14. Scottie Reed
Scottie Reed
Ivy: Serious question.
Me: Why does that sound threatening?
Ivy: Have you slept with Cash yet?
Me: Ivy??
Ivy: Disappointing answer.
***
We have been in Philly for four days now, and I have never felt more like an actual, living human being and a high-functioning machine at the exact same time.
I’m standing behind the scratched, smudged plexiglass at the team bench, clutching a steaming paper cup of the world’s most mediocre convenience-store coffee.
The cardboard sleeve is barely doing its job, the cup burning my fingertips through it, but I welcome the sting.
It keeps me rooted while I watch Finnian O’Connell die a slow, intensely athletic death on the ice.
Herb Ganz is standing near the center face-off dot, looking like an incredibly angry, weathered potato stuffed into a vintage nylon tracksuit. He’s screaming things into the rafters that would make a seasoned sailor blush.
“You’re slow, O’Connell! My goddamn grandmother moves faster than that, and she’s been buried for years!”
Cash is down in a deep, agonizing crouch, heavy drops of sweat actively dripping from the white steel grill of his mask and splashing onto the shaved ice between his skates.
Miller, the lanky college kid we hired to act as a human pitching machine, hovers at the blue line, takes a breath, and lets another wrist shot fly.
Thwack.
Cash snaps his glove hand up, catching it cleanly in the webbing before it can clip the top right corner.
“Better!” Herb barks, though he doesn’t dare clap. “Now do it fifty more times exactly like that. I want your legs to feel like overcooked diner spaghetti by the time we’re done!”
I can’t help it. A slow, genuine grin spreads across my face, breaking through the professional facade I’ve worn like armor all week. That’s my goalie.
Herb turns and skates over to the boards, spraying a fine, biting mist of shaved ice against the plexiglass right in front of my face. He pulls the silver whistle from his mouth and looks up at me with those watery, incredibly shrewd eyes.
“You,” Herb grunts. “Agent Lady.”
“That’s me, Herb. Just here to gently remind you that you’re currently ten minutes over our paid ice time.”
“Ice time is a suggestion.” He wipes his nose with the back of his glove. “He’s coming around. The kid’s got real heart, I’ll give him that much. But he watches you more than he watches the puck. Why is that?”
“Because I’m the one who handles the money, Herb. And because historically, I’m always right.”
Herb chuckles. “You’re a terrifying woman, Scottie. Truly. If I were forty years younger, I’d either try to marry you or hide under my bed.”
“Most choose the bed,” I say dryly, tapping the glass screen of my tablet. “How is the shoulder looking?”
“It’s holding up under the impact. He’s stopped cheating the drop.” Herb looks back over his shoulder at Cash, who has draped his massive frame over the crossbar of the net, desperately trying to find his lungs. “But tomorrow… tomorrow is a problem.”
“What kind of problem? I already cleared the morning with the arena manager.”
“Not the ice. The coach.” Herb sighs. “My Martha called the rink office. She says if I spend one more afternoon here playing hockey instead of helping her clear out the rafters in the attic, she’s going to change the deadbolts on the front door.”
“Herb, come on. We absolutely need the final session.”
“You’ve got the technical drills written down.
You’ve got the college shooter. You’ve got the eyes.
” Herb reaches out, pointing a gnarled, crooked finger directly at my chest. “You’ve watched him for years.
You run the final day. I’ve taught you more than enough over the last forty-eight hours to be dangerous. ”
“Me?” I blink. “I don’t blow whistles or run crease drills.”
“You do tomorrow morning. Consider it a professional development opportunity.”
He pushes off the wooden boards, his skates biting into the ice as he shouts over his shoulder without looking back. “O’Connell! Wrap it up! My wife is baking a brisket and I’m not missing the first cut for the sake of your glove hand!”
Cash skids to a halt near the blue line, his skates throwing up a massive cloud of white snow. He looks entirely confused, blinking behind the cage.
“Wait, what? We’re done?”
“Herb’s being held hostage by domestic chores,” I explain, raising my voice as he glides toward the bench and pulls his mask off.
