Chapter 20
twenty
ROOK
Between the death by PowerPoint and the ass numbness, this sociology lecture is going to kill me one way or another.
I’ve been sitting in this torture device disguised as a chair for forty-seven minutes, and I’m pretty sure my left butt cheek has achieved enlightenment by transcending physical sensation entirely.
And, as Professor Hendricks drones on about social stratification, I'm counting down the minutes until I'm out of here.
I’m in the back row—my usual spot, where I can zone out without being too obvious about it—but today even that small rebellion feels hollow. My knee won’t stop bouncing, dancing with this manic rhythm that started at 4:00 a.m. when I woke up with Morgan’s voice still echoing in my head.
“Your jokes didn’t just feel like a rejection. They felt like a cruel confirmation of a lesson I’d already learned.”
For three years she’d been carrying that, and the guilt sits heavy in my chest. It's hard finding out that you're one of two people responsible for another person putting up shutters on the rest of the world, resisting human connection and emotion in case they get hurt.
But, if nothing else, I got to hear her side of the story, and give her mine.
Strangely, standing up to Galloway and then sharing all the shit about my parents and my constant need for noise with Morgan has left me feeling lighter.
And, maybe, a little better. I still feel like a fraud of a captain, and I'm still not sure where things stand with her, but if nothing else, we've reached a sort of deal.
We'll talk to each other and deal with Galloway's bullshit if we need to.
Anything else… well… who knows?
There's a distant neuron in the back of my brain that fires at the thought, putting the suggestion of something more—something romantic—in my head, but I immediately command the rest of my brain to smother the rebel. Because the last thing I need is to fuck things up when they just got unfucked…
…even though I can't get that kiss and our roaming hands out of my head.
My phone vibrates against my thigh, interrupting my internal agony-aunt session. I pull it out, checking it in the most super stealthy way so that Professor Hendricks doesn't notice, and see it's a Pine Barren University Student Portal notification.
Midterm grades are up.
I open the app with the kind of detached curiosity you reserve for checking your bank balance after a weekend bender.
The number that greets me is a bright, unapologetic D-plus in Social Theory, and the rest of my grades aren't much better, culminating in a plucky C-minus in Sociology Fieldwork Craft.
And only because that class is mostly marked on class discussion, and I can talk shit with the best of them, even if I don't know what I'm doing.
A quiet snort escapes. Not a laugh, exactly, but more like defeat recognizing an old friend. It’s almost impressive how I’ve perfected the art of academic mediocrity, and if disappointing GPAs were an Olympic sport, I’d have corporate sponsorships by now.
Beside me, Mason Nash shifts. His phone lights up with the same notification, and he tilts the screen toward me with zero subtlety, revealing a solid D in the same class.
We exchange a look—that universal expression of shared academic inadequacy—and execute a silent, conspiratorial low-five under the desk.
Thank God for the hockey exception.
Everyone on the team knows about the university’s Academic Eligibility Policy. It’s this ancient rule buried somewhere in the student handbook that says any athlete with a GPA below 2.0 gets benched. The golf team actually worries about it. The tennis players stress. Cross-country runners study.
But the hockey team?
We're different.
We’re the golden geese who lay the championship eggs.
We fill the arena, we bring in the booster money, and we put PBU on the map.
The policy might as well be written in invisible ink for all the times it’s been enforced on us. Hell, in my rookie year, one guy turned in a philosophy paper that was just the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” repeated for six pages and still stayed on the ice.
My phone buzzes again, and this time it's a message from Coach Pearson:
My office. NOW.
The all-caps lands hard, because Coach Pearson doesn’t do all-caps. Coach Pearson texts like he coaches, with minimal words and maximum impact. He's the surrogate father to half the team, and the most heat we get from him is a frown of disappointment if we really screw up.
But this level of fury?
