13. Iveline Talvi
Iveline Talvi
Nico changed the name to “THE GROUP CHAT RICK SHOULD NEVER SEE”
Cash: Coach Talvi looks like she hasn’t slept.
Nico: That’s not exhaustion, that’s her tactical glow.
Leo: Should we… say good morning?
Brick: Only if you’ve made peace with God, kid.
* * *
Two months have passed since that night on the team bus in D.C.
Two months since Callahan came too close under a guttering streetlamp. Two months since I reminded myself, with painful clarity, why I don’t allow distractions to breach my perimeter.
When I woke up the next morning in that hotel room, the heat of his shoulder still lingered against mine. The memory made me flush with a mix of irritation and shame—not at him, but at my own momentary weakness.
Callahan didn’t cross a line, and I certainly didn’t invite him to, but if my father found out how easily I allowed him to see behind the mask, it would be the end of the autonomy I’ve fought so hard to build.
I kept my distance on the flight back. I avoided eye contact during the morning film sessions and stayed strictly clinical during our practices.
The team noticed the shift in temperature; they always do.
They stopped cracking jokes when I walked into the room, and even Cash started focusing on his edges instead of his punchlines.
The weeks that followed blurred into a relentless grind of travel, practices, and back-to-back games. We’ve clawed our way to nineteen wins already, a pace that leaves little room for anything except work and sleep.
Whatever strange, charged thing existed between Callahan and me that night never had the space to become anything more. We haven’t really talked since—not beyond clipped strategy notes, lineup adjustments, or the occasional low-voiced “good game.”
It’s easier to pretend we’re both too busy to acknowledge it. Easier to bury it under film sessions, injury reports, and the constant pressure of keeping this team sharp.
So we orbit each other instead—close enough to feel the pull, far enough to pretend it’s not there.
Now, it is late December and we are staring down the barrel of game twenty-seven.
Pre-game practice is a controlled chaos of skidding steel, clashing sticks, and pucks thudding against the plexiglass. I let the weight of the clipboard feel like an extension of my arm as I pace the boards.
“Focus,” I call out, my voice echoing off the rafters. “If I see one more blind pass to the slot, we’re skating suicides until the ice melts.”
Cash grins, executing a perfect tight turn and spraying a fan of snow against the boards near my feet. “I did that one correctly, didn’t I, Coach Talvi? Pure, unadulterated talent.”
The name doesn’t catch me off guard anymore; most of the players are calling me Coach Talvi now. And even if I’ll never admit it aloud, the shift warms something behind my ribs; it feels earned.
Callahan is the only one who stays reserved, sticking to a professional, careful “Coach” that sounds like a shield.
I look at Cash. “You’re surprisingly competent today, Cash. Try to keep it up for more than ten minutes.”
I skate back toward the center, scanning the roster.
Nico is juggling a puck on the blade of his stick like he’s auditioning for a circus act. Brick is watching him with quiet, heavy judgment. Leo is trying to look confident, but the way he grips his stick tells me the nervous energy is still vibrating through him.
Midway through the drills, the heavy doors at the end of the tunnel swing open. A voice cuts through the thrum of the arena, booming and joyous.
“Ivy! I’ve arrived! Please tell me you missed me or I’m going to have a breakdown right here on the concrete!”
I freeze, my heart leaping into my throat. A genuine smile spreads across my face before I can suppress it.
Two people step onto the ice—the two people who have been my absolute lifeline through the grueling years in Europe.
My favorite redhead, Scottie, comes skipping onto the ice in thick-soled boots, nearly slipping but laughing through the stumble. She is a whirlwind of cashmere, earmuffs, and a coat that probably cost more than a mid-sized sedan.
Following her is Dean, calm and silent as always, his eyes surveying the arena with the practiced caution of a perimeter guard.
“Ivy, my baby!” Scottie yells, waving her arms.
The team grinds to a halt.
Nico drops his puck. Cash stops mid-stride, his mouth hanging open. Leo nearly trips over his own shadow, and Brick squints as if trying to calculate the exact amount of chaos that just entered his sanctuary.
Scottie doesn’t just enter a room; she colonizes it.
