12. Iveline Talvi
Iveline Talvi
We take the first win of the season in D.C., and apparently that means the team bus has become a lawless zone. The second the doors hiss shut, I’m hit with a wall of noise so intense it feels like a concussion without the medical paperwork.
Twenty-five men are celebrating like they’ve never felt joy before.
Someone is drumming on the overhead bins. Someone else is yelling the wrong lyrics to a victory song. And the sharp clink of glass tells me Cash has smuggled champagne onto a vehicle that, by every safety regulation known to man, should not contain champagne.
The bus smells like sweat, wet gear, and expensive cologne fighting for its life. The lights are dimmed, replaced by the glow of phones and a neon strip someone taped to the ceiling like we’re in a discount nightclub on wheels.
I find a small pocket of space near the front, trying to keep my elbows tucked in.
I’m a month into this job.
Twenty-nine days of clinical professionalism, of keeping my gaze strictly on the whiteboard and never on the way the light catches the blue in Callahan Moore’s eyes.
I have become a master of the “three-second glance.” Anything longer and the air in the room starts to feel too thin to breathe.
He knows I’m avoiding him.
I can see it in the way he lingers near the bench when I’m checking the roster, or the way he lets his voice drop an octave whenever he asks for a clarification on a play.
It’s a game of chicken, and neither of us is willing to blink first.
I need a break from being a St. James, and I definitely need a break from being a variable in Callahan’s head.
The bus lurches into motion, tires humming against the asphalt.
“Coach!” Leo shouts from four rows back, his face flushed and a plastic cup held aloft. “You actually stayed! We thought for sure you’d take a town car and leave us to our sins.”
“I’m part of the team, Leo,” I say, projecting my voice over a speaker that is currently thumping a bass line I can feel in my soles.
“Yeah?” Cash pipes up, leaning over the seat back with a grin that suggests he’s already had a head start on the champagne. “Then take a sip of the emergency victory stash. It’s tradition.”
I hold up my water bottle with a practiced, tight smile. “I’ll stick to the tradition of making sure you all make it to the hotel in one piece. Someone has to be the adult in this metal box.”
The celebration swells again, filling every inch of the cramped aisle. I press my back against the seat, trying to carve out a pocket of space that doesn’t exist.
And then, the universe provides exactly what I was trying to avoid.
Callahan doesn’t announce himself. He doesn’t clear a path or make a show of moving closer to me. He just exists, sliding into the seat across the aisle like it’s a total coincidence.
Like he belongs in my personal space.
The bus hits a pothole, and for a split second, his knee brushes mine through the gap in the aisle. The contact is sharp—a jolt of static through my slacks that makes my breath hitch.
“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” he murmurs. His voice is a low vibration that sits underneath the music, intended only for me.
“I’m surrounded by hockey players in their natural habitat,” I say, staring straight ahead at the driver’s neck. “I’m adapting.”
He snorts. “Is this your version of small talk?”
“This is my version of survival.”
“Fair enough.”
He maintains eye contact, letting it linger just a bit too long.
We stay like that for a few minutes, the din of the bus dimming around us until his eyes drift down to my lips and stay there. It’s long enough for me to feel a familiar tension settle into my chest, a heat that has nothing to do with the bus’s overworked heater.
The bus slows to a crawl at a red light in the heart of the city. We are idling near a sidewalk crowded with rowdy fans from the game.
A man, clearly not on speaking terms with sobriety and wearing a rival jersey, recognizes the team logo. He lunges toward the vehicle, banging his fist against the window right next to my head.
The glass shudders. The man presses his face against it, his eyes dragging down my body in a way that makes my skin crawl even through the thick window.
“Hey! Open up!” he slurs, his mouth leaving a fogged smear on the glass. “Didn’t know they let girls on the—”
Callahan is moving before the guy can even finish the thought.
He leans across the aisle, his chest inches from my shoulder, his warmth blooming over me like a blanket. He doesn’t say a word to the man outside. He simply reaches past me and snaps the heavy black curtain shut, blocking out the world, the man, and the light.
He stays there for a second too long, his arm braced against the window frame, effectively shielding me.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” Callahan replies. He shrugs as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “Did it anyway.”
I blink, momentarily disarmed by his bluntness. Confusion and a strange warmth rise in my chest. It wasn’t the typical alpha-male posturing I’m used to seeing. There was no shouting, just a surgical intervention.