Cash looks at the retreating form of the old coach, then shifts his gaze to me, a slow, incredibly sweaty smirk spreading across his reddened face.
“Does this mean I get the afternoon off? Can we actually go find that county-fair diner with the deep-fried butter you were mocking yesterday?”
“Absolutely not,” I say. “It means I’m running the morning skate tomorrow at 5:00 AM. So you better get back to the room and get some actual sleep, O’Connell. I am significantly less patient than Herb.”
“You’re running the skate?” Cash’s eyebrows shoot straight up into his hairline. “Oh, this is going to be a disaster. I can’t wait.”
***
By the time we get back to the motel, the adrenaline has faded into a pleasant, humming exhaustion. We’ve moved to a slightly better place—a Holiday Inn that actually has two separate rooms and a distinct lack of cows.
We’re sitting in our vintage van, the rear engine ticking as it cools.
“You’re really going to whistle at me tomorrow morning, aren’t you?”
“I bought a metal whistle at CVS while you were taking that twenty-minute nap in the passenger seat,” I say. “I’ve already been practicing my ‘highly disappointed coach’ face in the mirror.”
“You’ve had that exact face since the day I signed with the agency.”
“Hey!” I swat his arm with the corner of my planner.
He laughs, and the sound fills the cozy, narrow interior of the van. He reaches out, his movements slow, and catches my wrist. He doesn’t pull my hand toward him; he just holds my wrist gently, his thumb resting right over the tiny symbol of my tattoo.
He doesn’t mention the ink. He doesn’t mention the nightmare. He just brushes his thumb against the pulse point there. One that says I’m right here, but also I’m entirely willing to wait until you’re ready.
“Scottie,” he whispers, his voice dropping an octave.
“We should go inside,” I say, my breath hitching in my throat. “We have to prep the tracking video for the front office.”
“The video can wait for ten minutes.”
“The video is the brand, Cash.”
“Screw the brand for ten minutes.”
He’s leaning across the center console now, just an inch closer, and in the bright daylight cutting through the windshield, I can see the gold flecks in his eyes.
I could very easily let it happen. I could close the tiny remaining gap between us and finally find out if he tastes like the peppermint gum he’s constantly chewing.
But right then, my phone buzzes violently against the dashboard. The screen lights up with an incoming call: Ivy.
The strange spell breaks instantly.
“It’s Ivy,” I say. “Probably calling to check if you’ve been eaten by a black bear in the woods yet.”
Cash lets out a long, deeply frustrated sigh, falling straight back into his seat. “Saved by Callie’s wife. Unbelievable. This is my karma.”
I press the screen. “Hello?”
“Scottie!” Ivy’s voice blasts frantically over the speakerphone. “Please tell me Cash hasn’t broken anything yet.”
“He’s perfectly fine, Ivy. He’s actually starting to look like a professional goalie again instead of a defense man’s target practice. Herb is an absolute miracle worker.”
We stay on the line for twenty minutes. It pulls both of us right back from the edge of the emotional cliff we were about to blindly jump off. By the time I slide the phone back into my pocket, the suffocating tension has simmered down into a comfortable, deeply playful heat.
“Okay,” I say. “Since we’re officially off the clock for Herb’s attic purge, I’ve decided we are going to do something stupid with our afternoon.”
“Stupid?” Cash’s head snaps up, his eyes brightening. “I excel at stupid. What are we talking about?”
“There’s a twenty-four-hour retro arcade and neon go-kart track about two miles down the highway bypass. And I happen to have it on incredibly good authority that I am a terrifyingly aggressive driver.”
“You?” Cash scoffs. “I’m a professional, multi-million-dollar athlete, Scottie. My spatial awareness and reflexes are literally peak human. You’re going to be eating my exhaust fumes within half a lap.”
“We’ll see about that, O’Connell. Loser has to pay for the next double round of deep-fried cheesecake at the diner.”
“You’re on.”
***
An hour later, I am strapped tightly into a tiny metal go-kart.
