Chapter Twenty-Three Maren
Maren Brooks had three hours, one lake, twelve hockey players, four staff radios, two folding tables, a bucket of markers Griffin had personally evaluated for ink integrity, and Tyler Donovan asking if infrastructure required a costume.
So, naturally, she felt calm.
By calm, she meant one eye twitch away from becoming local folklore.
“No costume,” she said, pointing at Tyler without looking up from her notes.
Tyler lowered the neon construction vest he had found somewhere. “It is not a costume. It is a symbol.”
“It is a liability.”
“It has reflective strips.”
“Exactly. People will notice you.”
He looked wounded. “That is usually encouraged.”
“Not when you are infrastructure.”
Cooper sipped iced coffee beside him. “I told you infrastructure was dangerous.”
Ava was at the folding table sorting printed signs into piles.
Nate was moving cones with the focus of a man who had accepted that love meant voluntary manual labor.
Miles and Beckett were building a question board under Denise’s supervision, which meant Beckett kept trying to add dramatic category names and Denise kept removing adjectives with the speed of a woman defusing bombs.
Griffin stood a few feet away, talking to two younger players about the youth clinic rotation.
Not directing Maren.
Not hovering.
Not taking over.
He had asked once what she needed.
She had told him.
Now he was doing exactly that.
It was extremely inconvenient, emotionally speaking.
Maren looked down at the activation plan in her notebook.
TRUST ENGINE FIELD TEST
Zone One: Ask the Team Anything, screened questions only.
Zone Two: Safe Bad Ideas, fan-voted micro challenges with clear boundaries.
Zone Three: Community Trust Wall, kids and families write what makes a team worth rooting for.
Zone Four: Skills Swap, players teach kids one hockey skill, kids teach players one lake skill.
No couple bait.
No private life teasing.
No making Griffin the center.
The concept was good.
Strong.
Clean.
Hers.
Which was why her stomach kept attempting to leave her body.
Because Paige’s setup across the lawn looked good too.
That was the part Maren hated most.
If Paige’s concept had been cheap and sloppy, this would be easier. Maren could have rolled her eyes, made a joke, and won on taste alone.
But Paige knew what she was doing.
Her agency zone near the sponsor tent had sleek banners, QR codes, branded wristbands, a polished photo backdrop, and a neat sign reading CHOOSE YOUR CHALLENGE. She had already pulled two alumni into a staged mini interview and somehow made the whole thing look expensive by eleven thirty-seven.
Maren hated expensive competence.
She wanted it.
That was different.
Ava appeared beside her with a stack of signs. “You are staring at Paige’s tent like you are trying to set it on fire with brand integrity.”
“I am assessing.”
“You are glaring.”
“My face is multi-skilled.”
Ava looked across the lawn. “Her setup is polished.”
Maren exhaled. “I know.”
“Yours is better.”
“You are biased.”
“Yes. I am also right.”
Maren looked at the Trust Wall sign Ava held.
WHAT MAKES A TEAM WORTH TRUSTING?
The question had felt almost too simple when she wrote it.
Now, with the afternoon crowd starting to filter in and kids racing across the grass in oversized Ridgeview shirts, it felt like a dare.
Not to them.
To her.
What made a team worth trusting?
Not perfection.
Not polish.
Not a funnel.
Not a romantic tease tucked into a content calendar and called strategy.
Something sturdier.
Ava bumped her shoulder gently. “You are allowed to want to win.”
Maren laughed. “I want to win so badly my teeth hurt.”
“Good.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” Ava’s voice softened. “You wanting something big is not the problem. The problem is people acting like wanting makes you less lovable.”
Maren looked at her.
Absolutely rude.
Illegal before noon.
“Do not make me cry near a foam board,” Maren said.
“I would never.”
“You would.”
“I might.”
“You love emotional ambushes.”
“I learned from you.”
Maren’s throat tightened.
Before she could answer, Griffin walked over with two bottles of water and a pen tucked behind one ear.
A pen.
Behind one ear.
Like a responsible man accidentally entering his event-staff era.
Maren stared.
Griffin stopped. “What?”
Ava looked between them and immediately smiled. “I am going to tape something far away.”
She left.
Coward.
Griffin held out the water. “Drink.”
Maren took it. “That sounded very court order.”
“Request with evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“You have been speaking faster for eight minutes.”
“You timed me?”
“I observed.”
“With a stopwatch?”
“With concern.”
Her heart did that terrible soft thing.
She covered it by opening the water bottle too aggressively. “Concern is worse.”
“I know.”
She took a drink.
He waited until she lowered it.
“Your plan is good,” he said.
“You have not seen Paige’s wristbands.”
“I have survived wristbands before.”
