5. Maddie
Maddie
I always wait outside the locker room.
It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve done this, how many games I’ve worked, how many clips I’ve filmed from this exact hallway with the same camera in my hands and a dozen ideas already lined up in my head.
There’s still a part of me that pauses here—just outside the door—like I’m standing at the edge of something I’m allowed to step into, but not without permission.
It isn’t written anywhere. No one ever told me I had to wait. But it feels like a line all the same.
So I lean back against the wall and adjust the settings on my camera again, even though I already checked them twice on the way in.
The overhead lights cast that same slightly harsh glow down the hallway, flattening everything into something a little too sharp, a little too real.
People pass behind me—staff, trainers, someone carrying a crate of sticks—but none of it registers.
Not the way the locker room does. The way it hums behind that door, low and alive, like something building.
Jake always comes to get me. Not because he has to.
Because he does. Because somewhere along the way, it became understood that this part of their routine isn’t something I walk into on my own.
It’s something I’m brought into, like they’re making space for me inside something that belongs to them first.
The door opens a few minutes later, and just like always, it’s him. Jake steps out already halfway dressed, his hair still damp, his expression easy in a way that makes my shoulders loosen before I even realize they were tight.
“You good, Mads?” he asks, leaning his shoulder against the frame like he has all the time in the world.
“I’m good,” I tell him, lifting my shoulder slightly.
He glances over his shoulder, then back at me, the corner of his mouth pulling up. “Give us two minutes. Grady’s still walking around like clothing is optional.”
I laugh, the sound quieter than the noise around us but real enough to feel like it settles somewhere in my chest. “I’ve seen worse.”
“Yeah,” he says dryly, “Lennon would disagree.” That makes me laugh a little more, and he nods like that was the goal before pushing back into the room. “Give me a minute.”
I nod and stay where I am. Waiting. It doesn’t take long.
The door opens again, and this time when Jake looks at me, he just tips his head toward the room. “Come on.”
The shift hits the second I step inside. It always does. The hallway feels like holding your breath. The locker room feels like finally letting it go.
Sound wraps around me immediately—music low but steady, voices layered over each other, the scrape of gear and the dull thud of something hitting the floor. It’s messy in a way that somehow still works, like every piece belongs exactly where it is even if it doesn’t look like it should.
Warm. Alive. I lift my camera almost without thinking, letting myself settle into the movement of it, into the way I know how to exist here.
“Maddie,” Luka calls, his voice cutting through the room with that same easy confidence he carries everywhere. “Careful. Media’s here.”
There’s a smile in his voice, even before I look at him.
“Like that’s ever stopped you,” I shoot back, angling the camera just enough to catch him leaning back against his locker in his pads like the whole place revolves around him.
He grins, like that’s exactly what he expects me to say. “I’m always professional.”
Jasper doesn’t even look up from where he’s taping his stick. “That’s not the word I’d use.”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” Luka replies, smooth as ever.
Grady laughs somewhere behind me, low and knowing. “Neither does whatever the hell that is.”
“Winning,” Luka says, like it’s obvious.
I shake my head, smiling without thinking about it, and let myself move through the room, capturing pieces of it instead of trying to control it.
That’s the thing about this part—it only works if it feels real. And this always does. I lower the camera for a second to adjust the angle—and when I do, Luka is closer. Not enough that anyone else would notice. Just enough that I do.
“You good?” he asks, quieter this time, the usual edge in his voice softened just enough to make it different.
I glance up at him, my fingers tightening slightly around the camera before I force them to relax. “I’m good.”
It comes out softer than I mean it to. His eyes stay on me for a second, like he’s deciding whether he believes me. Then one corner of his mouth lifts.
“Yeah?” he says, nudging his shoulder lightly into mine. “You look like you’re about to fire half the team.”
A breath of a laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Relax,” he says easily, already shifting back into himself. “I’m still your favorite.”
The words are light. Teasing. Like they don’t carry anything underneath them. But they land anyway. Steady in a way I don’t question.
