteen.”
“Yeah. You were.”
She takes a sip of her drink. “I hear you made alternate captain.”
I clear my throat to shove down the shock that she’s kept up with me. “Yeah. This year.”
“Congratulations. That's a big deal.”
“It means I have to come to these things.”
“And you hate these things.”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't have to. You've been holding that whiskey like it's the only thing keeping you from walking out the door.”
I look down at my glass. She's right. I set it on the bar. “It's that obvious?”
“To me it is.” Her eyes meet mine. Something in them that screams, of course, I noticed. I know you.
The words sit between us. She doesn't explain them. She doesn't need to.
“How's your mom?” I ask.
Her face softens. “She's great. She owns a boutique in Long Island now.”
“Lorraine owns a boutique?”
“She does, and she loves it. It’s doing well.”
“That's really great, Jasmine. She deserves that.” Lorraine Bennett was the warmest person I'd ever met. Their house was small. Two bedrooms, a living room with a couch that sagged in the middle, and a kitchen that smelled like whatever Lorraine had been cooking that morning.
There were no trophies on the shelves or newspaper clippings on the walls. No hockey sticks propped against the garage door. Nobody in that house gave a damn about my gap control or my footwork or whether I was going to make the NHL. Lorraine asked me about school and whether I was sleeping enough.
I loved going to that house. I loved sitting at their kitchen table while Lorraine hummed along to the radio and Jasmine did her homework across from me. After the noise of my own house, Jasmine's home felt like coming up for air.
“She does.”
“Does she still make that sweet potato pie at Thanksgiving?”
Jasmine stares at me. “You remember my mother's sweet potato pie?”
“I remember everything about your mother's cooking.”
She shakes her head, but she's smiling. “She still makes it every year.”
“Best pie I've ever had. Don't tell my mom,” I say with a laugh.
“Your mother's pie is good too.”
“My mother's pie is fine. Lorraine's pie is art.”
She laughs again, then looks away. When she turns back, her armor is up again, but it's not as thick as it was a minute ago.
“How about you?” she asks. “How are your brothers?”
“Nolan is playing for the Runners,” I say with pride in my voice. When Jasmine and I were together, Nolan was fifteen and spending every spare minute on the backyard rink trying to perfect his wrist shot.
Dom was thirteen and was always reading or disappearing into his room while the rest of us talked hockey. Now he's twenty-three, finishing his masters, and in a serious relationship.
I've won a Stanley Cup and played nine seasons for the team I grew up dreaming about. A whole decade has gone by in the blink of an eye. So much has happened. And all of it without her.
“I was at the game,” Jasmine says. “I saw him.”
I straightened off the bar. “You were there?” She was in the stands last night, watching me play, and I had no idea.
If I'd known, I would have looked for her.
I would have scanned the crowd between shifts, searching for her face in the bleachers, because playing always felt different when she was there.
I shut that down, and shut it down fast.
She's not my Jasmine. She hasn't been for ten years. She's a lawyer handling a contract for my team, and she was at the game for work. Whatever we had ended in Long Island when I was eighteen and too stupid and too obedient to fight for it.
“Yeah, professional capacity. I'm reviewing the Renegades' sponsorship visibility across venues,” she says. “And how is Dom?”
“He’s good. He's finishing his masters in sports science, and he’s practically engaged.”
Jasmine’s face lights up. “What? Little Dom is engaged?”
I laugh at the expression on her face. “He's twenty-three, not so much Little Dom anymore. He’s been dating his girlfriend for three years now, I’m certain he’ll ask her soon.”
“True. When I think of him, I still see the version of him I knew,” Jasmine says, and I have to stop the sadness I feel that she doesn’t know my brothers anymore.
There’s a long pause because I suck at talking before she clears her throat, and says, “And how are your parents?”
“They’re all right,” I say with a shrug. The last thing I want to talk about with Jasmine is my parents. I’m well aware that, like Sarah, my mother didn’t like Jasmine either. It wasn’t a personal thing. More like, she’s always thought that relationships interfere with hockey.
“Tell me about the firm,” I say.
She tells me about the firm, Caldwell, Price & Associates, where she's been a senior associate for six years. I can tell she loves her work, by the excitement in her voice.
Then, I tell her about the season and the pressure this year. We have to prove ourselves this year after last year’s first-round exit.
There’s so much I want to tell her, but I remind myself that we barely know each other. Still, we talk for another forty minutes. It's the most I've talked to anyone who isn't Blake in months. The words come easier with her than they do with anyone else.
A man in a gray suit approaches and touches Jasmine's arm. “Ms. Bennett? Thomas Moore was asking for you.”
“Of course.” She straightens, shifts back into professional mode so fast it's like watching someone flip a switch. She turns to me. “I should make the rounds.”
“Yeah.”
She picks up her drink. “It was good to see you, Logan.”
“You too. Hey, would you want to grab a drink sometime and catch up properly? Somewhere that isn't—” I look around at the banners and the champagne and the sponsors and chuckle a little. “This.”
She studies me and then smiles. “Sure, I'd like that.”
I stand at the bar with my whiskey going warm in my hand and my chest cracked straight down the middle. Jasmine is everything I knew she'd be, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. But it doesn’t stop the sadness I feel that she did it without me.
I have no one to blame for that but myself.
Blake appears at my side. “You good?”
“No,” I say. “I don't think I am.”