Chapter 16
Evan
Icame to practice the next morning carrying eighty-nine-point-six million dollars in my chest like shrapnel.
Mark had called twice more the previous night. Seattle’s front office had followed up with a formal framework. San Antonio’s GM had requested a meeting for the end of the week. The machine was moving, and I was inside it, and the gears did not care whether I had decided what I wanted.
I had slept for three hours. Skated my warm-up like I was trying to punish the ice for existing. Every drill went at a tempo two clicks above necessary, because intensity was the only tool I had for processing an emotion I refused to name.
The team noticed.
The team noticed that the energy was wrong: too sharp, too hot, charged in a way nobody had approved.
Brick gave me space. Colt, Mack, and Ryan did too. Finn kept about forty feet away, which proved his rookie instincts were improving.
Samantha was at the boards, camera up and professionally cool, and the absence of her warmth was one more thing I could not put down.
We broke for water. Players drifted to the bench, grabbing bottles, chirping about nothing. Routine sounds of a team at work. Fine. Manageable.
Then Brick leaned against the boards near Samantha and said, loud enough for the group to hear, “How’s Mr. Sunshine today? Looks like someone put extra storm in his clouds.”
The guys laughed. Brick meant it with warmth. The nickname had spread the way all good nicknames did: affectionately, without malice.
I stopped skating. The blades scraped to a halt, spraying ice. The sound cut through the ambient noise of practice like a blade through tape.
I looked at Samantha.
She was standing beside Brick, camera at her side, a half-smile still on her face from the joke. Warm. Open in the way she was with everyone who was not me, the version of her that existed before Silas’s warning had installed a pane of glass between us.
The words came out before I could stop them.
“Maybe focus on your job instead of giving me nicknames.”
Sharp and cold. Loud enough that the rink went quiet. Not gradually. Instantly. The way sound dies when something wrong enters a room.
Her face changed, and recognition was worse than anger.
Brick straightened. His eyes went flat.
“Easy, McKinney.”
Across the rink, Colt lowered his water bottle without lifting it to his mouth.
Sully held his whistle and did not blow it.
Ryan went still at center ice, captain instincts locking onto the room before anyone else moved.
Finn, halfway through a stretch along the boards, froze with one knee bent and all that rookie fire trapped behind his teeth.
I skated away before I could see the damage settle.
The instant the words left my mouth, I knew the timing was wrong and the target was worse.
Practice resumed around me. Drills and whistles. The mechanical continuation of a routine that did not pause for personal disasters.
I ran every drill at full speed and felt nothing.
Near the end of practice, during a line change, Sully caught my eye from the bench and gave one sharp nod toward the boards.
I skated over.
He waited until I was close enough that no one else could hear him.
“Whatever that was earlier, don’t do it again. Not in my room.” His voice was quiet, the way coaches said things they did not want the rest of the room to overhear. “I know you’ve got weight on you. The room knows too. But the room doesn’t get to be the place you set it down. Find another place.”
He held my gaze for half a second, then turned back toward the drill.
I pushed off from the boards and rejoined the rotation.
Samantha
The rink went quiet, and I kept my camera up.
I shot the rest of practice through a lens that had never felt heavier.
I did not look at Evan McKinney. Not once.
Ryan skated past my position near the end, his expression carrying a question he was too smart to ask out loud. I shook my head, a small definitive gesture, and he nodded and kept moving.
Practice ended. I packed with steady hands and walked out wearing professional neutrality like armor.
The parking lot was bright. The car was hot. I got in, closed the door, and sat there.
One breath.
Two.
On the third breath, something behind my sternum cracked.
He had taken the nickname I gave him, a small affectionate thing, and used it to push me away in front of everyone.
I recognized the shape of it: something offered freely, turned public in a room full of witnesses. Different weapon. Same architecture.
For letting him past the perimeter I had built after Case Whitfield. Only to watch him choose the nearest target when he needed somewhere to put the hurt.
The nearest target had been me.
I started the engine and pulled out without checking my mirrors.
I made it three blocks before I reached for my phone.
Me: Coffee tomorrow?
Bella responded before the next red light.
Bella: That depends. Am I being summoned as counsel, witness, or emotional damage control?
I stared at the screen. My eyes burned, which was just the sun.
Me: Yes.
Bella: What happened?
Me: Tomorrow.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Bella: Usual place. I’ll be there.
No prying. No demand for a full statement before I was ready to give one. Just the steady availability of a woman who knew when to cross-examine and when to simply show up.
I drove home through San Antonio traffic that moved too slowly and a sunset that had the audacity to be beautiful. Inside my condo, I set my camera bag by the door, sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, and pressed my palms flat against the cool tile.
Tomorrow I would be professional. Precise.
I would walk into that rink with my camera and none of the warmth that had gotten me here.
I would do my job. I would be excellent at my job.
I would give no one, not Sandra, not Brick, and certainly not Evan McKinney, any reason to question my professionalism.
I would be human Switzerland. Composed. Above the fray.
And if the man with the four-second kiss wanted to know why the temperature had dropped, he could figure it out himself. I was done walking toward people who were not ready to be met.
I pulled my phone out and typed one more message.
Me: Bella, does your offer to send a detective still stand?
Three dots. Then:
Bella: Always. What do you need?
Me: Just checking.
I set the phone on the tile, leaned my head back against the cabinet, and closed my eyes.
The saxophone from Jazz, TX was still in my head.
And now it sounded like something I had lost.