Chapter 3
three
ROOK
I'm only ten minutes late. That's fine. Right?
I shoulder through the conference room doors, my gear bag announcing my arrival with a thunderous crash that makes every water bottle on the table jump. The sound cuts through whatever bureaucratic sermon was happening, and every head swivels toward me, which is exactly what I need.
Can't have uncomfortable silence if everyone's staring at the circus act.
"Sorry, sorry!" I spread my arms wide, accepting imaginary applause for an entrance that would make my mother's jaw clench so tight she'd need dental work. "Traffic was absolutely brutal coming from—" I pause, letting them lean in—"across campus."
Baseball's captain gives a theatrical, slow blink, his gaze flicking toward the ceiling in a silent prayer for patience. "Jesus, Fitzgerald," he mutters under his breath, but there's no real venom in it—just the weary resignation of someone who's witnessed my entrances before.
The swim team captain—Jennifer? Jessica? Jemima?—looks ready to drown me in the shallow end of the pool. Her fingers tap against the table in a rhythm that screams, 'I have actual responsibilities and you're wasting my time,' and honestly, that's pretty fair.
But their reactions are background noise because Art Galloway is already rising from his executive chair.
"There's our champion!" He grins, his voice booming like he's introducing me at the Garden instead of at a meeting. "Get up here, Rook. We saved you the good seat."
He gestures to the chair at his right hand, the seat that screams this guy matters more than you peasants, and the validation hits my bloodstream like pure caffeine, temporarily drowning out that persistent whisper that's been stalking me since they raised our banner.
What happens when they realize you're not Maine? Not Mike?
I swagger toward the head of the table, making sure to high-five the lacrosse captain, who's a good guy despite the unfortunate facial hair that looks like he glued pubes to his chin. "Looking good," I lie, because what else do you say to a guy who clearly lost a bet or possibly his mirror?
I lob a few nods and smiles to some of the other captains I know, but there are plenty here I don't, from smaller sports or who've recently arrived on campus.
The gymnastics captain looks twelve, all wide eyes and perfect posture, probably wondering if all hockey players are this much of a disaster.
Spoiler alert: we are.
"Now that our reigning national champion has arrived, let's continue with introductions," Galloway says, hand landing on my shoulder. The weight of his palm is both reassuring and suffocating, like he's simultaneously claiming me and measuring whether I'm worth the investment.
As I drop into the leather throne, I feel content and warm and safe, because that brief public blessing is precisely the fix I needed. It was color and movement and affirmation all in one, not silence and the whispered questions of my mind.
The banner says I matter.
Galloway says I matter.
So, for now, my imposter syndrome skulks back to its corner.
"As I was saying," Galloway continues, all teeth and calculated charm, "we have a new addition to our athletics family this year. The university has invested in a women's hockey program, and I'd like you all to welcome their founding captain, Morgan Riley."
The name freezes me, annihilating the warm feeling entirely.
My lungs forget their only job. My heart stops, reconsiders, then hammers into overdrive like it's trying to punch through my ribs and make a run for it. I can't move, I can barely breathe, and I'm not sure I want to think about the nuclear meltdown that Galloway just triggered.
The conference room's recycled air suddenly feels thick as concrete, pressing against my chest, and I'm convinced everyone can hear the blood rushing through my ears like white rapids. Because, of all the people in all the places, this could not possibly be happening.
But then a figure rises from the far end of the table. It looks like her, sure. But it's more like her evil twin who murdered the original and stole her face, because the Morgan I knew had soft edges, warm smiles that started in her eyes, and hair that caught light like spun copper.
But this woman?
She looks carved from permafrost. Her blazer is so severely tailored it could cut glass. That gorgeous red hair is scraped back tight enough to cause migraines. Her posture belongs in a military recruitment poster: shoulders squared, spine straight, ready to take a bullet or deliver one.
And those eyes—Christ, those eyes that, for a few weeks, looked at me like I meant something—are now slate gray and empty as a January sky. It's like looking at a stranger wearing Morgan's face, and the wrongness of it makes my stomach twist into knots I didn't know were possible.
Time fractures, and suddenly I'm not in this fluorescent purgatory anymore.
I'm eighteen and we're at a High School Senior hockey camp, with the best male and female players in the country all flown in for two weeks of lectures and training with professionals. It's basically a teenage hormone attack, and both Morgan and I were willing victims.
She's lying next to me on scratchy sand, both of us coming down from the high of our first time. Her head rests on my chest, her finger tracing patterns on my stomach. And, for the only time in my life, the silence doesn't feel like a bomb countdown but rather feels like floating.
"You're quiet," she says, her breath warm against my skin.
"Yeah," I say, surprising myself with honesty. "It's nice."
And it is. With her, the quiet doesn't mean someone's about to throw a plate after an insult or a punch after too many beers. It just means we're here, together, and that's enough. It makes me wonder if this is what life is like for most people, able to just… be.
Fast-forward to our last night. We're on my truck's hood, looking at stars that seem impossibly bright. She's wearing my hoodie—swimming in it, really—and I'm having dangerous thoughts about her keeping it forever. She turns to me with this look that makes my chest compress.
"So what happens when camp ends?" Her voice is barely there. "With us?"
The question hangs between us like a lit fuse, and suddenly, the silence that has felt comfortable with her for two weeks gets busy.
Panic floods my system—that familiar, desperate need to defuse, deflect, make this anything but real—because real means it can hurt… real means we might become my parents.
