Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
TOLREK
Iarrived in the lobby early and positioned myself near a column that gave me a clear view of the elevator bank without looking like I was watching it.
The team gradually arrived, Mikael loud even at this hour. Two of the younger forwards were half asleep and barely moving. The assistant coaches lingered at the front desk, making sure the bill was settled.
The elevator pinged.
Haley stepped out with her laptop case slung over one shoulder, her overnight bag in the other hand. She didn’t look any different than last night, but this was what the situation required. We couldn’t do anything with what happened, not in front of the world.
My sternum pulled tight, the way it did at the start of a tough game.
Our eyes met across the lobby.
She looked away first, her attention shifting to the gear pile as she crossed the floor. I walked toward the collected baggage as if I’d been heading there the entire time.
I took her personal bag and added it to the stack.
“Thank you,” she said. “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
She turned toward the clustered lounge chairs, and I returned to my post.
Players continued to join us, the lobby filling with bodies and noise.
The equipment managers loaded everything on the bus while we climbed inside.
Brashe took the aisle seat directly across from mine, settling into it with a long sigh. He swiped into his phone and scowled at a picture of a woman. One of the staff? I couldn’t tell at this angle.
Haley sat one row ahead of us, in the window seat, and pulled out her laptop.
Once everything and everyone was settled, the bus pulled out of the lot. City traffic gave way to a long stretch of highway. The miles started stacking up.
If I turned my head just right, I could see the glow of her laptop screen, her fingers moving across the keyboard.
Eventually, she closed her laptop and rose, making her way down the aisle to drop her coffee cup in the trash. She returned, only briefly meeting my eyes, and sat in the window seat again, tipping her head against the glass pane.
I pulled my practice notes up on my phone and reviewed positioning sequences from yesterday’s game. The notes required more concentration than I liked, because it made it harder to watch Haley.
Four hours into the drive, we pulled into a rest stop.
“Forty minutes, guys,” one of the assistant coaches called out. He stepped off the bus as we rose.
I got off the bus and stood in the parking lot. The day had warmed up nicely. I tilted my head back and let the sun hit my face.
Haley exited the bus and passed by me on the way to the building. She didn’t stop, and I did my best to pretend I hadn't expected her to stop.
I followed her to the rest area building and stood outside, watching a family climb into their vehicle. The mother was organizing the children. The father was checking something on his phone. The kids were fighting with each other in the back seat.
Renkar would’ve made this into something.
He had a gift for that, finding the joke in ordinary situations, the release valve in moments that felt tight.
If he were standing here in this parking lot, he would’ve made the whole situation both worse and better, and I would’ve been annoyed at him for being right.
He’d been dead for three years, and I still turned to tell him things.
Haley came back out with a sandwich and a bottle of water and paused beside me.
“What’s the ETA?” she asked.
“Six or eight more hours. Maybe less if traffic cooperates.”
“Thanks.”
She crossed the parking lot to the bus, her jacket unzipped to enjoy the warm air. When she reached the bus, she climbed the steps and disappeared inside.
I went into the building and bought lunch. Back on the bus, I took my seat.
She was already working on her laptop again.
An hour past the rest stop, the bus quieted. The highway was flat and monotonous, and the players around me fell asleep. Haley closed her laptop and slid it into her bag. A few minutes later her head tipped against the window, and she slept too.
I hadn’t let myself look at her since the lobby. I looked now.
She had no pillow. Her head rested against the glass at an angle that would hurt her neck before the next stop. Her hands lay on her lap, relaxed in sleep.
I wanted to be where the window was. I’d rest her head on my arm instead of the glass. Then I’d keep my arm still for as long as she slept.
I didn’t look again for twenty minutes, though it took considerable effort to keep my gaze from the back of her head. When I did, she’d shifted. Her neck rested at an even worse angle. The glass pressed into her temple, and it would leave a mark.
I tugged my hoodie out of my bag and leaned forward, tucking it carefully beneath her head.
She stirred and adjusted, nestling into my sweatshirt.
I faced forward and acted as if I’d done nothing.
Brashe glanced my way and took a slow sip of his water.
The bus continued moving with the highway stretching ahead. Players shifted in their seats, and someone snored three rows back.
Haley slept with her head on my sweatshirt for the next two hours.
I pulled up notes on my phone and read the same sequence four times.
The highway was flat and black, and it meant nothing.
I set the phone face down on my knee and watched the road instead, doing all I could not to look at her again.
We arrived in Boston late afternoon and pulled up to the players’ entrance along one side.
The city felt familiar now. The skyline, the way the light filtered through the trees, and the streets I was starting to know by name.
While the equipment staff unloaded our gear, the players scattered. A few went to the locker room, others to their cars parked in the lot, while some scrolled through their phones to order transportation.
Haley, my sweatshirt draped over her arm, went inside, and I followed. She was going the same way.
While she unlocked and entered her office, I continued to the locker room, absorbing the familiar smell of this building. This was starting to be my building. Sweat and cleaning products and the scent of ice coming through the ventilation.
Most of the players had cleared out.
Brashe was still at his stall when I walked in and tossed a few things in the laundry basket from my bag.
“The defensive unit is starting to come together nicely,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The gap control in yesterday’s game was solid. Better than two weeks ago.”
“It was.”
“You called the rotation in the third period. It was a clean read, and it saved my ass. They would’ve been on my goal in a flash if you hadn’t.”
I nodded.
A female staff member passed the locker room doorway, someone from operations, carrying a tablet. Brashe’s attention shot to the door and remained there.