Within thirty seconds, she has managed to offend the sanctity of an NHL practice while simultaneously charming every man with a pulse.
I watch Callahan out of the corner of my eye. He is standing perfectly still, his stick blade resting on the toes of his skates, looking at Scottie and Dean like they are a catastrophic breach in security.
I realize, with a small, wicked surge of satisfaction, that he is jealous. He has no idea who they are. To him, they are just two attractive, familiar people who have the audacity to shout my name and look at me with an intimacy he’s been forbidden from touching.
Dean catches Callahan’s glare and holds it. He’s the quietest man I know, but he has the “protective older brother” stare down to a science.
While Callahan uses his physical size to command the ice, Dean uses silence like a legal trap. He is the most sought-after sports lawyer in the States for a reason—he doesn’t argue, he just dismantles.
“Ivy,” Scottie says, pulling back from a rib-crushing hug to look at me, her eyes immediately darting toward the boards. “Who is the brooding one over there? He looks like he wants to either fight Dean or marry you. Possibly both. Honestly, I’m into the energy.”
“He’s the captain,” I hiss, my face heating up until I’m sure I’m matching her hair. “Behave yourself. This is a professional environment.”
“I never promised you a professional environment; I promised you a friendship,” she winks, turning her gaze back to the team.
I take a deep breath, trying to reclaim my composure as the guys start to drift closer, curiosity getting the better of them. “Scottie, Dean. Please. Sit down. We are in the middle of a tactical walkthrough. And be quiet.”
Scottie grins, entirely unbothered by the weight of the stares. “Quiet? Me? You’ve known me fifteen years, Ivy. You know that isn’t an option.”
She charges forward again, enveloping me in another hug that nearly sends us both sliding across the ice. Dean wraps his arms around both of us, a silent, steady anchor.
For a heartbeat, the pressure in my chest becomes too much, and I feel tears threaten to sting my eyes.
“Missed you guys,” I murmur into Scottie’s shoulder.
She pulls back just enough to look me over, her hands resting on my shoulders with a grounding weight.
In her eyes, I’m not the youngest coach in the league or the woman fighting for a seat at a table made of ice.
I’m just Ivy.
The same Ivy who sat beside her in seventh-grade biology, trading whispered secrets and dreaming of lives we hadn’t lived yet.
We’re still the same girls—just in adult clothes, carrying bigger bags and bigger dreams, laughing at the same jokes, and healing the same hearts.
We grew up, sure, but the core of us never changed.
That realization is a sudden, sharp anchor in the middle of this whirlwind season.
I steer them toward the side seating area near the bench. As I skate back to the center of the ice, I hear the whispers.
“Who is that?” Nico whispers to Leo. “She looks familiar.”
“I think she’s a model,” Leo mutters back.
Cash is the one who puts it together. He’s been staring at Scottie with a look of dawning realization.
“Wait… red hair? That coat?” He pales slightly. “Is that… The Shark?”
The nickname ripples through the team.
Everyone in professional sports knows of The Shark—the most ruthless, high-profile sports agent to come out of Boston in a decade. She is famous for being a ghost in the media but a nightmare in the boardroom.
They know her name, they know her reputation for tearing GMs apart, but they’ve never seen her in the flesh.
Scottie stands up and leans over the glass, giving them a sharp, predatory smile.
“Scottie Elise Reed,” she announces, her voice carrying across the quiet ice. “And if any of you miss your assignments today, I’ll make sure your next contract negotiations happen in a dark room with just me and a very sharp pen.”
The team collectively gulps.
Practice resumes with a sudden, frantic intensity.
I keep one eye on Callahan the entire time. He remains precise and calm, but there is a new aggression to his movements. He’s playing better, faster, showing off for the “audience” in a way that is so subtle only someone who has spent weeks studying his patterns would notice.
As the practice goes on, I find myself laughing. It’s a real, honest sound that breaks through the cold air when Leo trips over his own feet during a transition drill. I don’t bark a correction this time; I just shake my head.
“Watch your edges, Leo. You’re skating like a newborn giraffe.”
The players stop and stare at me as if I’ve grown a second head. I can practically hear their internal gears grinding.
Coach Talvi has friends? Coach Talvi is human?
