25. Ryan #2
I felt the weight of thirty pairs of eyes moving between me and Griffin. I could feel the shape of what everyone in this group already suspected, whether they’d said it out loud or not.
“Clear,” I said.
A long beat. The kind that had a whole conversation in it. The acknowledgment that Calloway was right, that I knew it, that Griffin knew I knew it, that the gap between knowing something and fixing it was exactly the problem.
“Clear,” Griffin said.
Calloway nodded once. “Again. From the top.”
We ran it again. Better, technically. The machinery grinding instead of seizing. But I spent the rest of practice aware of Griffin the way I was aware of a bruise. Not looking directly at it but knowing exactly where it was.
When Calloway finally called it, I skated to the boards and stepped off the ice and started down the corridor toward the locker room.
I stood in the corridor for a moment, watching Griffin.
Then I kept walking.
Calloway’s office door was open. I knocked on the frame anyway.
“Close it,” Calloway said, without looking up from the clipboard.
I closed it behind me and sat in the chair across the desk without being asked. Calloway finished whatever he was reading, set the clipboard down, and watched me with the attention he gave things he’d already assessed and was waiting to confirm.
“What do you need,” Calloway said. It didn’t seem like a question.
I studied the desk for a moment. The printed schedule. The coffee cup. The same real cup Calloway had been carrying since the first day of training camp, never a paper one.
“Hypothetically,” I said.
Calloway’s expression didn’t change.
“If a player had a relationship with someone on staff. Not a subordinate. Someone in a different department entirely.” I kept my voice level. “What happens to her… To that person. Professionally.”
Calloway let it sit for a moment. The facility hummed around us. The distant sound of skates on the far rink, someone running a drill.
“There’s no rule against players dating staff here,” Calloway said.
“Hypothetically… She was hired for her experience and work ethic. That doesn’t change because of who she’s seeing.
” He said it the same simple way he did most things he felt didn’t require elaboration.
“Nobody I respect is going to see it any other way.”
“And if someone does?”
“Then that’s my problem. Not yours and not hers.”
I nodded. I’d gotten what I came for and started to stand.
“Lindqvist.”
I stopped.
Calloway met my eyes. “Fix it with Callahan. This week.” He turned a page. “Everything else follows from that.”
I stood for a moment in the office.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I let myself out.
The locker room was loud at first. The usual noise of twenty-something men decompressing after a hard practice, equipment coming off, music starting up from someone’s phone.
I found my stall and sat down and started on my skates without joining any of it, which was not unusual enough to draw attention right away.
Captains sometimes needed a minute. Everyone knew it.
I’d been sitting there for ten minutes without moving by the time Cole appeared next to me, and Cole had the antenna he’d always had, built from a lifetime of reading rooms I guessed, knowing exactly when someone needed to be left alone and when they needed to be bothered, and today he had clearly decided I had spent enough time sulking and needed to be bothered.
“You gonna take those skates off or are we doing this all day?” Cole asked, dropping onto the bench beside me.
I looked at him sideways.
“Because I’m patient,” Cole said, “but I’m also a person who would like to shower at some point.”
Across the room, Eli was pulling off his pads with the methodical calm that was just Eli.
He didn’t look up, but he didn’t leave either.
Theo had his back to us, ostensibly occupied with his gear, but had gone completely still.
A few of the younger guys watched with open curiosity, aware something was happening and not yet sure whether to insert themselves.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You are not even a little bit fine,” Cole said pleasantly.
“Calloway just lit us all up in front of the whole group, Callahan came in, took his shit off and left through the back exit, and Maren walked past the locker room twenty minutes ago and didn’t look in once—which she always does, by the way, she always glances in, it’s a whole thing—and you’ve been sitting in your skates staring at your own hands like they owe you money.
” He tilted his head. “So. What’s going on, Lindy? ”
I blew out a long breath. Looked at the ceiling. Thought about how much easier it would be to say nothing, I’m good, drop it. Then I thought about Maren’s avoiding me, and Griffin’s back exit, and the Swedish text that had gone unanswered, and I thought no. This has gone on long enough.
“Maren and I have been seeing each other since October,” I said.
The locker room did not erupt. In fact, quite the opposite. It went briefly, electrically quiet, and then six people started talking at once.
“Since October—”
“I knew it—”
“You owe me fifty bucks,” someone said to someone else.
I looked at Cole. “There were bets?”
“Lindqvist.” Cole held up a hand, the picture of wounded dignity. “With respect, you two have been making eyes at each other since the family skate in September. I’m guessing far before that. There were absolutely bets.”