Chapter 16
Logan
“Listen up.”
Mercer is standing in the middle of the locker room with his arms crossed and his jaw set. We're twenty minutes from puck drop against the Ottawa Breakers, and the room is dead quiet.
Three losses in a row. The energy that carried us through November is gone, and every man sitting in this room knows it.
“I'm going to be straight with you because I respect you too much to blow smoke up your asses,” Mercer says. “We've dropped three straight. Three games where we came out flat, played like we were scared of the puck, and got outworked by teams that want it more than we do.
“That's not who we are. That's not the team I coached to four straight wins after Pittsburgh.”
He paces between the stalls. Nobody moves. Cole is sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Blake is beside me, his jaw tight. Liam, who is never quiet, is quiet.
“I don't care about the scoreboard tonight. I care about effort. I care about compete level. I care about whether the man sitting next to you can count on you to do your fucking job when the puck drops. Because right now I'm not sure he can. And that's on every single one of you.”
He stops in the center of the room. “Go out there and play like the team I know you are. Leave everything on the ice. Every shift, every battle, every loose puck. If we lose tonight, we lose with nothing left in the tank. Not because we didn't show up. Questions?”
Silence.
“Good. Let's go.”
We file out of the locker room and down the tunnel. The Ottawa crowd is loud and hostile, and I barely register it. My legs feel heavy from the first stride.
My back is tight. I slept badly on the hotel bed last night, tossing and turning until three in the morning, running through game film in my head and coming up empty on answers for why we've fallen apart.
The puck drops, and I'm a step behind on everything. My reads are late. My passes are off. I get caught on a zone entry in the first period, and the Ottawa winger blows past me and feeds their center for an easy goal. I skate back to the bench and slam the door shut behind me.
Blake sits down next to me. “Shake it off.”
I can't shake it off. My body is doing what I tell it to do, but there's a delay, a fraction of a second between my brain and my legs that wasn't there a month ago. I'm tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix.
Three weeks of grinding through losses, trying to carry the defensive load while the team searches for its identity, and my body is starting to send me the bill.
Second period, we're better. Cole scores on a redirect that ties it at one. Liam draws a penalty, and we get a power play that generates three good chances, but nothing goes in.
Third period, Ottawa gets a lucky bounce.
Their defenseman throws a shot from the point that deflects off two sticks and trickles past our goalie.
2-1 Ottawa. We push hard in the final five minutes.
Mercer pulls the goalie. We cycle the puck in their zone for thirty seconds, and Liam fires a one-timer that hits the crossbar and bounces out.
The buzzer sounds. 2-1 final. Four losses in a row.
The locker room afterward is a morgue. Guys shower and change without talking. Mercer says nothing, which is worse than when he yells. He walks through the room once, looks at each of us, and leaves.
Cole stands up. “Sit down. All of you.”
We sit.
“This is it, boys. We're in a playoff race, and we're handing games away. I'm not going to stand here and tell you it's okay because it's not okay. We're not competing. We're not finishing checks. We're not winning the battles that matter. That ends now.”
He looks around the room. “When we get back to New York, we reset.
Tuesday practice, I want every man in this room ready to work harder than he's ever worked. We leave everything on the ice from here on out. No coasting. No excuses. We fight for every point, or we go home in April and watch someone else play in the playoffs.”
Nobody speaks. Cole nods and sits down, and that's the end of it.
I shower, change, and sit at my stall for a long time after everyone else has cleared out. My back is throbbing, and my legs are heavy, and I'm exhausted in a way that goes deeper than the physical.
Four losses have drained something out of me.
We fly back to New York tomorrow morning. Practice isn't until Tuesday. I have three days to rest and reset.
I pull out my phone and text Jasmine. We lost. I'm wiped out. What are you doing next weekend?
She replies fast. Whatever you need. How bad was it?
Me: Bad. I played like shit. The whole team did.
Jasmine: I'm sorry, baby. What can I do?
I stare at the screen. The answer comes to me fully formed. I want to go to Maine tomorrow afternoon. Come with me.
Jasmine: I would love to.
My chest loosens for the first time in hours. I text her the details. I'll pick her up at noon. We'll fly up and be there by mid-afternoon.
Pack warm, the coast is cold this time of year.
How are we getting there? She asks.
I'll sort out the flights. Don't worry about it.
I pull out my laptop and book a private charter from Teterboro to a small regional airport thirty minutes from my house in Maine. After the last team flight, I want control over every detail. A small jet, a short flight, a pilot I've used before.
