8. Callahan Eli Moore
Callahan Eli Moore
Cash changed the name to “THE UGLY DUCKLINGS”
Cash: So apparently our new assistant coach can get Rick drunk.
Marcus: Wait. Rick Anderson? The man who never touches alcohol?
Brick: …I’m officially terrified.
Cash: Terrified? Yes. Also, jealous.
Carter: Does she do this to everyone or just the men in power positions?
Cash: Whooo caress. I just want her to speak foreign words at me. Scary, hot foreign words.
* * *
The locker room is a pressure cooker of rumors this morning.
Usually, the talk is about trade deadlines or which club someone hit up on the weekend, but today, the air is thick with the name Iveline.
I can hear the whispers as I pull on my socks, the hushed tones of grown men gossiping like they’re in a high school hallway.
Cash had only learned about the bar night because he’d been shamelessly flirting with the arena receptionist. She’s pushing sixty, but apparently Cash’s ego doesn’t recognize age limits.
I pull my jersey over my head, the heavy fabric familiar, but today it feels like a weighted vest.
By the time I get to the rink, something feels off.
It’s too quiet, the kind of quiet that screams someone important—or terrifying—is about to appear. The guys are already dressed, sticks half-taped resting on their shoulders.
Someone yawns. Someone else groans like they slept on concrete.
“Why does it feel like a funeral in here?” I mutter, dropping onto the bench to tighten my skates.
Before anyone can answer, Rick Anderson walks in. His eyes are bloodshot, his skin has a grayish tint, and he’s moving with the deliberate care of a man whose brain is currently three sizes too big for his skull.
“Morning,” he says flatly. He lets out a long, pained sigh. “You’re all going to do me a favor today.”
No one breathes. Some guys glance at each other, quietly hoping for a miracle of a canceled practice.
“You’re going to shut up,” he continues, his eyes narrowing as he scans the room. “You’re going to listen. And you’re going to skate exactly how you’re told. Anyone who can’t manage that can enjoy conditioning drills until their legs fall off. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Coach,” comes the chorus of voices.
Rick nods once, looking like the sound of our collective voice physically hurt him. “Good. She’ll be here in a minute.”
She.
That’s all it takes.
My pulse picks up, a steady thrum in my ears. I force myself to relax, leaning back against the locker, but I find myself glancing toward the entrance too often. I look across the room and see the carnage from last night.
Miguel Santos looks like death warmed over. Sam is rubbing his temples in sync with the overhead lights. Rick sits next to Miguel, his jaw tight, looking like he made a series of terrible life choices sometime after midnight.
Even Jenna, usually the most composed person in the building, is slumped against the wall, half-asleep.
Then Iveline walks in.
And yeah—she’s clearly hungover.
She’s quiet and lethal in the kind of controlled way that makes caffeine a necessity and murder a serious consideration. Her hair is pulled into a bun that looks even tighter than yesterday’s, and she’s wearing sunglasses indoors. It’s everything I need to know.
She looks like a beautiful disaster.
There’s a slight paleness to her skin that wasn’t there before. The way she’s holding her coffee cup—both hands wrapped around it like it’s a lifeline—is the most human thing I’ve seen her do.
Most of the guys are smirking, but I can’t find the humor in it.
Even with a pounding headache and dark lenses hiding her eyes, she still commands the air in the room.
She doesn’t apologize for the sunglasses. She doesn’t make a self-deprecating “rough night” joke to fit in with the boys.
She just stands there, a lethal statue, and waits for us to be worth her time.
I find myself wondering what she was like last night.
Did she laugh? Did she finally let that severe bun down? Did she talk about our car accident to Rick and the others, or is that a secret she’s only keeping with me?
The thought that I might have a version of her that the others don’t have is a dangerous, sharp little thrill in my chest.
She stops just inside the doorway, surveying us like she’s counting idiots. She sighs heavily, as if she’s already bored with the entirety of humanity.
“Good morning,” she says, her voice raspy. She pauses. “You all look… hydrated.”