"Well," I hear myself say, my voice too loud, too bright, "I figure we'll always have these two weeks of amazing—" I make a crude gesture, pumping my hips, "—athletic performance to remember, right? We really stuck the landing. Ten out of ten, would recommend."
She flinches like I've slapped her.
"Or maybe we can be pen pals!" The verbal hemorrhage continues as my panic-level increases. "Do people still do that? Very romantic! We can send each other those little hearts with the candy messages. 'Be mine,' 'You're sweet,' 'Sorry I'm emotionally stunted!'"
Her face closes completely. Shutters before a hurricane. "Right," she says, flat and final. "Just fun."
She slides off the hood of my truck and walks away without even looking back. I sit there, drowning in the silence I created, knowing I just threw away something irreplaceable because I was too scared to say: "I think I'm falling in love with you, Morgan, and we'll figure out the details later…"
Galloway's voice hooks me back to the present. "Morgan comes to us from the University of Montana, where she built their program from nothing." He's using his 'look at what I acquired' voice, the one he used when he announced the new scoreboard last year, like Morgan's a toy for his collection.
My eyes lock on her as Galloway moves behind her chair. His hand lands on her shoulder, and something primal in my gut clenches hard enough to taste copper, because his touch is not professional. His thumb strokes the fabric of her blazer while his fingers curve possessively around her shoulder.
It's a gesture that says, mine, don't touch.
Rage floods my system, hot and violent. My hands curl into fists under the table, nails carving crescents into my palms. Every muscle coils with the need to launch across this polished surface and remove his hand, preferably at the wrist and with extreme prejudice.
The rational part of my brain—what's left of it—screams that starting a brawl with the Athletic Director would be career suicide. But the caveman part that remembers how Morgan's skin felt under my fingers is already calculating trajectories and impact points.
I can see it perfectly: me vaulting this table like some deranged action hero, tackling Galloway through the window behind him, the glass shattering dramatically. It would be glorious, but I'd definitely get expelled, although maybe it would be worth it?
But I hold back, because Morgan doesn't react.
She endures his touch with the stillness of someone who's practiced this. And when she speaks about building competitive programs and excellence, her voice is steel, each word calculated for maximum professional impact and minimum personal revelation.
When her gaze sweeps the room, it passes over me like I'm a piece of the furniture or one of the team photos adorning the walls. The dismissal is so complete I wonder if I imagined those two weeks or if I invented the girl who laughed at my terrible jokes and kissed me like I was oxygen.
The rest of the meeting blurs past. Galloway drones about budgets and travel plans while my brain loops on a single track: She's here and she hates you. The whole time, Morgan takes notes, and I sit there like someone replaced my brain with cotton candy—sticky, useless, dissolving.
When Galloway finally releases us with platitudes about "excellence" and "tradition," and one last backslap for me and me alone, my body moves on autopilot. My internal monologue—the emotional janitor who can't let silence or mess just be—starts screaming.
Fix this! Make a joke! Say something stupid! That's your specialty!
I intercept her in the hallway before she can escape. "Morgan! Hey, wait up!"
She stops and turns, her face a picture of indifference. "What?"
I deploy my trademark grin, the one that's never failed me.
"Crazy running into you here, right?" I say.
"Small world. Or small university—or—" My mouth is a runaway train.
"Or medium-sized university, actually, if you think about it.
Like, not tiny but not huge. We're like the Goldilocks of universities. Just right."
"I believe we'll be seeing each other at various athletic department functions." Her voice is as sharp as an ice pick. "I trust you'll conduct yourself appropriately."
The subtext lands like a body blow: We are strangers and we will remain strangers, so please do not test this.
"Morgan, I—" I'm sorry. I was a coward. I was eighteen and stupid and I've regretted it every day.
"If you'll excuse me," she says, her tone sharp enough to draw blood. "I have a team to prepare."
She walks away, her heels clicking perfect, measured beats. Each step puts more distance between now and then, between who we were and who we've become. I watch her go, and it's that night all over again, except this time I know she's not coming back.
I stand in the empty hallway, my usual arsenal useless against the fortress she's built.
And, for the first time in three years, I'm really thinking about that night and about the question I was too scared to answer.
But, more than anything, about the girl who walked away because I couldn't tell her the truth.
That she was the only person who ever made silence feel safe.
And now she's back, wrapped in armor I made her don.
The hallway feels too quiet, too much like the inside of my head when I let myself think about what I've lost. I need noise. I need chaos. I need literally anything that will drown out the voice whispering: You did this. You had something real and you destroyed it because you were scared.
I grab my gear bag and bolt, already sending a message to the team group chat:
O'NEIL'S. TONIGHT. CODE RED.
Schmidt replies immediately:
What level of disaster are we talking?
I reply:
DEFCON 1. Bring the whole team.
Leo's next:
Even the freshmen?
I reply:
Especially the freshmen. They need to learn how to properly self-destruct.
Because if I can't fix this—the way she looked right through me, like I was already dead to her—I can at least make sure I'm too drunk to think about it. That's basically the Fitzgerald family motto: When in doubt, add alcohol and volume.
But even as replies ping back, filling my phone with emojis and promises of shots, I can't shake the image of Galloway's hand on her shoulder and the way she endured it with that terrifying stillness. Like she's been enduring things alone for three years.
Because I taught her that letting people close only leads to disappointment.