Noelle sets the tray down like it’s sacred cargo and starts lining everything up with the kind of quiet care that tells meshe’s done with the books on the shelves at her store. “Don’t let this go to waste.”
“Thank you,” I say when she hands me a little sandwich that looks too fancy to eat, crusts trimmed with precision, the bread soft and pale like it’s never seen the inside of a plastic bag.
It’s chicken salad, but not the deli tub kind. This is delicate and lemony, speckled with chives, tucked between thin slices of buttery brioche with a whisper of arugula. The kind of sandwich that feels like it belongs to people who say lunch instead of eat.
Beside it are tiny triangles of cucumber and herb cream cheese, the cucumbers sliced paper thin and salted perfectly. A platter of prosciutto rolled into neat little ribbons sits next to sharp white cheddar cubes and green grapes still on the vine like decoration that happens to be edible.
There’s a bowl of sea-salt kettle chips, another of mixed nuts glazed lightly with honey, and strawberries cut in halves so they look like they’re posing. Mini éclairs gleam under the warm lights, chocolate glossy, pastry perfect, and there’s a stack of shortbread cookies dusted lightly with sugar.
I take a bite and nearly laugh at myself.
Back home, chicken salad meant Miracle Whip and soggy bread. Here, it tastes like someone cared enough to measure things.
I have a seat, but I like to stand at the edge, shoulder braced against the corner where the glass is thickest. It’s a weird kind of power, to watch everything without being seen. If I’m honest, I’m going to miss this box when the assignment ends. I won’t be able to afford a ticket to the nosebleeds, let alone this kind of altitude. But by then, I’ll have the degree, and the job, and maybe even a shot at the kind of life where you don’t have to be afraid of what comes next.
You’d think the thing I’d miss most is the adrenaline, the spectacle, the feeling of being on the inside for once. But whatI’m already missing, before it’s even gone, is the space between things: the low commentary when the ref makes a bad call, the way Nalani always offers you gum without ceremony, the quiet competence humming through this room like it’s oxygen.
It feels like belonging. Fragile. Solid.Both at once.
So, I stand here, palm pressed lightly to the glass, letting the vibrations climb into my bones, pretending I could get used to this kind of life.
“They’re looking good in warm-ups,” Sofie says beside me, eyes tracking the players below. She doesn’t look at me when she speaks, but her body tilts slightly toward me, a small acknowledgment I’ve learned she only gives to people she considers safe.
“They always look good before they start trying to kill each other,” Paul chuckles from behind us.
Claudia laughs softly. “Occupational hazard.”
Nalani hums. “Better hair than most law students.”
“You have an obsession kid,” Paul laughs.
Her husband is Koa, who the fans call the KOK, he is native Hawaiian just like her, and has long hair. He’s beautiful in a kind of terrifying way.
I glance back down to the ice just as the Bears circle toward our end, dark jerseys cutting across the shine like ink.
And then I see him. Number 9. Broad shoulders. Clean stride. Right side.
He peels away from the line and skates closer to the boards beneath our box, slowing as he reaches up to pull off his helmet. His hair falls free, thick and brown, pushed back with an easy drag of his fingers. And then he looks up. Not scanning. Not casually. Up.
For half a second, I could swear that cocky little smirk lands directly on me. A private curve of his mouth like he knowssomething I don’t. Like he’s in on a joke the rest of the arena hasn’t caught yet.
I know better. I do. There are glass panels and lights and people everywhere. Men don’t look up at women like me from ice this expensive. He’s looking up at his friends’ wives and fiancée’s.
Yet my stomach flips anyway, not nerves exactly, not recognition, just this sharp electric flicker under my skin like my body clocked him before my brain did.
I swallow and lean closer to the glass, pulse skipping like it tripped on itself.
I never even liked hockey. I barely tolerated it at the beginning. But something about the way he moves out there, controlled, deliberate, powerful without wasted motion, pulls at me like gravity has hands. He glides instead of skates, shoulders loose like he already knows where everything is headed. Calm. Cocky in the quiet way, not loud, more certainty. The kind that lives in posture.
His mouthguard flashes when he turns toward our end and I finally catch his face without distance softening it. Full lips pulled into that private almost-smirk. Thick brown hair shoved back under his helmet. Scruff dark along his jaw. Brown eyes sharp and steady, scanning the ice like he owns the space.
He’s different off the ice. From a distance he seemed to laugh easily during the holiday shoots. Hands shoved in coat pockets. He listened more than he talked. Relaxed shoulders, casual stance, sarcasm softened by warmth and that low accent that wraps around certain words.Accents get me every time.
This version of him, the real version, not the ones for socials, is broader, louder even in silence. Dangerous in restraint instead of charm.
Same mouth. Same eyes. Same composure.
Yet heat flickers low in my stomach as my brain struggles to reconcile the man from those quiet city shoots with the one carving circles into the ice below me.