He shook his head, and I swore he whispered, “Can’t be her.”
Her? I didn’t comment.
We left the locker room together and parted ways in the corridor.
I found Haley standing near the curb, scrolling on her phone, probably calling for a ride.
I walked over and stood beside her. “We could share.”
She glanced up, her gaze sliding to her father chatting with one of the equipment staff. “We could.”
Was this a safe move? Maybe not. But someone would soon discover that we lived across the street from each other. Then this would appear practical, not planned.
The vehicle pulled up, and I tossed our bags in the back, climbing into the rear seat beside her. She waved to her father as we pulled away, but he didn’t look up.
We had maybe eight inches between us. She kept her bag on her lap. I watched the city through the window.
This silence felt different from the bus. The bus had noise—players, road, engine. This was the driver and us not speaking when we had so many things to say.
We both got out in front of her apartment building. I stood with her on the sidewalk with a foot of space between us and a hundred reasons to keep it there.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she said.
“Yes.”
Her lips quivered, but she tightened her grip on her shoulder strap and, still holding my hoodie, went inside her building. I waited, watching her window until the lights came on inside her apartment before I turned and crossed the road.
Beau met me at my apartment door with the kind of enthusiasm that said I’d been gone for years instead of two days. I set my bag down and picked him up. He licked my face and wiggled, all whimpers of joy.
“I know,” I said. “I missed you too.”
I fed him and took him for a walk around the block. He sniffed every corner with the thoroughness of someone conducting a formal investigation.
Renkar had picked him out of the litter because he was the one not jumping around for attention. Just sitting in the corner of the dog bed, watching. Renkar said that was the right kind of dog. I couldn’t disagree.
Back inside, I sat on the sofa. Beau jumped up and climbed into my lap.
I stared at the sketch on the wall.
Haley had drawn him in about twenty minutes. She’d handed it over like it was nothing, the way she did most things. I’d framed it because I didn’t know what else to do with the feeling it gave me.
Beau sighed and went boneless against my knee.
I didn’t move for a very long time.
Morning practice. My ice. My rink now. The surface felt great under my skates as I warmed up my muscles. The coaches led us in drill sequences. Basic positioning work, the kind we’d run until it became automatic.
I fell into the read I’d been developing, tracking where my teammates would be and adjusting the defensive structure around the play before it developed.
Two of the newer defensemen kept moving out of line, which meant the play was coming together wrong. An opposing team’s forward was going to exploit the gap. I saw it in real time.
“Switch,” I called out.
Both defensemen adjusted, and the gap closed, cutting the play off.
The coaches didn’t make a production of it, though one of the assistants wrote something on his tablet.
Crim came off the ice at the end of the drill and paused beside me.
“Good call.” His low laugh rang out. “I would’ve scored if you hadn’t tightened up that line.”
“Yup.” The tape session had shown me the evidence, but the ice was where it became real.
Late afternoon, I passed Haley’s office on the way to the coaches’ corridor. I had an errand in that direction. I stopped at her open doorway and placed one hand on the frame.
She looked up.
“I have a schedule question,” I said. “About the next tape session. Is Thursday good?”
Her face shifted, softening, but she smoothed it fast. “Thursday works.”
“Same time?”
“Four o’clock?”
“Yes.”
The excuse for the question was thin, and we both knew it.
I turned and continued down the hall. Halfway along the corridor, I fully processed the look on her face. She’d wanted to ask me to step inside.
What would I give to be able to do that?
Everything.
I was heading out at the end of the day when Jim called out to me. Stopping in the lobby, I turned back.
“Tolrek. Glad I caught you.” He strode over to stand beside me. “I saw that positioning call this morning, the switch in the neutral zone. That’s the kind of read we need and exactly what we brought you here for.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re settling in well. I can see it on the ice.” Genuine warmth came through in his voice. He clapped my shoulder. “Do you have a minute to talk? I want to run something by you.”
We strode together down the corridor toward the coaches’ offices. Jim talked about defensive pairings, about how he was thinking of adjusting the rotation for the next game. The usual stuff.
We turned the corner.
Haley stood outside her office, her back to us, struggling with the door. Her laptop bag had slipped off her shoulder, and she was trying to juggle it, her phone, and her keys at the same time.
“Haley,” Jim called out.
She turned.
The laptop bag dropped.
I closed the distance in a few strides, catching the bag before it hit the floor.
Muscle memory. The same reflex that made me position myself between a forward and the net.
I straightened, holding her bag, standing close enough to see the exact moment her breath caught.
Close enough to feel the heat coming off her skin.
Too close.
“Good reflexes,” Jim said behind me, his tone light and amused.
I handed Haley the bag. Our fingers touched, and her pupils dilated. I forced myself to step back.
“Thank you.” Her voice came out steady, but I heard the slight breathlessness underneath it.
“No problem.”
Jim moved closer, positioning himself between us without seeming to notice. “Are you working late again, honey?”
“Just finishing up the defensive zone package,” Haley said, turning toward her father. “I wanted to get it done before tomorrow’s meeting.”
“You work too hard.” Jim’s voice held affection. “You’re allowed to have a life outside this building, you know.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Well, don’t work too late.” Jim turned back to me. “Tolrek, we should grab coffee together soon. I want to pick your brain about the defensive structure. You’re seeing things on the ice I want to understand better.”
“Of course.”
“Good.” Jim smiled. “I’ll have my assistant set something up.”
He walked away, his footsteps echoing down the corridor.