I’ve seen it once since he took over a year or so ago, when Maine got arrested for public urination on the university president’s lawn. Although, in Maine's defense, he thought it was just a really fancy frat house. In response, Pearson made the entire team do suicides until someone puked.
“Gotta go,” I mutter to Nash, who’s absorbed in scrolling through Instagram, and he just nods absentmindedly as I sneak out of class.
Once I'm back in the land of the free, the walk to the athletic complex feels longer than usual, each step weighted with dread. My brain catalogs every possible fuck-up from the last week that might have Pearson riled up, but I’ve been practically comatose since the coffee shop conversation with Morgan.
No parties, no pranks, no accidentally setting off fire alarms.
Whatever he's going to rip me apart for, it's a mystery to me.
I reach the athletic complex and head inside. The door to Pearson’s office is slightly ajar, which is somehow more ominous than if it were closed. It's like he’s so angry he couldn’t be bothered to shut it properly, or maybe he left it open so everyone could hear him tear me apart.
Public execution, athletic department style.
I knock once, the sound pathetically quiet, and push it open. Inside, Pearson stands by the window, his back to me, hands clenched into fists at his sides. His shoulders are rigid, pulled up toward his ears like he’s physically restraining himself from punching through the glass.
Whatever it is, this is bad.
Nuclear winter, asteroid hitting earth, season-ending bad.
“Coach?” I say, my voice cracking slightly.
When he turns, I’m bracing for the fury to be directed at me—for my shitty leadership, for the team’s recent string of sloppy losses—but his eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, tell me there's something different in store and that he's not furious at me.
He’s furious for me.
“Galloway has screwed us,” Pearson says, his voice low and controlled in that way that means he’s one wrong word from exploding. “I don't know why."
He shoves a printed email across the desk with enough force that it slides past the edge and flutters toward the floor. I catch it, and the header shows it’s from Galloway to someone named Dr. Marjorie Albright, with Pearson CC’d into the memo.
Dear Dr. Albright,
I write to you today with grave concerns regarding the academic standards within our athletic programs…
The language is formal, bureaucratic… a knife wrapped in silk. Each word has been chosen with surgical precision to cut deep while maintaining plausible deniability.
Recent midterm evaluations have brought to my attention that several members of our men’s hockey team are performing below the university’s established academic standards…
My eyes skip ahead, searching for the kill shot.
As a proactive measure, I am formally recommending the immediate and consistent enforcement of this policy for the men’s hockey program, effective immediately.
I have identified three students who would serve as appropriate case studies for this enforcement: James Fitzgerald (1.9 GPA), Mason Nash (1.9 GPA), and Bradley Stiles (1.9 GPA).
The numbers blur as the ramifications sink in.
I believe demonstrating our commitment to academic excellence, particularly within our most visible athletic program, will send a clear message about Pine Barren University’s values…
The word “respectfully” at the end makes me want to vomit. There’s nothing respectful about this. This is a targeted assassination disguised as administrative concern. And the worst thing is I know exactly why he's doing it.
I look up from the paper. “He can’t… can he actually do this?”
Pearson’s laugh is bitter, devoid of humor.
“He’s not inventing rules, Rook. He’s asking them to enforce what’s been on the books since before you were born.
We had an understanding—we win, we bring in money, and they look the other way as long as you boys eventually graduate—but Galloway has changed it. ”
“OK…" I say, voice trailing off, because I'm not sure what to say or do.
He sinks into his chair with a groan that speaks of bone-deep exhaustion. “I don't know why, but Galloway has suddenly decided to flex on us, and it takes my captain and two of my best young players off the ice. It's a catastrophe, and I don't know why he's doing it…"
I do, but I don't tell him that. Instead, I scoff. “But the team—”
“Will be gutted.” His voice is flat, defeated. “Nash is one of our best scorers. Stiles, for all his mouth, anchors our blue line. And you…” He looks at me with an expression that makes my chest cave in. “You’re the captain and the heart of this team, not to mention the goddamn goalie.”
