Chapter 4
Samantha
Imade it all the way to my car before the image caught up to me.
Not a photograph. I had not taken one, not of the moment that mattered.
This was worse. This was a memory, which meant it did not have edges I could crop or exposure I could correct.
It just sat there in full resolution behind my eyes: Evan McKinney carving arcs into empty ice like he was writing something in a language only his body understood.
I dropped my camera bag onto the passenger seat and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
The parking lot was nearly empty. The August morning was already brutal, sun hitting the asphalt so hard it shimmered, and I sat there with the engine off, letting the heat build because apparently I had decided that sweating through a minor emotional crisis was how I wanted to start my Tuesday.
I had photographed athletes on four continents. I had seen greatness before. This was different.
What I had seen on that ice was not performance.
It was not the version of Evan McKinney that showed up at community events and media days with his face locked down and his walls at full height.
It was the version that existed when no one was there to see it: fluid and almost reverent.
The way he handled the puck was not skill.
It was conversation. Like the ice was the only thing in his life that talked back to him in a language he trusted.
And I had stood there at the boards like an idiot and watched it happen without taking a single photograph.
Because some moments were not meant to be taken. They were meant to be kept.
I pulled out of the lot and drove toward downtown, window cracked, letting San Antonio’s morning soundtrack fill the car: a pickup rattling bass at a red light, Spanish sports radio spilling from an open work van, someone already arguing about the heat before nine a.m. Normal sounds.
Sounds that did not remind me of blades on ice or the way a man’s voice dropped half a register when he said something honest without meaning to.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder. I glanced at the screen.
Bella: You alive? You were supposed to text me last night. I assume you were either murdered or doing something interesting. Both require details.
Isabela Rey. Assistant district attorney, and the only person in San Antonio who had looked at me during our first meeting like I was a person instead of a résumé.
We had met six weeks ago when she needed headshots for the DA’s office website.
I had taken her photos, she had taken me to a rooftop bar, and by two a.m., we were dancing on furniture and sharing a cab home like we had known each other for years instead of hours.
She was the kind of friend who texted at seven a.m. and expected a response by 7:01, because boundaries were something that happened to other people.
Me: Alive. Long morning. Tell you later.
Bella: That’s code for something happened. I’m blocking out lunch. You’re not allowed to say no.
I should say no. I should go back to my condo, spend three hours in Lightroom, and eat a sandwich over my keyboard like a normal emotionally avoidant person.
Me: Fine. Noon. Pick somewhere with good coffee.
Bella: Already did. You’re predictable when you’re spiraling.
I parked at the training facility and walked inside. The lobby was quiet, early enough that the front desk staff was still setting up, the air heavy with pre-activity stillness.
Brick was leaning against the wall near the weight room, scrolling his phone with the focused intensity of a man who was definitely not reading anything important.
Even in warmups, he carried the kind of casual authority that made rookies straighten and let the other veterans forgive him more than they probably should.
He looked up the second I appeared. “You look like someone showed you a magic trick and then refused to explain it.”
I stopped walking. “That’s annoyingly accurate.”
“I’m perceptive.”
“You’re nosy.”
“Same skill set.” He pocketed his phone and fell into step beside me. “Rink session went well?”
“Define well.”
“You’re alive. McKinney didn’t scare you off. You’re back for more. I’d call that well.”
“He’s different on the ice,” I said before I could stop myself.
Brick’s expression changed. Not dramatically, but enough. The grin softened into something more authoritative than clown, the version of him the room probably got behind closed doors when someone needed calling back into line.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the real him.”
“I figured.”
“He doesn’t let people see that.”
“I figured that too.”
We walked in silence for a few steps, the kind of quiet you could only share with someone who did not need to fill it.
“Brick,” I said. “Why do you look out for him?”
He glanced at me sideways. “Because he won’t do it for himself.”
That hit harder than it should have. I did not respond.
Sully appeared at the end of the hallway, coffee in hand, moving with the quiet authority I was beginning to recognize as his default setting. He nodded at me, measured, and paused.
“McKinney didn’t give you trouble?”
“No. He gave me something else.”
Sully’s eyes sharpened. A fractional narrowing, there and gone. The look of a man who had spent too many years reading players to miss what lived under the surface. He did not ask what I meant. He did not need to.
“The campaign’s on track,” he said, tone even. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
It was not a compliment. It was a checkpoint. And it carried enough weight to remind me that whatever I had seen on that rink, whatever I was feeling about it, the work still had a purpose that was not personal.
I nodded. He walked on.
From somewhere inside the facility, I heard the distant clang of weights and the muffled sound of a TV. A sports anchor’s voice reached me through the walls in fragments: “… McKinney’s contract extension expected to be a priority… sources say multiple teams monitoring the situation…”
Contract year. The words settled into the context of everything I had seen. The calculated interactions. The man standing by every exit in every room was being watched by people who would decide his future based on how he performed in spaces exactly like this one.
No wonder he treated every public moment like a performance review. For him, it was.
I pushed into the weight room, set up my equipment, and got back to work. The day had jobs in it. The deadlines did not care about magic tricks or ice rinks or the way a man’s whole body changed when he forgot someone was watching.
Sandra had already emailed tomorrow’s schedule. Another community appearance. Another room full of kids, cameras, handlers, and athletes being asked to look effortless under fluorescent lights.
Evan’s name was on the list. Of course it was.
I could already picture him near the nearest exit, expression locked, body braced, waiting for the first acceptable moment to disappear.
Whether he was keeping people out or keeping himself in.