It irritates me that I liked it.
It irritates me that for a single, flickering second, I let myself lean into the shadow he cast.
I’ve fought so hard to be the one in charge, yet here is Callahan Eli Moore, the very man I called a distraction, acting like my personal guard.
The night stretches on as the bus winds through the D.C. streets.
I end up drinking more of the “emergency stash” than I intended—just enough to feel the edges of my world soften. I laugh at Cash’s absurd stories about his time in the minors. I listen as Marcus quietly explains a specific play from the second period, the pride soft in his voice.
Then Kovács vaults over the back of a seat like the bus is his personal jungle gym, landing beside me with a grin that could power a small city.
“Coach,” he declares, pointing at me with a plastic cup, “if we win like this every night, I’m getting your face tattooed on my thigh.”
“Please don’t,” I say.
“Too late,” he winks, even though I know he’s lying. Hopefully…
We reach the hotel, but the team refuses to get off.
The guys are still riding the high of the win, passing the bottle around like we’re parked outside a frat house instead of a four-star hotel.
I slip down the steps and into the cold night air before anyone notices.
The cold D.C. air hits me immediately, making my breath fog in front of my face in the streetlights. Relief seeps in alongside the shock of the cold.
Less than two minutes later, the bus door opens with a hiss, and movement flickers in the glass of the hotel window in front of me. Broad shoulders. Dark jacket. A posture I could pick out in a crowd of thousands.
“You were smiling in there,” Callahan says. His arms are crossed lightly across his chest.
I turn to look at him.
God, he’s handsome. He always has been, and he always will be.
I quickly avert my eyes to the street.
“I’m drunk,” I murmur. I sound defensive, even to my own ears.
“Doesn’t make it any less real,” he says with a half-smile.
He moves a step closer. We aren’t touching, but the proximity feels entirely deliberate. The city buzzes around us, indifferent to our silence.
I let my gaze drift.
Washington is louder than Boston, and in a strange way, it reminds me of home. Not Finland itself, but something about the cold air and the hum of life passing by.
Sometimes I miss Finland so much it aches.
Sometimes I don’t miss it at all.
I remember my mother—her smile, her quiet strength.
She’s gone now, but I carry her with me in the smallest, most unshakable ways. I see her in my habits, hear her in my tone, and feel her in the careful precision with which I move through my life.
My mother used to say that Finland was a place of Sisu.
It’s a word that doesn’t quite translate to English, but it’s a mix of grit, resilience, and a stubborn refusal to give up when the winter gets too dark.
I’ve built my entire life on Sisu.
I’ve stayed cold and hard because that is how you survive in this industry.
But looking at Callahan under the hazy glow of the streetlamp, the Sisu feels brittle.
He’s looking at me not as a coach, and not as a St. James, but simply as a woman standing in the cold. It’s a level of being seen that makes me want to bolt into the hotel or hide behind a clipboard where it’s safe.
I try to tuck a stray hair behind my ear, but I miscalculate the distance. My hand brushes against my temple with a clumsy, soft thud.
“You’re swaying, Iveline,” Callahan says, his voice a low vibration in the cold air.
“I am not swaying. I am… oscillating,” I correct him, the word feeling too big and round in my mouth. I realize as soon as it leaves my lips that it’s a ridiculous thing to say, but the alcohol has stripped away the part of my brain that usually filters for dignity.
I look at him, my focus slipping for a second before I force it back.
“Why is your voice like that? It’s distracting. It’s a tactical disadvantage for the rest of the league.”
“My voice is a tactical disadvantage?” he repeats, the amusement in his tone dropping into a lower, more intimate register that vibrates right through me.
He leans back against the stone pillar of the hotel, the movement causing his jacket to pull tight across his chest, and he watches me with a look that is far too steady for someone who just heard a ridiculous accusation.
“Very rude,” I emphasize, trying to summon my usual coldness, but it comes out as more of a breathless whisper.
He huffs a quiet, dark laugh, stepping just an inch closer into my personal space. “I’ll try to speak in a higher pitch during the next briefing if it helps you focus, Iveline.”
“Don’t be patronizing,” I mutter, swaying slightly.
I look up at him, and for a second, the bustling street noise of D.C. fades into a dull hum. The silence between us stretches, no longer jagged with our usual bickering, but softened by the late hour and the shared heat of our proximity.