Chapter Thirty-One
CALLED OUT
Zayden
I’m in the best mood I’ve been in for months.
Maybe years.
The locker room smells the same as always—sweat and industrial soap and the sharp bite of menthol from someone’s muscle rub—but even that can’t drag me down today.
The fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting their usual unflattering glow, and the tile floors are cold under my bare feet as I pad toward my stall.
None of it matters. I woke up this morning thinking of Tori, and I haven’t stopped smiling since.
Apparently, it shows.
“Okay, what’s going on with you?” Logan drops onto the bench next to me, already half-dressed for practice.
“You’re smiling. It’s freaking me out.” He’s got a protein bar hanging out of his mouth and his practice jersey on inside out—classic Logan—but his eyes are sharp as he studies me.
The kid misses nothing when it comes to team dynamics. It’s annoying as hell.
“I smile.”
“You don’t smile. You brood. You glare. You occasionally smirk when you score a goal.” He squints at me. “This is different. This is like... happy smiling. It’s unnatural.” He narrows his eyes.
“Maybe I’m just having a good day.”
“Uh-huh.” Logan’s not buying it. He turns to Banks, who’s lacing up his skates two stalls down. “Banks. Tell him he’s being weird.”
Banks glances over, takes one look at my face, and returns to his skates. “He got laid.”
I choke on nothing.
“What? No. I—”
“You definitely got laid.” Banks doesn’t even look up. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The look of a man who’s finally gotten what he’s been pining after for months.” Now he does look up, one eyebrow raised. “Congratulations. It’s about time.”
Heat creeps up the back of my neck. I want to deny it—should deny it—but the memory of last night floods through me unbidden. Tori in my bed, her hair spread across my pillow, the sounds she made when I—
I clear my throat and focus very intently on strapping on my shin guards.
Logan’s head swivels between us like he’s watching a tennis match. “Wait. Wait wait wait.” His eyes go wide. “Is this about Tori? Did you and Tori finally—”
“Keep your voice down,” I hiss, glancing around the locker room. The last thing I need is this spreading through the whole team.
“Holy crap.” Logan’s grin is enormous. “I knew it. I knew it! I called this like two months ago. Didn’t I call this?” He turns to Banks. “I called this.”
“You called it,” Banks confirms, sounding bored.
“I said, ‘Those two are going to end up together,’ and everyone was like, ‘No, Logan, she’s his PT, it’s professional,’ and I was like, ‘Watch. Just watch.’” He’s practically bouncing. “And now look! I was right!”
“You want a trophy?”
“I want acknowledgment of my superior observational skills.”
Archer appears from the shower area, towel slung over his shoulder, steam still rising off his skin. His hair is damp and pushed back from his face, and he’s got that calm, steady energy he always carries—the goalie zen that makes him unflappable in the crease.
He catches the tail end of the conversation and raises an eyebrow. “What are we acknowledging?”
“Zay finally made a move on his PT,” Banks says.
“The hot one who doesn’t take his crap?” Archer grins. “Good for you, man. She seems solid.”
“She is solid.” The words come out before I can stop them, and I sound like an idiot, but I don’t care. “She’s... yeah. She’s great.”
Great doesn’t even begin to cover it. She’s brilliant and funny, and she’s great with Maisie. She fits into our life like she was always supposed to be there.
And God, the way she—
I cut off that train of thought before it shows on my face. Too late, judging by the way Logan’s grinning.
“Oh no. He’s got it bad. Look at his face.”
“Shut up.” I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror mounted on the inside of my locker door. He’s right. I look... different. Softer around the edges. The permanent furrow between my eyebrows has smoothed out.
“You’re all soft and mushy. It’s disgusting.” But he’s smiling when he says it. “Seriously though, I’m happy for you. You’ve been wound so tight lately I was worried you’d snap.”
“I wasn’t that bad.”
Three voices say, “You were that bad” in unison.
This startles a laugh out of me—a real laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere deep in my chest. Banks looks mildly surprised at the sound, like he’s never heard me make it before.
He probably hasn’t. Not like this.
“Okay, fine.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “Maybe I was a little tense.”
“‘A little tense,’” Logan mimics. “Bro, you nearly took Henderson’s head off last week for breathing too loud during film review.”
“He was breathing loud. It was distracting.”
“You need to get laid more often. You’re way more tolerable like this.”
Okay, maybe I was that bad.
Archer settles onto the bench across from me, pulling on his pads. “So what’s the situation? You guys official? Keeping it quiet?”
“Keeping it quiet for now. At least until the season is over.” I run a hand through my hair. “Dana knows. She’s... handling it. Tori got reassigned off my case, but she’s still with the team.”