“They are matte.”
“I do not know what that means.”
“It means expensive in a quiet font.”
His mouth moved. Almost.
She loved the almost.
Which was becoming a problem.
“Maren,” he said.
There it was.
The voice.
The one that made her want to stop performing and start telling the truth, which was wildly inconvenient in daylight.
“Do you want me less visible this afternoon?” he asked.
The question surprised her.
“What?”
“Paige’s argument centers us. Your concept does not. If me being near you hurts the test, I can stay with the skills station.”
For one second, Maren could not answer.
Not because she did not know.
Because the fact that he had asked made something inside her ache.
People were always making assumptions about what she needed.
More stability.
Less sparkle.
A real job.
A backup plan.
A better sense of what counted as serious.
Griffin kept asking.
Do you need assistance?
Your call.
What do you want?
Do you want me less visible?
She looked across the lawn at Paige’s tent, then at the Trust Wall, then at the team scattering into their assigned places.
Then she looked at Griffin.
“No,” she said. “I do not want you hidden because Paige made existing near me inconvenient.”
His expression changed.
Small.
Enough.
“But I do not want to use you either,” she said. “So I want you wherever you make sense. Skills station. Safety review. Fan questions if you want. Not as bait. As you.”
“As me,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“That sounds risky for the campaign.”
“You are very secretly compelling.”
“Secretly?”
“Do not get greedy.”
His eyes warmed.
The lawn got louder around them. Families arriving. Kids laughing. Denise testing the microphone. Tyler yelling that he had been handed a walkie-talkie and would only use it for leadership. Cooper immediately taking the walkie-talkie away.
Griffin stepped a little closer.
Not much.
Just enough that Maren’s attention narrowed.
“You are going to win because your concept is stronger,” he said.
“I might not.”
“You might not,” he agreed.
She loved him a little for that.
No.
Not loved.
Absolutely not.
Liked with concerning structural implications.
He continued, “But you will not lose because you made yourself smaller.”
Maren’s eyes burned.
“Oh, that was rude.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Rude?”
“You cannot just say a thing like that in public with a pen behind your ear.”
He reached up like he had forgotten it was there.
Maren laughed.
A real one.
His face softened so much she had to look away.
Danger.
Daylight danger.
Denise’s microphone crackled. “Field test begins in five minutes. Everyone to stations.”
Griffin stepped back. “Beside.”
Maren’s chest tightened.
“Beside,” she said.
Then the afternoon started.
For the first thirty minutes, Maren’s plan worked.
Not perfectly.
Perfect was Paige’s language.
Maren’s plan worked alive.
At the Trust Wall, kids wrote things in messy markers.
They show up.
They help you when you fall.
They do not laugh mean.
They teach the little kids.
They keep promises.
A little boy in a too-large Ridgeview shirt wrote, They say sorry, then stood back like he had solved civilization.
Maren photographed the wall with his mother’s permission and nearly had to swallow her own heart.
At Skills Swap, Miles taught a seven-year-old how to hold a hockey stick, then got taught how to skip a flat stone and failed so dramatically that the kid said, “It is okay, everyone starts bad.”
Cooper, who had been assigned to help, said, “Frame that.”
Maren did.
At Ask the Team Anything, Nate answered a question about leadership by saying, “You learn quickly that being captain is less about being the loudest guy and more about knowing when to listen before the room breaks.”
Ava, standing behind the camera, looked at him like she wanted to kiss him and maybe also push him into the lake for emotional crimes.
Excellent content.
At Safe Bad Ideas, Tyler ran the fan-voted prompts with shocking discipline because Griffin had made him read the rules aloud before every round.
“Bad ideas,” Tyler announced to a crowd of kids and parents, “are better when everyone survives them and Denise does not fill out forms.”
Denise pointed at him. “Correct.”
Tyler glowed like he had been knighted.
The first prompt was harmless. Players had to introduce themselves as if they were lake birds.
Beckett committed fully.
The second prompt required Griffin to let a group of kids vote on whether he would wear a foam sun visor during the safety briefing.
The visor was shaped like a yellow duck.
Maren almost cried from professional gratitude.
Griffin put it on.
The crowd lost its mind.
He stood there, six feet of controlled hockey player, duck visor on his head, expression solemn, saying, “Hydration is not optional.”
Maren recorded the whole thing.
Her caption wrote itself.
Safe chaos works because the line is clear and the duck is optional.
The post performed immediately.
Strong likes.
Strong comments.
Very strong shares.
Carter walked by once, checking numbers on his tablet.
Adrienne’s assistant watched from a video call on Denise’s phone.
Maren tried not to look needy.
She failed internally.
Externally, she looked incredible.
Probably.