Luke nodded, eyes dropping briefly to the table. “You might be right.”
“And the noise makes it worse,” Cassie added. “Fans don’t have patience for adjustment. Especially not when money’s involved.”
A breath escaped him—half laugh, half sigh. “So, I should relax.”
“You should stop trying to prove something every shift,” she said. “You’re already here.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The café noise filled the space they didn’t.
Outside, trucks rattled past on Smallman Street. Inside, the air felt charged—not because of what they were saying, but because of how easily it came. Luke told her about getting lost in the Strip’s loading docks his first week in town, about organizing his bookshelf until midnight. Cassie countered with stories about spilling an entire latte mid-flight and that time a rookie once asked her if beer counted as hydration.
They laughed. They talked hockey. They stayed just on the safe side of the line.
And still, the ease between them made that line feel both necessary and quietly unbearable.
Six
Cassie realized it halfway through putting on mascara.
She paused, wand hovering, studying her reflection with a flicker of irritation. She’d already changed once—ditched the sweater she wore on road mornings for something a little more fitted. She’d re-curled her hair twice. She reached for perfume, hesitated, then added one extra spritz at her neck.
For a second, she didn’t understand why.
Then she did—and the realization sent a sharp, unwelcome jolt through her chest.
This a routine morning skate, the kind she’d covered hundreds of times without thinking twice about what she wore beyond comfort and professionalism. And yet here she was, calibrating herself. For him.
She frowned at her reflection. “Get it together,” she muttered, already annoyed at the part of herself that felt exposed by the awareness.
At the rink, the cold air steadied her.
Cassie settled along the glass with the rest of the beat, notebook open, eyes scanning the ice out of habit more than intention. The lines formed quickly—centers rotating, defense pairs sliding into place. She followed the movement automatically, tracking patterns.
Then she noticed what wasn’t there.
Luke wasn’t taking line rushes.
He skated on the far side of the ice with an extra forward, helmet on, stride smooth and unhurried. Not injured. Not late. Just…separate.
Cassie stilled.
She knew the difference between maintenance and message. This wasn’t a maintenance day. Luke had struggled more the last two games—late reads, a bad pinch that led directly to a goal. Not catastrophic, but noticeable.
Healthy scratch.
She wrote it down, then forced herself to keep watching, to not let her gaze linger. When the skate wrapped, the media clustered outside the locker room, waiting for the coach to speak.
“Scott,” she said when Coach Parker walked to the front of the group. “Who are you starting in net tonight?”
“Connor Martin,” Parker replied, his thick Boston accent making the Renegades’ young netminder’s name sound more likeCawnah Mahtin.“Ilya will back up.”
She nodded. “And Luke Anders, he wasn’t taking line rushes. Is he dealing with anything, or is that a lineup decision?”
Parker didn’t bristle.
“Yeah,” he said evenly. “We’re sitting him tonight.”
“Is that performance-based?” she asked, careful with her tone.
