The Hockey Trainer’s Secret Baby

Chapter 1

Ice, Interrupted

Riley

Blood freckles my gloves before the whistle even finishes screaming.

The bench rocks under the weight of bodies slamming down, sticks rattling like teeth in a jar.

The crowd is a single roaring animal, hot breath rolling over the boards.

I don’t look up. I peel open a packet, the sharp sting of antiseptic cutting through the stink of sweat, skate leather, and cheap cologne.

“Don’t move,” I tell our winger, who is absolutely moving.

“Just a scratch,” he grits out through blood-slick teeth.

“Congratulations, you’re bleeding from a ‘scratch.’ Hold still.” I press gauze to his cheekbone. He hisses. I don’t flinch. The ref’s arm goes up at center ice, a penalty we can’t afford, and the bench erupts in profanity that rolls right over me. I have a job. I always have a job.

Tape. Steri-strips. Check pupils. My world narrows to the tidy square of his face and the rhythm of my breath. I’m the calm in the storm. I’m always the—

A body slams the boards behind me so hard the quake shivers up through my knees. The glass booms. I spin in time to see a blur of dark hair and fury shouldered toward the opening in the boards.

Jason Maddox doesn’t so much step into the bench as get shoved into it.

The collision makes the Gatorade bottles jump. For a fraction of a second, everything inside me does the same. He tears off a glove with his teeth, jaw flexing, eyes scanning for the linesman he wants to murder. Then his gaze snags on me. Catches. Holds.

Blue, colder than fresh ice and just as dangerous. I know that look like a scar I pretend not to have.

“Hey,” my patient croaks. “Am I good?”

I tear my eyes away. Professional. Efficient. Untouchable. “You’re good.” I press the gauze into his palm, add, “Tell Coach you need two shifts off.” He nods and staggers away. I toss the bloody pads into the biohazard bin and rip open a fresh kit with more force than necessary.

Jason’s wrist is swelling under the tape, angry and wrong. He’s breathing like he sprinted a mile uphill, visor fogged at the edges. The trainers on the other teams call him a freight train masquerading as a man. I call him a complication with a perfect slap shot.

“Sit,” I say, already crouching in the narrow strip of floor between his skates. The word comes out steady. My pulse doesn’t.

He drops onto the bench. Sweat rolls from his hairline to the hollow of his throat, disappearing into the neckline of his jersey. He smells like cold air and adrenaline and the kind of trouble I’ve outlawed from my life.

“Wrist?” I ask, gloved fingers testing along the taped joint. I keep my touch clinical, even as memory crowds the edges of my vision—hotel sheets, neon bleed, a door that clicked in my face years ago.

“Stick got yanked,” he grinds out. “Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” I angle his hand, thumb steady at his scaphoid. His breath hitches. “Don’t be a hero.”

His mouth tips, the ghost of a smirk that used to mean I was about to break a rule on purpose. “That a medical opinion, Lane, or a personality review?”

“Both.” I don’t look up. If I do, the heat in his eyes will knock me off my axis. “You’ve got a game to finish. Let me do my job so you can do yours.”

The bench squeezes in around us—knees, blades, barked line changes. A stick clacks inches from my ear. Someone mutters about the ref’s mother. A helmet thuds down, rattling the board. I shut it out. I’m needle, thread, tape. I’m the metronome in a song that’s all drumline and chaos.

His pulse beats against my fingertips, too fast. Mine matches it, stupid traitor. I tell myself it’s the noise, the pressure, the ten thousand eyes above us.

It’s not.

“Look at me,” I say, because I need him still, because I am not remembering the taste of his name. He obeys, chin dropping, those eyes locked. The electricity of it crawls over my skin like static under a wool sweater.

The trainer down the line shouts for alcohol swabs. I already have them. Of course I do. I snap a cap, the antiseptic bite sharp enough to water my eyes. Jason doesn’t flinch. He never did—on the ice, at least.

“Deep breath,” I murmur, and when he takes it, it’s like the whole bench does too. The horn blares. The crowd surges. My hands don’t shake.

They never shake. Not for him. Not anymore.

I glove up fresh and reach for the suture kit.

The cut along his wrist isn’t pretty—ragged from a skate blade, shallow but angry.

He shouldn’t go back out with it open, not with sweat pouring like this.

I brace his forearm on my thigh to steady him.

Bad idea. Heat leaps across denim to skin, and memory tries the door again.

“Eyes on me,” I say, because I need him still and because I can’t afford the past right now. “You pass out, I’m writing ‘drama queen’ in your chart.”

He huffs a laugh that sounds like gravel. “As if you’d risk a paper trail.”

“I love paper trails.” I thread the needle. “They keep billionaires honest.”

His gaze flickers, then settles into that grumpy amusement that used to get me in trouble. “Try me.”

“Hold.” I press the edges of the cut together, clamp, and clean.

He doesn’t flinch, but the tendons in his wrist jump under my glove.

The crowd crests on a near miss and crashes back down.

Someone behind us pounds the boards with a stick—three sharp booms that echo in my ribs.

I breathe with the count. In. Out. Stitch.

“Do you ever stop giving orders?” Jason asks, voice low enough to hide under the noise.

“Do you ever start following them?” I tie off the first stitch, quick and neat. “Stop flexing.”

“You’re digging at bone.”

“I’m nowhere near bone,” I say, and because muscle memory is a rude, disloyal thing, my thumb makes one slow pass to test stability.

The same thumb that remembers the slope of his hip, the notch at his collarbone, the places that undo him.

