30. Iveline
Iveline
A reporter shoves a microphone toward my face the second I step out of my car, the gravel of the arena parking lot crunching under my boots.
“Coach Talvi—care to comment on the photos?”
I don’t slow my pace. I keep my eyes fixed on the staff entrance, my jaw set. “No.”
“Are you denying the relationship?”
That word again.
Relationship.
As if proximity automatically becomes a narrative. As if a hand held out to prevent a fall is a binding contract of the heart.
I stop abruptly.
I turn fully to face the man with the recorder, letting the silence stretch just long enough to reset the balance of power in the parking lot. I wait until the red light on his camera feels like a spotlight.
“I’m denying the implication that my work is defined by a man,” I say. “Any man.”
A camera shutter snaps nearby. Someone else inhales sharply, like they’re about to push for a follow-up, but I don’t wait for it. I head for the arena entrance, moving with a purpose that discourages pursuit.
Avoidance is a skill.
It is one I’ve refined over years of navigating the minefields of this industry.
I perfected it in boardrooms full of skeptics, in locker rooms where I was the only woman, and in press conferences where every question was a trap.
I even perfected it at family dinners where ghosts sat at the table pretending they were alive, and we navigated around the wreckage of my mother’s memory.
Avoidance isn’t panic.
It’s not denial.
It is precision.
So, when I avoid Callahan, I do it cleanly. I make it a surgical procedure.
I start arriving at the rink earlier than him.
The cold metal benches bite through the fabric of my coat as I sit alone in the stands or by the glass, waiting for the ice resurfacer to finish its rounds. Echoing footsteps carry through the empty rink like heavy reminders of what I’m trying to ignore.
When he eventually arrives, the silence between drills stretches longer—an absence I’ve learned to count in heartbeats.
On the ice, I stand on the opposite side of the bench, separated by Rick and the other assistant coaches.
I route every single piece of communication through Jenna or the assistants whenever possible.
I make eye contact with every person in the building—the scouts, the trainers, the fourth-line grinders—except him.
If anyone thinks it’s accidental, they don’t know me at all.
It takes an exhausting amount of mental energy to not look at someone.
It requires a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree awareness of the room at all times.
I have to maintain a mental map of where he is every second so I can ensure my gaze lands exactly three inches to the left or right of his silhouette.
My father used to say that silence is a vacuum—it eventually pulls the truth out of people. But this silence isn’t a vacuum; it’s a barricade.
Every time I hear the specific, sharp snap of his tape hitting the ice or the low rumble of his voice giving directions to the defense, my body wants to betray me. My head wants to turn toward the sound. My pulse wants to sync with the steady, powerful rhythm of his skating.
I’ve spent my whole life being the smartest person in the room, but I’ve never felt more like a fool. I am treating the man who understands me best like a ghost, and the haunting is starting to wear me thin.
I blink at my clipboard and realize I’ve been staring at the same power-play diagram for five minutes. The lines are blurring together.
The control I crave has become a cage of my own making.
The kiss replays in my mind anyway, no matter how hard I try to suppress it.
It’s not the act itself that haunts me as much as the after.
I remember the way reality slammed back into place like a heavy vault door locking from the outside. I saw it in his eyes too: the fear, the restraint, and something dangerously close to a raw, aching longing.
I cannot afford that.
Not now. Not ever.
And yet, I feel it.
There is a heat in my chest that won’t dissipate. There is a pull I hate myself for acknowledging.
My fingers clench the plastic edge of the clipboard as though that could somehow ground me in the reality of the game. I feel a mounting frustration at myself for wanting him even as I expend every ounce of my will to push him away.
Cash chirps less than usual, his usual sunny disposition clouded by confusion. Nico keeps glancing between Callahan and me like he’s waiting for an explosion that he knows is coming but can’t see.
Brick’s jaw is set, his expression unreadable as he focuses on his footwork. Leo is hyper-focused, as if channeling all his anxiety into the drills might keep the tension from snapping the entire team in half.
