4. Lucy
LUCY
NOW
By the time I pulled into the Talon Arena parking garage in the morning, Northbend had fully committed to threatening winter.
The sky hung low and gray over downtown, heavy with the kind of cold that settled into concrete and stayed there until April out of pure spite.
Wind whipped sharply between the buildings surrounding the arena district, carrying traces of snow flurries that had not technically started yet but clearly intended to soon.
Every local weather station in Minnesota had spent the last forty-eight hours talking about a clipper system with the emotional intensity of war correspondents.
I shut off my car and sat there for a second anyway.
Normally, I liked mornings. The structure. Quiet. Coffee. The predictable comfort of sequences that kept my brain organized before the chaos of the day started clawing at me professionally.
This morning, my brain felt like somebody had thrown a hockey puck directly through the center of it.
Because apparently seeing Ty Burns for the first time in years had turned my entire nervous system into an active crime scene.
Fantastic, I thought. Just fucking great.
I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat and climbed out into air cold enough to sting immediately against my cheeks. Somewhere deeper inside the garage, tires hissed across wet pavement while distant arena machinery hummed through concrete walls.
Game day.
Not my first game day at Talon Arena. I'd already spent nearly two weeks learning the rhythms of the organization—shadowing departments, attending meetings, observing home games, and trying to memorize enough names, procedures, and reporting structures to function like a competent adult.
But this was the first one without an asterisk attached to it. No onboarding schedule. No training checklist. No safety net.
Just me doing the job. And maybe that was why the building felt different this morning.
Even after growing up around hockey, Talon Arena still had the ability to catch me off guard. Not because it was intimidating. Because it was alive.
Arenas weren't office buildings.
They weren't corporate headquarters.
They were ecosystems.
By eight in the morning, thousands of moving parts were already shifting into place for a game that wouldn't start until nightfall.
Even early in the morning, before fans and lights and game-night adrenaline transformed the place into controlled insanity, the building already pulsed with movement beneath the surface.
The employee entrance smelled faintly like industrial cleaner, coffee, sharpened skate blades, and fresh ice.
A weirdly comforting combination.
Security nodded me through automatically now, which still felt slightly surreal considering I spent most of my childhood wandering these hallways holding my father’s hand while trying not to get flattened by hockey players built like refrigerators.
“Morning, Lucy,” Greg at the security desk called.
“Morning.”
I stepped farther inside, boots clicking softly against polished concrete while the arena unfolded around me in layers of organized game-day motion.
Staff rolled equipment carts through service corridors.
Someone from media relations hurried past carrying three camera batteries and a laptop while muttering into a headset.
Farther down the hallway, arena crews swapped out sponsor graphics beneath giant digital boards glowing blue and silver with Frosthawks branding.
The distant sound of pucks hitting glass echoed faintly from the lower bowl where morning skate cleanup was still wrapping up.
Voices carried everywhere.
Coaches.
Equipment staff.
Operations assistants.
Someone yelling about missing meal deliveries.
Someone else arguing about power-play graphics.
The entire building felt like a living organism preparing itself for nightfall.
And somewhere inside all of it—Ty existed.
The thought hit me so abruptly I almost missed my office entirely.
I exhaled slowly and kept walking.
The executive corridor overlooking the lower bowl stayed quieter than the rest of the arena, softened slightly by dark carpeting and glass-paneled offices lining both sides of the hallway.
Through the windows overlooking the rink, the empty arena stretched massive and silver-blue beneath work lights while crews moved across the ice far below.
Beautiful.
Cold.
Endlessly hockey.
My office sat near the end of the corridor beside Player Operations.
Temporary.
The word existed permanently in my head every time I unlocked the door.
Temporary workspace, position, involvement, life disruption.
I pushed inside and immediately stopped short.
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed to no one.
A massive bouquet of flowers sat in the center of my desk beside an enormous pink bakery box tied with gold ribbon.
Beside both sat a folded card in my father’s unmistakably terrible handwriting.
Lucy Bug,
You belong here.
I'm proud of you.
Love, Dad
P.S. Lo says breakfast first. Work second.
I stared at the words for a second before setting the card down.
You belong here.
Easy for him to say.
This was his world.
I'd spent years trying to build one that wasn't.
I held my breath for three full seconds before laughing helplessly despite myself.
Then immediately got annoyed all over again.