The words hit me like a physical blow, but not the kind that knocks you down, rather the kind that knocks something loose inside you that's been stuck for months. My throat tightens, and I have to look away from Pearson's face because the raw sincerity there is too much.
For the first time since Maine and Mike graduated, since they handed me this C and basically said "don't fuck it up," I don't feel like a fraud wearing a letter that doesn't belong to me. Pearson sees something in me worth fighting for, worth protecting, and that means everything.
Because Coach Pearson doesn't blow smoke up anyone's ass.
He's a father figure, quiet and contemplative, but he doesn't talk shit.
But as the warm feeling rushes through my body, it's chased by a poison. Because this isn’t just about me. Galloway is going to decimate our season because I stood between him and Morgan in that lobby, stopping him from being a creep and feeling her up.
“When?”
“Albright’s already scheduled an emergency committee meeting for Monday." Pearson shrugs. "The policy says you'll first be given a warning and thirty days to turn around your grades, and if they're still subpar after that, then you'll all be benched…"
Thirty days to learn what I should have been learning for three years
Thirty days to score a C-plus average?
For most students, it would be easy enough, but I've never been the brains of the operation.
I know my limitations, and I hit those at about the third week of the first semester of junior year.
It's lucky I can hold a stick and catch a puck once in a while, because otherwise I'd be doing something much harder for a buck.
And, now, that might be my future anyway.
“Coach, I—”
“I can't fix this, James,” he says, his voice tired, all the fight drained out of him.
"I tried speaking to Galloway and to Albright, but they're not budging, so you and the others have to figure it out. I don’t care if you have to bribe your professors or study all fucking night, you'll need to make the grade to stay on the ice.”
We talk for another few minutes, then I stumble out of his office, legs feeling disconnected from my body. I lean against the wall, cold concrete seeping through my shirt, trying to process what just happened. The D-plus that seemed funny twenty minutes ago now feels like a death sentence.
But it’s a death sentence for Nash and Stiles too, and they're guys who didn’t do anything except have the misfortune of having shit grades and being on the team of someone who deliberately riled up the athletic director of the entire university.
My phone is in my hand before I consciously decide to pull it out, thumb scrolling through contacts.
Because I need help from someone who's shown a deftness for working through academic bureaucracy, or at least someone who's smart enough to help me learn a semester's worth of sociology in four weeks.
Then a name stops me cold.
Morgan Riley.
The woman whose program is currently under siege as well. The woman who has every reason to tell me to go fuck myself with a rusty skate blade. But also the woman who navigated the political minefield of starting a program from scratch while holding the line against Galloway's bullshit.
She's a political science major who thinks in strategies and counter-strategies while the rest of us are still learning checkers. She’s a political animal, apex predator variety, and tough as nails. And, from what I know of her, she's smart as fuck as well.
Not to mention the only other person who understands the war we’re fighting.
My thumb hovers over her name.
This is desperation, pure and simple.
But what choice do I have?
I need Morgan.
Taking a breath that does absolutely nothing to steady my nerves, I type out a message. I write and delete a dozen versions—too desperate, too casual, too apologetic, too demanding. It’s like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube where all the colors are different shades of “pathetic.”
Finally, I settle on something simple:
We need to talk. Alone.
I hit send before I can second-guess myself for the thirteenth time.
The typing bubble appears immediately. Disappears. Appears again. She’s typing and stopping. My heart is doing something medically inadvisable, possibly trying to escape through my throat. Finally, after what feels like several geological ages, her message comes through:
Library. Third floor, back corner study room. Twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes.
Barely enough time to get across campus if I run, but I’m already moving, because I need to find out if the tentative truce we negotiated over coffee is strong enough to withstand what I’m about to ask, and to ask if she'll help to save me when she has every right to enjoy watching me burn.
And, somehow, I'll need to ignore the fact that I can't be around her without wanting her…