"Sorry doesn't get us into the PWHL." Mara leaned against the desk, her arms crossed over her chest. "Our qualification math just got significantly worse. We needed points from this game. Boston is next, and they're playing the best hockey of their season. If we don't win that game?—"
"I know the math."
"Then act like it." Mara's eyes bored into her. "Whatever is going on with you—whatever personal situation is eating at your focus—you need to get it handled. Now. Because this team can't afford another performance like tonight."
Lou's jaw tightened. The personal situation. As if she could simply "handle" the fact that she'd ended things with Camille via text message, that she'd chosen the coward's way out because facing Camille directly would have broken her resolve. As if she could compartmentalize the way her heart felt like it had been scraped hollow, leaving nothing but the raw edges of grief behind.
"Do you hear me, Calder?"
"I hear you."
"Good." Mara straightened. "Now go clean up and get on the bus. We've got a long ride back to Phoenix Ridge, and you've got a lot of thinking to do."
Lou made it as far as the door before Mara spoke again.
"For what it's worth—I don't think walking away from whatever was happening between you and Laurent-Duboiswas the answer. I told you to focus. I didn't tell you to tear yourself apart."
The words landed like a punch. Lou gripped the doorframe, her knuckles white against the metal, and didn't turn around.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know a broken heart when I see one." Mara's voice had softened, but only slightly. "And I know a player trying to sacrifice their happiness for the team. Sometimes those sacrifices are worth it. Sometimes they're just another form of cowardice."
Lou walked out before Mara could say anything else. The corridor was dim and empty, the sounds of the home team's celebration distant through the walls. She leaned against the concrete for a moment, pressing her palms flat against the cool surface, trying to remember how to breathe.
Cowardice. The word echoed through her skull, sharp and accusatory. Mara was right. Lou had spent so long protecting herself that she'd forgotten how to take risks. And now that avoidance had cost her everything—her relationship, her focus, maybe her team's shot at the PWHL.
She pushed off the wall and headed for the showers.
The bus ride back to Phoenix Ridge was hours of highway and silence. The vehicle rumbled through the night, its engine a constant drone that filled the spaces where conversation should have been. Lou sat alone near the front, staring out the window at the desert darkness, watching the headlights of passing cars create brief constellations in the blackness. The air conditioning hummed overhead, and somewhere in the back someone's phone played music too quietly to identify.
The team sprawled behind her in various states of exhaustion and disappointment, nobody talking much, theusual post-game energy completely absent. A few players slept, their heads lolling against seat backs or pressed to cold windows. Others stared at phones, scrolling without seeing, using the blue glow as a barrier against having to process the loss.
Frankie tried twice to sit beside her. Lou's expression sent her retreating both times—the particular closed-off look that Lou had perfected over years of keeping people at arm's length. Even her best friend couldn't breach those walls tonight.
Elise caught her eye once, her gaze heavy with concern and something that looked like understanding, but she didn't approach either. Maybe word had gotten around about whatever was happening with Camille. Maybe the whole team had figured out what Lou had been too stupid to hide.
It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered except the hollow ache in Lou's chest and the knowledge that she'd failed—failed the team, failed herself, failed Camille by leaving her alone in that dark apartment with nothing but a text message for company.
Mara's words echoed through her mind: sometimes those sacrifices are just another form of cowardice.
Was that what this was? Had Lou convinced herself she was being noble—stepping back for the good of the team, protecting Camille from the complications of a public relationship—when really she'd just been running scared? Had she used Mara's warning as an excuse to retreat before she got hurt worse?
The highway stretched ahead, endless and dark. Lou pressed her forehead against the cold window and tried to remember why she'd thought any of this was a good idea.
She'd spent her whole life being invisible. Playing solid,reliable hockey while flashier players got the headlines. Keeping her head down and her personal life private, never taking risks that might draw attention or create complications. It had been a survival strategy, honed over decades of navigating a world that didn't always make space for women who looked and loved the way Lou did.
It had kept her safe. It had kept her employed in a sport that didn't always value women like her. It had given her a career, a purpose, a place to belong.
But it had also kept her alone. And now, at thirty-four, she was beginning to understand the cost of that safety.
And now, when she'd finally found someone worth being visible for, she'd panicked. Chosen isolation over intimacy, safety over risk, the familiar comfort of loneliness over the terrifying possibility of being truly known.
The bus pulled into Phoenix Ridge at three in the morning. The arena parking lot was empty, the building dark except for security lights, the whole facility feeling abandoned in the small hours of the night. Lou gathered her bag and walked to her truck on autopilot, her body moving through motions her mind barely registered.
Her phone had three messages. One from Frankie:I'm here if you need to talk.One from Elise:Whatever's happening, you don't have to face it alone.And one from a number she didn't recognize, probably a reporter who'd gotten her contact information somehow.
Nothing from Camille.
