Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HALEY
The team meeting started at ten with a full roster. The coaching staff filed in, plus support personnel who needed to be present for tactical discussions. I sat in the back corner with my laptop open, ready to pull footage if the coaches needed additional angles.
My father stood at the front, running through the breakdown from last night’s game. He pulled clips, highlighted patterns, and praised specific plays.
Then he pulled up Tolrek’s power play kill sequence.
“This is textbook gap control,” my father said.
The footage played on the large screen, showing Tolrek reading the developing play and adjusting his position.
“Watch how he anticipates the passing lane before the forward commits. That’s the kind of defensive awareness that makes everyone around him better. ”
The room absorbed this. Players watched with varying degrees of attention. Crim nodded, no doubt recognizing what he’d seen in real time on the ice.
Tolrek sat to my right, in the opposite corner. He didn’t react to the praise, but he held himself a fraction straighter.
My father continued. “This is what we need to see consistently. This kind of read doesn’t just prevent goals, it creates offensive opportunities. That’s the standard we need to bring to every game.”
The meeting continued for another twenty minutes, my dad discussing adjustments he was making for tonight’s game.
He was moving Tolrek up to the first line and starting him when the puck dropped. I watched the news ripple through the room, most nodding in respect, a few lifting eyebrows, especially the orc being bumped down to the second line.
“One more thing before we break,” my father said. “We’re three games into preseason, and I want to remind everyone about keeping personal and professional lives separate. This applies to everyone, staff included. We’re building something solid here, and that requires focus from all of us.”
The words hit hard.
He wasn’t talking about me specifically. He gave this speech at the start of every season, a reminder that the team came first and personal complications could derail everything we were trying to build.
Now it felt like he was looking directly at me while he said it, even though he wasn’t. He scanned the room, making eye contact with multiple people, ensuring his message hit.
Guilt churned through my belly.
The meeting ended and the players filed out, heading to the locker room to prepare for tonight’s game. I stayed in my seat, pretending to review my notes, though I was actually trying to steady my breathing.
“Haley.”
I looked up to find my father standing at the front of the room, everyone else gone.
“Good work,” he said. “Nosh is playing like a different player. Whatever you put in that package worked.”
“Just doing my job.”
“You do it better than anyone.” He came my way, his expression warm.
At this moment, he wasn’t the coach but my dad.
“I know this life isn’t always easy. Following me from city to city and working in a world that doesn’t always make space for you.
But you’ve built an amazing thing here. I’m proud of you. ”
I would’ve welcomed words like this a month ago. I’d chased my father’s approval my whole life.
Now they just made the guilt churn worse.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Are you okay? You seem tired.”
“I’ve got a lot of prep to do for tonight’s game.”
He studied my face for a moment before sucking in a breath and releasing ig. “Don’t work too hard. You’re allowed to have a life outside this building.”
The irony of it would’ve been funny if it didn’t hurt so much.
He left, and I sat in the empty meeting room for five more minutes before I could make myself move.
The hallway between the meeting room and my office was empty when I stepped out.
Then it wasn’t.
Tolrek came around the corner from the opposite direction, probably heading to the stairwell that would take him to the locker room. We saw each other at the same time.
For one instant, we were alone in a corridor with no cameras and no witnesses.
My body moved before my brain caught up. One step toward him. Another. My hand half-raised, reaching to touch him.
He stopped walking.
We stood about eight feet apart, crossable in a few strides. That was nothing, really, in a building this size.
Yet it felt like miles.
I dropped my hand to my side.
A door opened farther down the hall. Voices echoed from around the corner, an orc laughing. The moment shattered.
He strode past me, continuing toward the stairwell without looking back.
I entered my office and closed the door, leaning against it until my heart rate returned to something approaching normal.
I stood there longer than I needed to.
The corridor had been empty. But I hadn’t crossed it and neither had he, and that restraint was costing both of us something I didn’t have a tag for.
Sitting at my desk, I turned on my computer. I pulled up the full-team overview, and I made myself work until the evening’s game, when I left to take my place inside the same press box.
Tolrek played like an orc who’d found something he’d been missing. His reads were sharp, his positioning perfect, and his on-ice communication was the kind that made the whole defensive structure stronger.
I did my job, trying not to feel like twenty thousand people were watching something that belonged only to me.
We won by three goals, and I was sure the press would call it a dominant performance, the kind that would fuel my father's team meetings for days.
After the game, I stayed in the press box, compiling my breakdown and avoiding the moment when I’d have to walk past the locker room area where Tolrek would be celebrating with the team.
When I finally packed up and headed out, the corridors were empty.
I found Tolrek standing near the exit, talking to Crim and Brashe. He looked amazing in a suit he’d donned for the post-game media wrap-up, and relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen before.
I continued toward the parking lot where my car waited.
Behind me, Crim said something that made Brashe laugh. Tolrek responded, though I couldn’t make out the words.
My father joined them, his voice boisterous as he praised their performance.