I shake my head, nudging him back. “Go finish getting dressed.”
He grins, the full version of it this time. “Yes, ma’am.”
I shake my head, lifting the camera again as Luka moves off, letting myself slip back into the rhythm of the room like it’s something I can disappear inside if I stay busy enough.
That’s always been the easiest part of this job—the way movement fills the space where thoughts try to linger too long, the way noise gives me something to hold onto when everything else feels like it’s shifting just out of reach.
There’s always something to capture, something to adjust, something to focus on that isn’t whatever is sitting quietly under my skin.
So I move with it.
More clips. More laughter. The scrape of skates against the floor, the low hum of music threading through the room, voices overlapping in a way that shouldn’t make sense but always does.
It builds without asking permission, the kind of energy that doesn’t need direction because it already knows where it’s going.
I let it pull me along, angling the camera, stepping around the guys, catching pieces instead of trying to control the whole.
And for a minute, it works. For a minute, I don’t think about anything except the shot in front of me.
Until the door opens again. It doesn’t slam.
It doesn’t draw attention. Nothing about it should matter more than any of the other times that door has opened tonight.
The room doesn’t go quiet. No one stops what they’re doing.
The music keeps playing, someone laughs across the space, Grady says something I don’t quite catch. But something shifts anyway.
It’s subtle enough that if I weren’t standing still for half a second too long, I might miss it.
A quiet tightening in the air, like everything that was moving freely a second ago just found a center without being told to.
The kind of shift that doesn’t ask for attention but takes it anyway, pulling everything into focus in a way I don’t have a name for.
I don’t turn right away. I don’t have to. Because I already know. The awareness lands before the thought does, settling low and certain in a way that feels more like recognition than realization. It doesn’t question itself. It doesn’t hesitate. It just… is.
Dean.
I adjust the camera in my hands, not because it needs it, but because I do—because it gives me something to do with the sudden stillness that settles into me before I’m ready for it.
Then I lift my gaze. And it’s him. Of course it is.
It’s always him. The way he steps into the room doesn’t change, not really.
It never does. There’s nothing loud about it, nothing that demands attention in the way Luka does or fills the space the way Grady can when he wants to.
But something about Dean doesn’t need any of that.
The room adjusts around him without realizing it, like everything instinctively falls into place the second he’s in it.
I’ve seen it before. I’ve filmed it before.
But seeing it and noticing it aren’t the same thing. And tonight—I notice it.
The way the space around him settles instead of scatters. The way the guys shift just slightly, not stopping what they’re doing but aligning in a way that feels automatic. The way his presence doesn’t add to the noise, it steadies it.
And for some reason, that’s the thing that holds me there. Not the movement. Not the sound. It's Him. Like my attention doesn’t even pause long enough to consider anything else first, like it doesn’t have to choose because it’s already decided.
It’s nothing. It has to be. I’m standing still too long. Letting a moment stretch further than it should, turning something ordinary into something it isn’t because I’m not moving, not thinking about anything else, not doing my job the way I’m supposed to be doing it.
That’s all this is. It has to be. Because there’s no reason for it to feel like this.
No reason for the room to narrow in the way it does, for everything else to fade just slightly out of focus while he comes into it, for the sound to feel a fraction quieter even though I know it isn’t.
No reason for me to notice the way something heavier sits behind his eyes for just a second too long before it disappears, like I caught something I wasn’t meant to see.
And I shouldn’t notice that. Out of everything happening in this room—out of all the movement, all the noise, all the energy building around me—that shouldn’t be the thing that stands out.
But it is.
And even as I lift the camera again, even as I force myself to step forward and rejoin the flow of everything I was doing before the door opened, it doesn’t quite let go.
The awareness lingers, quiet but steady, like something that settled into place without asking permission and has no intention of moving just because I want it to.
So I don’t question it. I don’t try to name it. I just move. Because that’s easier. Even if, somewhere underneath it—something already feels different.