I clamp down hard on the thought and on the skin. “Don’t be a baby.”

He leans in, breath a fraction warmer than the arena air. “You used to call me worse.”

“I was younger.”

“And nicer?”

“Smarter,” I say, and set the second stitch. The antiseptic burn rides up my nose. If I keep the jokes coming, maybe he won’t notice my pulse in my throat. Maybe I won’t notice the way his eyes soften every time I touch him.

Coach barks a line change. Bodies shuffle; helmets knock; a spray of ice dusts over the dasher and catches in my hair. I don’t move. I’m a fixed point while the team orbits and collides.

“Lane,” the team doc calls from down the bench, “status?”

“Two more minutes,” I answer, not looking away from Jason. “He’s fine.”

“Define ‘fine,’” Jason mutters.

“Skating, shooting, and pissing me off.” I snip a tail and reach for more gauze.

A shadow leans over us. “Hey, lovebirds,” a rookie chirps, sweat dripping off his nose, grin filthy. “Want me to give you a minute? Maybe light a candle?”

Heat punches my face. My hand stays steady. “Want me to staple your mouth shut, Collins?”

“Careful,” another voice adds from behind him. “HR’s gonna need a cigarette.” Laughter ripples down the line.

Jason’s mouth quirks. The look he gives me is pure gasoline—reckless, daring me to strike a match. He could say something to shut them up. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He likes it when I burn.

“Eyes front,” I snap at the peanut gallery, not trusting my own. “Next person who talks gets an ice bath and a tetanus booster.” They scatter like pigeons, still chuckling. My heart jackhammers like I just skated a full shift.

“Still terrifying,” Jason says, softer. “Didn’t miss that.”

I ignore the word miss. I set the third stitch, neat as a signature I refuse to claim. “You’re going to wear extra padding over this,” I tell him. “And you’re going to like it.”

He tips closer, voice a scrape along my nerves. “What if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll sit you.” I tighten the knot. “I’ll duct-tape you to the bench if I have to.”

His laugh is a low, rough thing that tightens every muscle in my body. “Kinky.”

“Medical.” I reach for the final strip, determined to end this clean and clinical. Determined not to look up and drown in the thing I’ve been pretending I don’t want. My gloves creak. The needle catches light. One more stitch and I can breathe again.

I lay the final butterfly strip against his skin, smoothing the adhesive with the flat of my thumb. The cut has stopped oozing; the arena hasn’t. The roar rises, falls, rises again like a tide that wants to drag us under. I can feel eyes. Maybe that’s paranoia. Maybe it’s experience.

“Padding,” I say, reaching for the foam. “You’re not taking a shot without this.”

“Bossy,” he murmurs, and that almost-smile tugs at the corner of his mouth—the one that used to mean I’d end up laughing against a door I should never have closed behind me.

Before I can answer, a helmeted head bends over our narrow bubble of space. Collins again, sweat dripping, grin obscene. “Careful with that hand, Maddox,” he stage-whispers. “Wouldn’t want you to… strain it later.”

Laughter pops like bubble wrap down the bench. My cheeks flash hot. I don’t look up, don’t give him the satisfaction. “Hydrate or cramp, Collins,” I say, voice flat. “Your choice.”

He snorts and shoves off, but not before tipping his chin at Jason with a performative wink. The message lands anyway: people are watching. People are always watching.

I angle my body to block the view as much as I can, shoulder to his chest, my back to the aisle. I tell myself it’s about sterility and line of sight. It’s about survival.

“Ignore them,” Jason says, low. His breath ghosts my hairline. “They’ve got the maturity of freshmen.”

“I work with athletes,” I say. “I’m fluent in freshmen.” I tape the padding snug, clean, my hands moving in the ritual that saves me from thinking too hard. The foam sits neat over the sutures, a little white flag declaring ceasefire.

“Riley.” My name in his mouth does something reckless to my balance. I don’t look up. If I look up, I’ll remember too much and forget the rules that keep my paycheck intact.

“Flex,” I say instead.

He does, obedient for once, tendons shifting under my fingertips. The skin holds. My breath does not. I feel the steadiness that has always been my superpower wobble a degree. That’s all it takes—one degree—to send a train off its track.

“Hey, Trainer Lane!” another voice cuts in from behind us, louder, the kind of volume designed to be overheard. “You gonna kiss it better?” A couple of guys bark out laughs. The rookie giggles like he’s twelve.

Rage flares hot and clean. I keep my voice level. “One more comment and I file a harassment report, gentlemen. Then we all get to enjoy a delightful seminar about respect in the workplace.”

A chorus of faux groans. A muttered, “Yes, ma’am.” Sticks scrape. The moment shudders, then moves on. Jason doesn’t laugh. He’s looking at me like he wants to murder someone and also maybe scale a building. I do not deal with either of those realities.

“Last stitch,” I tell him, even though I’ve already tied off. It’s a lie I tell my hands, to buy one more breath, one more second where I control the narrative.

The needle slides. The world narrows to the tiny bright curve of metal, the thrum of the crowd vibrating through the boards, the scuff of his skate against the rubber mat. He’s so close I can count the darker lashes stuck to his cheekbone with sweat.

“Don’t move,” I whisper.

“Not moving,” he says, and then, in a voice meant for exactly one person, “Miss me, sunshine?”

My hand jerks. The bite of the stitch nicks deeper than I intend, and his breath snaps through his teeth. Heat detonates behind my ribs—anger, memory, the unforgivable gall of him. I look up, finally, straight into those ice-blue eyes.

“Hold still,” I say, even though I’m the one shaking.