He nodded. “That’s the honest answer. My wife’s been incredible. She tells me she’ll support whatever I decide. But she also knows what this means to me.” He smiled faintly. “I don’t want to be the guy who quits one year too early. Or one year too late.”
“Thank you,” Cassie said. “For trusting me with that.”
Tanner shrugged. “You’ve always done right by us.”
Cassie clicked off her recorder and slipped it into her pocket. “Off the record,” she said lightly, more habit than necessity.
Tanner nodded. “Always.”
They stood there for a moment, the noise of the room filling the space.
“So,” Cassie said, softer now, “how’s the oldest handling high school?”
Tanner smiled, real this time. “Better than I am,” he said. “She told me last week I should stop apologizing for missing things and just decide what I’m doing.” He shook his head. “Kids are ruthless.”
Cassie laughed. “They’re efficient.”
“Yeah,” he said. Then, almost casually, “They don’t hand out medals for sacrifice, you know.”
She looked up at him.
Tanner shrugged, eyes on the floor now. “People love to act like giving things up makes you noble. Sometimes it just means you didn’t ask yourself what you actually wanted soon enough.” He glanced back at her, not unkind. “Whatever you’re carrying—just make sure it’s a choice. Not something you wear so other people feel better about it.”
Cassie nodded, the words settling heavier than the tone suggested. “I hear you.”
“Good,” Tanner said, reaching for his bag. “You’re too smart to confuse endurance with purpose.”
He gave her a small, familiar smile before moving on, leaving Cassie standing there with her notebook pressed to her chest, replaying the sentence she knew she wouldn’t write—but wouldn’t forget either.
Across the room, Luke sat at his stall, half undressed, skates still on his feet. He hadn’t moved in several minutes. His eyes were fixed in Cassie’s direction, but he wasn’t really seeing the locker room at all.
Instead, he saw the hotel room in Chicago. The low light. The quiet. The way she’d looked standing barefoot near the window, hair still damp, worrying over him in that way she tried to hide. The memory hit him in flashes—the warmth of her hands as she traced his abs, the breathiness of her voice as they spoke between kisses, the sense of calm that had followed after weeks of tension…the way her inner thighs felt, softly grazing againsthis face, the way she tasted. It replayed without permission, vivid enough that his chest tightened.
He barely registered Elias Johansson dropping onto the bench beside him.
“You good?” Elias asked, glancing sideways. “You look like you’re somewhere else.”
Luke blinked, dragging himself back into the present. The sound of equipment being tossed into locker stalls, the hum of conversation, the smell of sweat and disinfectant rushed back in. He shook his head once, like clearing water from his ears.
“Yeah,” he said quickly. “Just—thinking about that one-timer I missed in the last drill. Overthought it.”
Elias frowned. “Didn’t look that bad from where I was sitting.”
Luke forced a shrug. “Felt bad.”
Elias studied him for another second, then let it go. “Happens,” he said, standing. “Beer later?”
“Maybe,” Luke replied, already reaching for his hoodie.
Cassie thanked Tanner again before moving toward the exit. As she passed Luke’s stall, their eyes met briefly. Nothing obvious. Nothing that would draw attention. Just a flicker of recognition, of shared memory, of something unspoken that tightened and then released.
Twenty-Three
By mid-March, the season had stopped feeling like a long road and started feeling like a wall.
Every game mattered. Every mistake lingered. The standings sat open on Cassie’s laptop at all hours, percentages and tie-breakers blurring together as she tried to calculate what the Renegades still needed. Two wins. Maybe three. Help from someone else. A regulation loss here, an overtime point there. It was math layered over exhaustion.
Luke felt it too, but in his body first.