Callahan, meanwhile, isn’t being subtle.
He’s pissed. He isn’t loud pissed, which would be easier to handle. He isn’t being reckless or taking bad penalties.
He is controlled pissed. The worst kind.
His jaw stays locked in a hard line. His shoulders are rigid beneath his gear. His movements are precise to the point of being aggressive.
When he runs the transition drills, it looks like he’s carving lines into the ice by sheer force of will alone. When he speaks, his words are clipped, efficient, and entirely unforgiving.
I feel a flicker of something that might be fear, or guilt, or perhaps just a longing sharp enough to make me flinch despite myself.
He doesn’t look at me either which somehow feels much worse than when he did.
I bark corrections from the boards, my clipboard clenched so tight my knuckles are white. Everything is about systems. Everything is about structure. Everything is safe.
But deep down, I know it’s too safe.
We are playing like people afraid to break something, rather than people playing to win.
“Coach Talvi,” Carter Hale drawls as he skates slowly past the boards, sweat slicking his hair back against his skull. “Did we all get assigned restraining orders this morning, or is this just a new, passive-aggressive communication strategy?”
The sound of skating stops.
Cash mutters, “Oh no,” loud enough for me to hear. Nico’s stick clatters against the ice as he fumbles a puck. Brick exhales a long, slow breath, looking like he’s already bracing for an impact.
I turn slowly to face Hale. He meets my gaze with that familiar, lazy smirk—the one that says he enjoys pressing on fresh bruises just to see who flinches first.
“What did you just say?”
Jenna, Sam, and Miguel have been hanging near the bench all practice, subtly observing the fallout of the media circus. I could feel their quiet interest all morning, but their eyes were always polite and never intrusive—until this moment.
“Just noticing,” Hale continues, his voice carrying easily in the silent arena, “that you and Captain Moore haven’t exactly been… aligned lately. Different sides of the rink. I thought maybe it was—what do they call it in the movies?—creative differences.”
“Creative differences,” I repeat softly, stepping closer to the glass. “Is that what you think this is, Carter?”
Hale shrugs, his eyes darting briefly toward Callahan before returning to mine. “Looks like tension to me. And tension usually means someone isn’t pulling in the same direction.”
“You don’t get to comment on my relationships,” I say, my voice sharp. “You don’t get to speculate on the dynamics of this staff. And you certainly do not get to undermine authority because you’re bored and looking for a headline of your own.”
Hale’s brows lift in mock surprise. “Touchy.”
“One more word out of you today that isn’t about hockey, and you’ll be running laps until condescension stops being your entire personality. Do I make myself clear?”
The rink goes dead silent. Even the ice seems to be listening.
Then—unexpectedly—Hale smiles. It’s not a smug or mocking smile. It’s something quieter, almost a look of approval.
“Noted, Coach,” he says, pushing off and skating back into line without another word of argument.
Only then does Callahan look at me. Just once.
His expression is unreadable, but his eyes are dark with something heavily restrained.
I flinch subtly, a small hitch in my breath betraying the tension I’ve been holding for days. Irritation and longing tangle together in a knot that I can’t untie.
Practice ends shortly after without further incident.
The team files off the ice, their energy muted and heavy.
Jenna bumps my shoulder with hers as we begin to gather our things near the bench. “So… now that the cat is out of the bag—he didn’t exactly hide that little look he gave you back there, did he?”
I freeze, my hand hovering over my clipboard. “What look, Jenna?”
She grins, dragging her water bottle along the boards as she starts toward the tunnel.
“The one that makes the rest of us want to buy popcorn. You know the one, the foreheads-almost-touching, eyes-locking, heat-melting-the-ice look. Admit it, Ivy. You love him. Or at the very least, you’re halfway there. ”
Sam snorts from a few feet away, busy packing up pucks. “Finally. Someone said it out loud.”