I have my hair tied back in a bun, and I’ve traded my jacket for one of Cash’s oversized team-issued hoodies that comes down to my knees and smells faintly of laundry detergent and him.
Cash is wedged into the tiny kart directly to my left, his long legs bent at a ridiculous angle so that his knees are practically hitting his chin because his massive frame is entirely too large for the compact kart.
He looks absurd. Especially because he’s wearing those massive, green glitter googly-eye glasses from the gas station again, because of course he is.
“You ready to lose your dignity, Scottie-girl?”
“In your dreams, Finny!” I shout back.
The red staging lights above the track tick down, the neon green illuminates, and I floor the plastic pedal to the metal.
The next fifteen minutes are pure, childish chaos. I drive like a woman possessed, taking the sharp hairpins on two screeching wheels and cut-throating Cash at the apex every single time his kart tries to slip past me on the inside lane.
I am laughing so hard my abdominal muscles actually hurt.
Cash is hooting like a madman behind me, trying to repeatedly ram my plastic rear bumper on the straightaways, his oversized plastic googly eyes bouncing wildly on their metal springs with every bump in the track.
“That’s an official league penalty!” he screams. “Two minutes in the box for intentional interference! I’m calling my lawyer!”
“The ref didn’t see it, so it didn’t happen! And I am your lawyer, so good luck with that suit!” I yell, swerving directly into his path and forcing him to slam on his brakes with a dramatic yell.
He manages to draw perfectly level with me, his elbow practically brushing mine. He looks over, winking. “See ya, slow poke.”
“Not today!” I scream, throwing my weight forward as if it would make the kart go faster, cutting him off at the final turn.
I cross the painted finish line a mere hair’s breadth ahead of his front bumper, pumping my right fist into the air like I’ve just won the Stanley Cup.
I climb out of the vibrating kart, dizzy and exhilarated, my heart pounding against my ribs with a genuine joy I haven’t felt since before law school.
“Victory!” I shout, doing a ridiculous little shimmy, using the oversized sleeves of his hoodie to wave in his face.
Cash climbs out, groaning as his massive legs unfold, shaking his head with a massive grin on his face. He yanks the googly-eye glasses off, letting them hang from his collar.
“You cheated. You definitely cheated. There are tire tracks on my sneakers, Scottie. Pretty sure that’s attempted manslaughter.”
“You’re just a deeply sore loser who can’t handle an elite driver,” I say, stepping right into his space and tapping his chest. “Now, where is my cheesecake?”
“You want cake after putting my life in mortal peril?” He grabs the hood of the oversized sweatshirt I’m wearing, pulling it down over my eyes so I’m suddenly plunged into darkness. “The audacity. Truly.”
I laugh, swatting blindly at his hands until I push the hood back up, my hair a disheveled mess. He’s looking down at me, breathing just as hard as I am, his eyes bright and crinkling at the corners.
He reaches out, plucking a stray piece of track debris out of my hair with an unexpected tenderness that makes my chest tighten for a second, before he immediately ruins it by wiping it on my sleeve.
“Fine,” he says, slinging a heavy, sweaty arm over my shoulders and dragging me toward the exit. “Cheesecake it is. But I’m ordering the expensive one just to dent your pride.”
“My pride is bulletproof, Finny. You pay, I eat, that’s the deal.”
***
After eating way too many deep fried cheesecakes we finally reach the motel. Cash stops right in front of me, the neon sign of the Holiday Inn reflecting in his eyes.
“Thanks, Scottie,” he says, his voice becoming incredibly soft.
“For absolutely destroying your ego at go-karts or for spending all your money on cheesecake?”
“For… for just being here through this. For not running back to Boston when things got messy.”
I reach out, my hand steady, and pat his chest right over his heart.
“Don’t go getting all sentimental on me now, Cash. You still have to face Coach Scottie at exactly five o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“I’m terrified,” he says, but the soft, lingering smile on his face tells me he’s anything but.
I go into my room, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t check the lock three times. Because for the first time in years, I don’t feel like I’m the only person standing guard in front of the door.
I have a goalie and he’s pretty damn good at stopping whatever comes our way.