A few guys snort before remembering Rick’s warning, choking the sound back into a cough. She removes the sunglasses then, revealing eyes that are sharp despite the exhaustion.
“We’re going to keep this efficient today,” she says, her tone clipped. “That benefits all of us. Mostly me.”
She turns to Rick, but he’s sitting there with his eyes half-closed. When he notices her staring, he simply waves a hand toward the ice. The respect is given; she doesn’t even have to ask for it.
She walks straight to the large whiteboard mounted near the tunnel and starts drawing. There’s no hesitation. Her voice carries through the quiet arena—clear, precise, and impossible to ignore.
“We’re adjusting neutral zone pressure today,” she explains. “Less drifting. More intent. If you’re unsure where you’re supposed to be, that’s not the system failing. That’s you failing the system.”
A couple of guys shift uncomfortably.
She explains the movements better than she did yesterday. It’s cleaner and simpler. And damn it—I hate that I understand exactly what she wants immediately.
But what I hate even more is how my eyes keep drifting every time she bends over to draw something along the bottom edge of the board. Cash is doing the same thing next to me, and I narrow my eyes at him.
Dick.
“Noah,” she calls out without looking up from the board. “Timing data.”
Noah appears like a summoned ghost from the shadows of the hallway. He’s holding out a fresh coffee cup.
Heat prickles in my chest, and my jaw tightens. I can’t explain why it bothers me so much that Noah is the one standing there, the one who already knows her morning routine.
She takes the cup without missing a beat. “Thank you, Noah.”
Their fingers don’t touch, but I’m watching for it anyway.
Noah Klein is a human calculator. He’s safe and non-threatening. But the way he moves into her space—the way he already seems to know her patterns—feels like a personal affront to my position as captain.
I’ve spent my career being the guy people watch. I’m the one who gets the standing ovations. But in this moment, watching an analytics guy hand a coffee to a coach, I feel like I’m sitting on the far end of the bench.
It’s a stupid, ego-driven reaction, and I know it. But as we finally head out and I skate toward the face-off circle, I’m digging my blades into the ice a little deeper than necessary.
If she wants “intent,” I’ll give her so much intent she won’t be able to look at anyone else on the ice.
We start the drills.
The first rep is messy, the second is better and by the third rep, it clicks.
I skate harder than I mean to, testing the lanes she’s set up. She corrects our positioning without ever raising her voice. She calls names, and eventually, she gets to mine.
“Moore. Half a second earlier on the transition.”
I adjust. It works perfectly.
“Careful, Cap,” one of the defensemen calls out as we rotate. “Coach is watching. Try not to embarrass yourself.”
“Shut up, Miller,” I snap, sounding sharper than I intended.
“Damn,” he laughs, shaking his head. “She’s got him trained already. Look at him go.”
My jaw tightens so hard it aches. I pretend I don’t hear Iveline’s quiet exhale—the kind of soft sound that says she definitely heard the comment.
I push off harder, cutting across the ice with more force than the drill actually requires. The cold air bites at my lungs, but it’s nothing compared to the heat crawling up my neck.
I can feel her eyes on me.
“Moore,” she calls out. Her voice is steady and clipped. “Reset. Again.”
I circle back, stopping a few feet away from her.
I’m too close, yet not close enough.
Her expression doesn’t change, but I see her posture tighten. It’s a subtle shift, like she’s bracing for an impact she knows is coming.
“For the love of—Cap, stop hovering,” Nico mutters as he skates past. “You’re practically breathing her air.”
“Do you want to run laps, Nico?” I fire back.
He grins, unbothered. “If it means watching you trip over your own skates trying to impress her? Absolutely.”
I ignore him.
Iveline steps closer, just enough that I catch the faint scent of her perfume. She doesn’t look at me directly, but her voice drops a fraction lower, meant only for my ears.
“Half a second earlier,” she says. “You’re reacting, Moore. You aren’t anticipating.”
My throat goes dry. “I am anticipating.”
“No,” she replies, her eyes flicking up to mine for the briefest, most devastating second. “You’re distracted.”
It hits harder than any body check I’ve ever taken.
Because she’s right.