Miguel shakes his head, chuckling as he walks past. “Iveline, your face gave you away before your words ever could.”
I huff, grabbing my clipboard and holding it against my chest like it’s a piece of tactical armor. “You are all completely insufferable.”
Jenna winks over her shoulder. “And yet, we’re right. We are always right.”
I walk through the narrow hallway toward my office, intent on leaving before I have to face anyone else.
“Ivy.”
I stop dead in my tracks, but I don’t turn around to face him.
“Yes, Moore?”
The name lands between us like a serrated blade.
I see him flinch out of the corner of my eye—just a microscopic twitch—and the sight of it kills me.
He isn’t Moore. He is the man who held me when I was burning up with a fever. He is the man who stood in my father’s office and risked his entire career.
But I need him to be a player; I need him to be a jersey number. Because if he’s just a man, then I am a woman who is currently failing every professional standard she ever set for herself.
His footsteps approach slowly until I can feel the heat of him at my back.
“You’re doing it again,” he says, his voice vibrating through the space between us.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do.”
I turn then, lifting my chin to meet his gaze. “We agreed that nothing changed, Callahan.”
His jaw tightens. “That was a lie. We both know it.”
“Necessary ones often are in this business.”
His eyes search my face, scanning for the cracks I know are there. “You think this fixes anything? Treating me like a stranger?”
“I think it prevents damage,” I say, my voice hardening.
“To who?” he asks quietly.
The answer lodges heavy and hot in my chest. I swallow hard, my composure finally beginning to fray at the edges.
“If I mess this up,” I whisper, “they’ll say it’s because I’m a woman. They won’t say I made a mistake or that I had a bad game. They’ll say I couldn’t handle the pressure. They’ll say I’m weak.”
His expression shifts.
“I can’t be the woman who loses her job just because she couldn’t keep her distance,” I add, my voice barely steady.
Silence stretches between us—thick, suffocating, and full of everything we aren’t allowed to say.
“I have work to do,” I say finally, stepping away from him.
He doesn’t try to stop me this time. But I feel the tension coiled tight between us. Behind me, I hear him exhale a long, slow breath.
Avoidance works.
Until it doesn’t.
***
By the time we reach Game 4 of the second round, the avoidance has metastasized.
We are back in Washington, and the arena is a den of wolves. The tension that began seven days ago has followed us, and it is actively strangling our play.
The first period is a massacre.
Callahan is overcompensating, trying to do everything himself because he doesn’t trust the systems I’m calling out. He’s taking massive, bone-crunching runs at the opposing forwards, leaving his offensive position wide open.
They score once.
Then twice.
By the end of the first, it’s 3–0.
The locker room during the intermission is the most volatile space I’ve ever occupied. Even Rick is screaming. The players are staring at the floor.
“Enough!” I snap, and for once, the room actually goes silent. “You are playing like you’ve already lost. You’re playing like the headlines are right. If you want to prove them wrong, you start by playing for the man next to you. Callahan, sit down and listen to me.”
He doesn’t sit. He stands right in front of me, sweat dripping off his nose. “What do you want, Coach? You want me to play soft? You want me to keep my distance?”
The subtext hits like a physical blow.
“I want you to be the Captain,” I say, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “I want you to trust the person who prepared you for this game.”
For a long, agonizing moment, he just stares at me.
Then, he nods once.
“Fine. We play it your way.”
The second and third periods are a masterclass in redemption. We claw back, goal by agonizing goal. Callahan plays with a cold, surgical precision that I’ve never seen before.
We win it 4–3 in the final minute. The buzzer sounds, and the reality of the sweep hits the ice like a physical weight.
We are headed to the Conference Finals.
As the team celebrates, I find myself looking at him through the glass. He isn’t cheering. He’s just standing there, chest heaving, looking right at me.
The crowd is screaming, the lights are flashing, but for that one second, the world is silent.