The door shuts, clean and final. Jessie lingers one breath longer, eyes flicking between us. “If either of you wants to keep your jobs, you’ll stay visible for the rest of the night.”
Then she’s gone, heels sharp against the carpet. The latch clicks—a line drawn with precision and mercy.
Chapter 14
Storm Warning
Jason
Fifteen minutes later, the coaches’suite smells like burnt coffee and old tape. Jessie parked me here with a look that promised paperwork and texted compliance; the TV is muted but flashing highlights, our last game reduced to jerky ghosts that refuse to look away.
The coaches’ suite smells like burnt coffee and old tape. The TV is muted but flashing highlights, our last game reduced to jerky ghosts that refuse to look away. I take the chair by the window, far end of the oval, because distance is supposed to be smart. Riley sits across from me near the whiteboard, legs crossed, pen aligned with her clipboard like she can staple the room into behaving.
We don’t look at each other. Not directly. My eyes do a lazy circuit of faces—Ducks at the head with his chewed cigar, Adams with his dry mouth twist, Julia leaning against the minibar pretending she’s furniture—and stop a breath short of Riley’s shoulder before moving on.
“Skate loads from morning practice,” she says, voice crisp enough to slice. She doesn’t aim it at me. She aims it at the air between us. “Maddox capped at seventy percent, no red flags. Sensations?”
Adams clears his throat like it’s his line. “Any soreness this afternoon, Jason?”
I let my knee bounce once under the table and lock it down. “Normal. Quads woke up mean and then got over it.” My voice is even. The word mean makes Riley’s pen tick once against the board. No one but me would hear that as a laugh.
Ducks taps the marker against the whiteboard. “Neutral-zone traps tonight. Don’t be cute at the blue line.” He points the marker at me without looking. “Maddox, your east-west looks are there if you don’t float. Don’t float.”
“Ten-four,” I say. I don’t float. Not anymore.
The meeting stretches like skate laces pulled too tight: zone exits, faceoff assignments, special teams tweaks. I speak when spoken to. Riley routes everything through Adams—injury risk, load management, minutes ceilings—like we’re strangers who only speak adjacent. Every neutral glance ricochets like a puck off tempered glass. The elevator ghosts live in my peripheral vision. The echo of her mouth is a problem I keep telling my pulse to ignore.
A knock thuds at the door, two beats, late. Ducks grunts, and Julia cracks it open. Assistant Coach Murphy slips in, hair damp, followed by a man in a navy sport coat who wears compliance like a cologne.
“Sorry,” Murphy says. “Brought Danvers from compliance. Quick thing about staff-player boundaries given the road schedule.”
Danvers’ gaze sweeps the room with a bureaucrat’s smile. It drifts over the lineup board, lands on Riley’s clipboard, then onme. It stays a fraction too long in both places, like he’s reading a headline that hasn’t been written yet.
My pulse spikes, stupid and obvious. I make my face blank and reach for the paper cup of coffee in front of me. It tastes like the bottom of a bench bag. Good. I deserve it.
“Just reminders,” Danvers says. “Travel compresses boundaries. Best practice is documented interactions, no closed-door sessions without a second staff present.” His smile widens. “Protects everyone.”
Riley’s pen doesn’t move. “Understood,” she says, professional to the bone. I watch her knuckles whiten around the clipboard, then force myself to watch the TV instead.
Ducks snorts. “We’re big on chemistry, Danvers. On and off the ice.” It’s a joke he’s made a hundred times about line mates who actually pass the puck. Laughter skitters around the room like a dropped coin anyway. Murphy chuckles too loud. Julia’s mouth does a private wince. I don’t laugh. Across from me, Riley goes very still.
Heat lifts under my ribs, sharp as a cross-check. Protectiveness is dumb in a room full of people who think they’re on my side, but I feel it anyway. I picture stepping in front of her like I did at the door, a wall between her and the smirk I hear under Danvers’ smile. Instead, I sit back and let the chair creak, casual as a false start.
“Right,” Ducks says, rolling over it. “Back to the kill. Maddox, you’re first over the boards if Kitson’s stick stays a wet noodle.”
“Copy,” I say. The meeting drags through zone coverage and matchup assignments. Riley’s voice stays neutral, but I feel her restraint in every clipped syllable. When it ends, the room unravels—chairs scraping, cups tossed, pens capped. I don’t look at her. She doesn’t look at me. We leave a table’s length of air between us and pretend it’s enough to breathe.
The laugh lines from Ducks’ joke don’t fade; they smear. Danvers flips his notebook closed with a neat little click that makes my molars grind.
“Appreciate the reminders,” Julia says smoothly, stepping between the whiteboard and Danvers’ smile like she was born to be a firewall. “We’ll circulate an email.”
Riley’s pen finally moves—one short stroke that’s not a note so much as a pressure valve. Her face is composed, trainer-neutral, but I see the micro flinch she can’t hide fast enough when Murphy leans past her to grab a marker, brushing her elbow like she’s furniture.
Heat spikes, clean and bright. I roll my shoulders back and aim my mouth at the cold coffee before anything worse comes out. I’m not twenty-two anymore. I don’t start fights in rooms with clipboards and witnesses. But the part of me that still believes in putting my body between her and anything sharp is awake and pacing.
Ducks claps once, the cue to disband. “Get your heads right. Puck drop’s in three hours. Adams, Lane, send me the final availability. Maddox, extra touches after warmups if you’re feeling fancy, not instead of them.”
“Okay,” I say, standing slow so the chair doesn’t scrape. The room erupts in movement—Murphy fielding a text, Adams stacking handouts, Danvers buttoning his jacket like he accomplished something.