Practice ends with the sharp blast of the final whistle, the air still buzzing with sweat and adrenaline.
Cash slows as he passes me, a grin stretched across his face like he’s been waiting the whole practice for this moment.
“So, Coach… your friends. They staying for the game?”
“Yes, Cash. Now go get changed.”
He leans in conspiratorially. “Is The Shark single?” He jerks his chin toward Scottie, who’s lounging in the stands.
I watch Dean lean against the railing next to her, his calm presence a perfect foil to Scottie’s fire.
It feels like a lifetime ago that Scottie had dragged me to a pre-law mixer, insisting she’d found the “only man in the tri-state area with a brain faster than mine.”
She had introduced us, and the three of us had become an airtight unit almost instantly.
Dean had been the one to look at my first professional contract and tell me exactly how much I was being undervalued, while Scottie was already reaching for her phone to fix it.
We didn’t just grow up together; we built our worlds together.
I look back at Cash. “Find out yourself, Cash. If you’re brave enough.”
Nico and Leo snort as they skate past. Even Brick cracks the smallest, tightest smile before disappearing down the tunnel.
One by one, they vanish into the locker room until only Callahan remains. He lingers at the boards, resting his forearms on the top rail, eyes fixed on me with that steady, unreadable calm of his.
“Good work today, Coach,” he says. “Not that you need me to notice it.”
A small warmth flickers in my chest, annoyingly persistent. I can’t stop the slight curve of my lips. “Well… thank you anyway, Captain.”
***
We win the game with a level of discipline that this team didn’t possess in October. When the final buzzer sounds for our twenty-seventh match, the celebration is explosive.
Rick pulls me into a brief, exuberant hug. “I’m so happy I called you, Iveline. Look at them.”
In the locker room, Kovács smirks at me as he pulls off his jersey. “You were… good tonight, Coach. Really good.”
He raises his brows, looking around the room. “Drinks? We have to celebrate the streak, right?”
Before I can answer, the door bursts open. Dean and Scottie push through the crowd of giant men like they own the place. Dean raises a finger, silencing the room.
“Not so fast, boys,” Dean says, his voice low and commanding. “It’s her birthday. She’s coming with us.”
The room freezes. Cash stops mid-laugh. Leo drops his water bottle, the plastic clattering against the floor. Nico blinks in total confusion, and Brick whispers, “Birthday?”
I exhale, my chest feeling exposed and elated all at once. Having everyone notice me as a person, not just a set of eyes on a clipboard, is more intimate than I anticipated.
Cash is the first to move.
He strides over and wraps me in a massive, sweaty hug, planting a loud, sloppy kiss on my cheek. “Happy Birthday, Iveline! Why didn’t you tell us? We would’ve gotten a cake!”
Heat rises in my chest, and for once, I don’t push the affection away. I hug him back briefly. “Because I didn’t want the cake, Cash. But thank you.”
A birthday is a vulnerability; it’s a day that admits you have a history, a life that exists outside the white lines of the rink. I’ve kept mine a secret for years because I didn’t want the cupcakes or the ‘Happy Birthday’ sung by twenty men who can’t hold a high note.
But seeing the way the guys’ faces soften—seeing them look at me as a human being—it cracks the Ice Queen’s armor right down the middle.
Callahan moves through the crowd. The other guys instinctively give him space, sensing a shift in the air.
He doesn’t hug me like Cash did.
He doesn’t plant a kiss on my cheek.
He just stands in my space, his height making the rest of the room feel small and distant.
“Congratulations, Ivy,” he says.
He uses the name only my inner circle is allowed to touch. He says it like he’s been practicing the weight of it in his mouth.
“It’s just another year, Callahan,” I say, my voice coming out breathier than I intended.
“No,” he murmurs, leaning in just enough so the words are for me alone. “It’s the year you came to us.”
I meet his gaze, and the moment stretches until the rest of the room feels like a background blur.
Scottie claps her hands, breaking the tension before it can ignite. “Alright! Enough brooding! Now we celebrate. Drinks, birthday, and a win—all at once. You in?”
I look around the room at my team, at my friends, then back at Callahan.
“Let’s get drunk.”