I close my laptop and lean back in my stall and close my eyes. Maine. Nobody in my family has ever been. It’s the one place in the world that belongs entirely to me.
I can’t wait for tomorrow.
The following morning at eleven-thirty, I pull up outside Jasmine's building. The sky is gray, and I'm wearing a heavy sweater under my jacket. I buzz her intercom.
“Come up,” she says.
I take the elevator to the fourth floor and knock. She opens the door in jeans and a cream knit sweater. She steps forward and wraps her arms around me before I'm through the doorway.
“It'll get better,” she says into my chest. “The team will find it again.”
I hold her and press my lips to the top of her head. “I hope so.”
She pulls back and looks at my face. “You look exhausted.”
“I am exhausted.”
She kisses me softly, then turns and grabs a weekend bag from beside the door. I take it from her hand and sling it over my shoulder.
“That's it?” I ask. “One bag?”
“I pack light.”
“You are the only woman I've ever met who packs light.”
“I'm a woman of many talents, Shaw.”
We take the elevator down. In the small space between floors, I lean against the wall and rub my hand across my face.
“I haven't slept properly in a week,” I say. “The losses are getting into my head. I keep replaying shifts and second-guessing decisions.”
She takes my hand. “That's why we're going to Maine. You need to step away from it for forty-eight hours.”
“I don't know how to step away from it.”
She smiles, and there’s a hint of mischief there. “That's why you have me.”
The elevator opens, and we walk through the lobby to my car. I put the bags in the back seat and pull out into traffic heading toward the Lincoln Tunnel and New Jersey.
Jasmine settles into the passenger seat and kicks off her boots and tucks her feet underneath her. “So let me tell you about my week because you need to think about something other than hockey for the next two hours.”
“Go ahead.”
“Mabel called an emergency meeting on Wednesday because the sports betting partner filed a complaint about the compliance changes I recommended. They're claiming the new age-verification requirements on the app are costing them user engagement, and they want to renegotiate the contract.”
“Can they do that?”
“They can try. The compliance changes are non-negotiable because they're based on state regulations, not my personal opinion. But they're pushing back, and Wilder is nervous because the betting partner brings in serious revenue.”
“What did Mabel say?”
“Mabel said, and I quote, 'Let them complain. The regulations are the regulations. If they don't like it, they can find another team.' Then she told me to draft a response that was polite enough for a boardroom and firm enough to end the conversation.”
“Did you?”
“I sent it Thursday morning. Three pages. Clara read it and said it was the most elegantly threatening document she'd ever seen.”
I smile for the first time since the Ottawa game. “That sounds like you.”
“Thank you. I also had to deal with Jude Knight, who has been sniffing around the Renegades account because he smells an opportunity. He asked Mabel if he could assist me on the sports betting issue, and she said no.”
“Does this guy bother you?”
“Jude bothers everyone. He's the kind of lawyer who bills three hours for a one-hour meeting and takes credit for other people's research. Clara and I have a running theory that he sleeps in his office because nobody has ever seen him leave.”
I'm laughing now, and it feels good. Jasmine talks about the office the way other people tell stories around a campfire — vivid, funny, full of characters.
The charter is a small jet, eight seats, quiet engines. Jasmine stops on the tarmac and stares at it.
“Logan. This is a private jet.”
“It's a small one.”
“Still, it's a private jet.”
“I told you I'd sort out the flights.”
“I assumed you meant a commercial airline.”
“After what happened on the last plane I was on, I want a pilot I trust and an aircraft I've inspected. This is my guy. He's flown me to Maine four times.”
She shakes her head and walks up the steps into the cabin. I follow her with the bags. The pilot greets us and runs through the basics, and we settle into seats across from each other with the aisle between us.
The flight is ninety minutes. Jasmine falls asleep twenty minutes in, curled up in her seat with her head against the window and my jacket draped over her shoulders. I sit across from her, look out the window, and watch the landscape change from city to suburbs to forest to coastline.
We land at the regional airport and take a cab to the house. The drive is thirty minutes along a two-lane road that follows the coast. The trees are bare, and the ocean is gray-green, and the sky is low and heavy.
A thought comes to me so clearly and so completely that it takes my breath away. I’m going to marry this woman. Tomorrow, if I could. I'm going to make her a Shaw and bring her back to this house and fill every room with the life we should have been building for the last ten years.