“That’s good. Could’ve been worse.”
“Yeah.” It could’ve been a lot worse. I’m still grateful every day that Dana listened, that she gave us a chance instead of just following policy to the letter.
“How’s Maisie taking it?” Banks asks, and the question catches me off guard. Not because it’s intrusive, but because he remembered. Because he thought to ask.
Banks doesn’t do small talk. Doesn’t ask questions he doesn’t care about the answers to. The fact that he’s wondering how Maze is doing—says more about our friendship than a hundred locker room conversations.
I feel a sudden surge of gratitude for these guys. This team. The family I’ve built here without even realizing I was doing it.
“She’s, uh... she’s good. Really good, actually.” I can’t help the smile that creeps across my face. “She’s been asking when Tori can come over for dinner again. Apparently, I’m ‘boring’ and Tori knows all the words to the Moana songs.”
“Brutal,” Logan says. “Upstaged by a Disney soundtrack.”
“You have no idea. Last week, Maisie informed me that Tori’s grilled cheese is better than mine. Which is insane because I use three kinds of cheese.”
“Maybe it’s not about the cheese,” Archer says, and there’s something knowing in his voice. “Maybe it’s about who’s making it.”
I don’t have a response to that. Because he’s right.
It’s not about the sandwich. It’s about Maisie seeing someone who shows up, who keeps promises, who fits into our little two-person world like she was always meant to be there.
It’s about her finally having a positive maternal figure who’s not just her nanny.
“She’s good for you,” Banks says quietly. “Tori. I’ve noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“You’re different when she’s around. Less...” He waves a hand vaguely. “Clenched.”
“Clenched?” My eyebrows dart up. That’s not a pleasant word. Is that really what my teammates thought of me?
“You know what I mean. You’re always carrying everything yourself. The kid, the career, the pressure. Like you’re afraid to let anyone help.” He shrugs. “With her, you seem like you actually breathe.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Banks isn’t exactly known for his emotional insights—or for sharing them, at least. The fact that he’s noticed, that he’s saying something, means more than I know how to express.
“Thanks, man.”
He nods, and that’s the end of it. No big moment, no lengthy heart-to-heart. Just acknowledgment between two guys who’ve been in the trenches together.
Logan, of course, has to ruin the moment. “So when do we get to officially meet her? Like, as your girlfriend? Because I have a lot of questions about your medical history that I feel she could answer.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on. Just a few questions. Like, what’s his pain tolerance really? Because he acts all tough, but I saw him limping for twenty minutes after that love tap from Boston’s third liner.”
“That was not a love tap. He caught my knee, you dick.”
“Dude, my grandma hits harder than that guy.” Logan shakes his head. “And don’t even get me started on the tape incident yesterday.”
“There was no tape incident.”
“You yelped, Zay. Out loud. When you ripped the tape off your socks.”
“It pulled my leg hair.”
“You’re literally missing a tooth from blocking a shot and you’re crying about leg hair?”
Archer laughs, and even Banks cracks a smile, and I realize something that catches me off guard.
These idiots. They give me endless crap, chirp me about everything from my tape job to my love life, and half the time I want to strangle them.
That’s the funny thing about hockey players—we don’t do the emotional stuff.
No big declarations, no deep conversations about our feelings.
But they show up when it matters, and that’s enough.
I spent so long thinking I had to do everything alone. That needing people was weakness, that letting anyone in was a risk I couldn’t afford. But sitting here in this locker room, surrounded by idiots who won’t stop making fun of me, I realize I already have what I was so afraid of losing.
A family.
Not just Maisie. Not just Tori now. But this—the brotherhood, the trust, the knowledge that these guys have my back no matter what.
“Hey.” Logan snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You’re doing the thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The soft mushy thing. You’re gonna make me emotional.”
“God forbid.”
“I’m serious. If you start crying, I’m going to start crying, and then Banks is going to make fun of both of us.”
“I would,” Banks confirms.
“See? So pull it together, Bishop. We’ve got practice.”
He claps me on the shoulder and heads toward the tunnel, and the moment passes. But the feeling doesn’t. That warmth in my chest, that sense of belonging—it stays.
Archer pauses next to me on his way out. “Hey. For real though. I’m glad you found someone. After everything with Sienna, with Maisie... you deserve something good.”
“Thanks, Arch.”
“Just don’t screw it up.”
“Helpful.”
“I try.” He grins. “Now come on. Coach is going to murder us if we’re late.”
I grab my helmet and follow him out, but I’m still smiling.
Not because everything’s perfect. It’s not. There’s still the playoff push, still the pressure, still a hundred ways this could all go sideways.
But for the first time in a long time, I’m not facing it alone.
And that makes all the difference.