Because naturally my father would send flowers after accidentally detonating the one boundary he promised me he could maintain.
‘You won’t have to deal with players directly.’ That sentence had lasted less than two weeks.
I dropped into my chair, tossing my bag onto the floor before carefully opening the bakery box.
The smell curled around me like a hug I didn’t know I needed. Butter. Brown sugar. Cinnamon. Warm peaches. Bourbon pecan sticky buns sat packed tightly beside peach hand pies dusted with powdered sugar.
Lo believed emotional support should come with sweetness and approximately nine thousand calories.
A knock sounded lightly against the open office door. Bea walked in holding a tea carrier while Freya followed behind her balancing two coffees and somehow still texting one-handed.
“Good,” Freya announced immediately. “You look terrible.”
“Wow.” I looked up slowly. “What a comforting thing to say to someone before nine in the morning.”
“You’ve got the face.” She pointed at me while setting coffee down on my desk. “The emotionally constipated overachiever face.”
Bea snorted quietly beside her.
“I hate both of you already,” I informed them.
“That’s fine,” Bea snickered quickly. “We brought caffeine.”
Freya dropped dramatically into one of the chairs across from my desk wearing black leggings, an oversized cream hoodie, and enough gold jewelry to somehow still look put together despite clearly functioning on sports medicine department exhaustion.
Meanwhile Bea somehow looked polished enough to walk directly into a press conference despite it being barely eight-thirty. Camel wool coat. Dark trousers. Hair smooth and glossy around her shoulders. Gold hoops catching softly beneath the office lighting.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re annoyingly pretty for this early.”
“I suffer for beauty,” she replied gravely before stealing half a sticky bun directly out of the box. “And Alois wakes up way too early in the morning. I have so much more time now.”
Freya reached for a peach hand pie, scattering powdered sugar across the sleeve of her hoodie in the process. She looked down at it. Looked at Bea. Then looked back at the powdered sugar. “Tell me again why a man who's suspended still has to come to work.”
Bea carefully peeled apart a sticky bun before answering. “Because he's Alois.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is, unfortunately, the answer.”
Freya pointed the hand pie at her. “You know what? Fair.”
I laughed into my coffee.
Outside my office, the executive corridor had started sparking with game-day energy.
Arena staff moved quickly between departments carrying clipboards, equipment manifests, laptops, and enough coffee to sustain a small military operation.
Somewhere farther down the hallway, somebody was arguing passionately about sponsor placement.
The game wasn't for hours.
The building was already awake.
Bea rolled her eyes. “He tried to argue with security yesterday.”
“About?” I asked.
“Whether being suspended should exempt him from media obligations.”
Freya snorted. “That feels very on brand.”
“He said—and I am quoting directly—‘If I cannot play hockey, then I should not have to discuss hockey.’”
“That is objectively funny.”
“It was not funny in the moment.”
“It was a little funny.”
Bea finally smiled. “A little.”
The smile lingered for exactly half a second before her eyes landed on me.
Damn it.
I took another sip of coffee. Too late. She'd already noticed.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She shrugged.
“Bea.”
“Lucy.”
I pointed at her with my coffee cup. “Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“The thing where you notice something and then pretend you didn't.”
Across from me, Freya leaned back in her chair and looked between us. “Oh, good. We skipped directly to the weird part of the morning.”
“Lucy looks tired,” Bea offered.
I dropped my gaze to the sticky bun sitting untouched on my desk. “I am tired.”
“And you look upset,” she added.
“I am not upset,” I lied through my teeth.
Silence. The kind only good friends could weaponize.
I lasted approximately three seconds. “Fine. I'm annoyed.”
“There she is,” Freya snickered.
I groaned. “Sarah assigned me permanent Buzz duty.”
Freya's laugh exploded through the office so loudly a passing operations assistant glanced through the glass wall.
Bea immediately closed her eyes. “Oh no.”
I pointed at her. “Thank you. That is the correct response.”
“Permanent Buzz duty?” Freya repeated.
“Player monitoring.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It is worse.”
“Why you?”
“Because Sarah hates me.”
“Sarah loves you,” Bea assured, her eyes softening as she locked eyes with me.
“Sarah tolerates me professionally,” I whined back, breaking the eye contact as quickly as I could.
“She bought you a notebook last week,” Freya chimed in.
“That proves nothing.”