I kept walking until I reached my car, where I got inside and sat in the dark before I could make myself start the engine.
Midnight found me stress baking in my kitchen, elbow-deep in flour and butter.
My mother’s recipe cards sat on the counter, splattered with ingredients. I was making chocolate chip cookies, the same ones I’d made at least once a week since I was twelve.
I was making them because I couldn’t sleep and needed my hands to do something other than reach for my phone.
I measured vanilla extract, adding extra the way my mom used to. If I was lucky, the gut punch I got whenever I used her recipes would never go away.
A sweet smell filled my small kitchen.
The first batch went into the oven. I set the timer and spooned more onto a second sheet pan.
My phone sat on the counter, face up. It had remained silent all night.
I could text Tolrek something simple. A few words that wouldn’t mean anything if anyone else saw it. How’s Beau? Or, Great game! No one would question anything like that.
The timer went off, and I pulled the first batch out and set them on the cooling rack. Golden brown, slightly crispy at the edges, and soft in the middle. Perfect.
I slid the second pan into the oven and scooped the first pan’s cookies onto the rack. Then spooned up more batter on the first pan.
By one in the morning, I had made four dozen cookies. Enough for my neighbors and the kid who liked them. My father could take some to the coaches’ office tomorrow.
I could give some to Tolrek.
The thought arrived fully formed, which was how I knew it was a bad one. It was a neighborly gesture, something nice because we lived across the street from each other and that’s what neighbors did, right?
It was cookies, nothing that required explanation.
I packed a container with the best ones.
Then I stood in my kitchen at one-thirty in the morning, holding a container of cookies and having a very serious conversation with myself about what I was about to do.
This was not keeping personal and professional lives separate the way my father had reminded everyone to do in this morning’s meeting. This was me in pajama pants and an old t-shirt, holding cookies at one-thirty in the morning, about to walk across the street to a hockey player’s apartment.
I put on shoes, grabbed my keys, and left before I could talk myself out of it.
The street was quiet at this hour, only the occasional car passing and the sounds of a city that never truly went completely silent. The air felt cool enough that I should’ve grabbed a jacket, but going back for one would mean giving myself time to think.
I stood outside the entrance to his building for thirty seconds, container in hand, before I pulled the door open and stepped inside. The elevator ride to the third floor was the longest forty seconds of my life.
I’d never been inside, but I knew which unit was his by his window. Some things you just memorized without meaning to.
I strode over to his door and raised my hand to knock.
What was I doing?
It was one-thirty in the morning. I was holding cookies. I was standing outside his door in pajama pants like a rom-com main character who hadn’t thought through the implications of her choices.
Behind his door, I heard footsteps. Then Beau’s small yip, the sound he made when he heard something interesting.
The door was going to open.
I was going to be standing here with cookies at one-thirty in the morning, and Tolrek was going to see me, and I was going to have to explain what I was doing here.
Except I couldn’t explain it, not in any way that didn’t sound like exactly what it was.
I stepped back from the door.
Beau yipped again.
The footsteps came closer.
I turned and jogged back to the elevator, jabbing the button. The doors opened right away. I stepped inside and leaned against the wall as the doors closed.
My apartment was exactly as I’d left it, the kitchen still covered in cooling racks and baking supplies. All evidence of my inability to handle my feelings like an adult.
I set the container on the counter and stared at it.
We couldn’t keep doing this without defining it. Stealing moments in corridors and stairwells and calling it nothing wasn't fair to either of us.
Who would’ve thought the coach’s daughter would fall for a player on her father’s roster? That she’d hide it. Lie about it. Compromise everything she’d built because she couldn’t stop herself from wanting something she shouldn’t have.
My phone sat on the counter where I’d left it.
Picking it up, I opened a new text to Tolrek.
We need to talk I typed.
I deleted it and typed instead, We should discuss what this is before the tape session.
I deleted that too.
I’m falling in love with you, and I don’t know what to do about it, I typed in the blank space.
I stared at it before deleting it and setting the phone face down on the counter where I couldn’t see the screen. Then I cleaned up my kitchen. By three in the morning, my kitchen was spotless, and I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
I climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling.
Tomorrow, we’d sit in my office with the door closed and the monitors glowing and all the space in the world to talk about what we were doing.
I needed to know if he was falling too. The thought scared me more than anything else. Even more than the risk to my job or my relationship with my father or the invisibility that had kept me safe for years.
I worried I’d tell Tolrek how I felt and he’d look at me with his dark, direct eyes and tell me this was physical. Something that happened. Nothing more complicated than two people who lived across the street from each other and worked in the same building and couldn’t stop wanting each other.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
I tried not to think about Thursday at four o’clock, when we’d have to face exactly what we’d been avoiding.
Or the container of cookies sitting on my counter, meant for someone I’d almost gone to but couldn’t quite reach.
Or how badly I wanted to pick up my phone and send a message that said exactly what I was feeling.