Because she knows exactly why I’m distracted.
A chorus of muffled snickers rises from the guys behind us who are definitely eavesdropping.
“Distracted,” Cash repeats loudly from the line. “Yeah, that’s one word for it. I can think of a few others.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, skating back to my position.
Iveline straightens up, her professionalism snapping back into place like a suit of armor.
“Again!” she orders, stepping away before I can read anything else in her face.
And I go.
I go because she told me to.
But the ice feels different under my skates now—sharper and thinner, like one wrong move will send me crashing straight through the surface.
That’s when Carter Hale decides to open his mouth.
“Easy for you to talk about systems,” Hale says, loud enough for the entire rink to hear. “Must be nice walking in here with daddy sitting at the top of the stairs.”
The ice goes dead silent.
The only sound is the hum of the cooling system beneath us. Iveline stops skating. She turns slowly, her eyebrow lifting just enough to let everyone know she’s dangerous.
“Say that again, Hale.”
Her hangover has clearly made her irritable.
Nice.
Hale shrugs, trying to look cocky in front of the guys.
“I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking. I’m the only one brave enough to say it out loud. You’re here because of your last name, not because you’re some tactical genius.”
She skates closer to him.
“You think,” she says calmly, her voice echoing in the rafters, “that if nepotism was enough to get me into this league, I’d be standing on the ice with you at seven in the morning? Do you think I’d be dealing with your ego instead of sitting in a climate-controlled office upstairs?”
Hale scoffs, but he’s losing his nerve. “I’m just saying—”
“No,” she cuts him off. “You’re deflecting. You’re deflecting because it’s easier for you to question my résumé than it is to admit you missed your defensive assignment twice in under a minute.”
A few guys glance at Hale. He’s flushing a deep red now.
She doesn’t stop.
She’s on a roll, and the hangover seems to have stripped away any desire she had to be “polite.”
“I coached for eight years overseas in leagues you wouldn’t last a week in,” she says, her voice like a knife.
“I earned licenses you don’t even know exist. I’ve rebuilt teams older than you are.
And if I wanted my father to help me, I wouldn’t be here in Boston.
I’d be somewhere much quieter, much richer, and with a hell of a lot less patience for players who think their shooting percentage excuses them from having a brain. ”
I skate a little closer to the center, my hands clenched around my stick. I’m feeling a confusing mix of admiration and irritation. Watching her dismantle Hale so effortlessly is unsettling.
Hale opens his mouth to respond, but she steps even closer.
Every head in the rink is leaning in now.
Every eye is on her.
“If you have a legitimate issue with my coaching, bring me data. Bring me film. Bring me effort. But don’t you dare bring me excuses dressed up as misogyny.”
The word lands like a physical slap.
It hangs in the freezing air, as visible as the breath leaving our lungs.
Most coaches would have danced around it. They would have called it “disrespect.” But Iveline called it exactly what it was, and the silence that follows is heavy enough to break the ice beneath us.
Hale looks like he’s just been doused in a bucket of cold water.
He’s a big guy, a power forward who prides himself on being the toughest man in the room, but he looks incredibly small standing in front of her right now.
And then I see him.
William St. James is posted behind the rink-side glass, hands clasped behind his back, observing everything without a word.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t tap on the boards or blow a whistle to intervene. He just stands there like an ancient, judgmental god.
The resemblance between him and Iveline is terrifying in this light—the same tilt of the head, the same absolute refusal to blink.
I realize then that she isn’t just fighting us. She’s fighting the man in the suit up there. Every word she just yelled at Hale was meant for her father, too.
She’s telling her worth at the one person who probably never gave her enough of it.
“Now—are we done crying about my last name, or do you actually want to skate?”
No one says a word.
“What?” she snaps, her irritation finally cracking through the professional veneer. “You all had plenty to say five minutes ago. Where’s that energy now?”
She turns to head toward the bench—and then she freezes. Her shoulders bunch up just a fraction. It’s a tiny movement, but it’s enough to catch my attention because I’m looking for it.
She’s seen him.
For once, in the history of this franchise, no one in the arena breathes at all.