My entire body goes still in that ancient, instinctive way—like the air’s shifted and every cell I have remembers what it means to brace.
It isn’t fear.Not exactly.
It’s deeper.Older.That quiet thrum of knowing something irreversible has already started.The breath before the break.The frozen second before impact—when your blade catches on a crack in the ice and the world holds its breath to see how you’ll land.
And maybe this time I won’t.
I wipe the sweat from my brow with the hem of my shirt.“Take five,” I tell my trainer, casual as hell.Like my chest isn’t caving in on itself.Like the league hasn’t just decided to blow a hole through the middle of everything I’ve built.
I walk fast.Past the gym.Down the hall where no one will see my face if it fucking crumples.Past every version of me who believed loyalty was something you could count on.
I answer.
“Winthrop speaking.”
There’s a beat.
There always is.The pause where they prep the script, get ready to ruin your life with a professional cadence and a warm smile.
“Callaway Winthrop,” Devon Kincaid, the Cobras’ GM says.Like we’re friends.Like he’s not about to gut me with a sentence.“I wanted to talk to you directly.”
Bullshit.If he cared, Marlowe, my agent, would’ve made the call.But this is about optics.About Devon feeling better when he lays his head on a pillow tonight, telling himself he did the respectful thing.
“I’m listening,” I say flatly.Not because I’m calm.Because if I sound interested, it’ll mean I care.And if I care, I’ll break.
He opens with the language of betrayal.Respect.Gratitude.Business decisions.
He strings them together like they’re life rafts, expecting me to hold on while he watches me sink.
Then he says: “It’s confirmed.We’ve agreed to a trade.”
I don’t speak.My teeth are grinding against teeth.Something claws at my ribcage from the inside.I stare at the white wall in front of me—blank, like I’m supposed to be now.Blank like I’m supposed to become.
I’m no longer a Cobra.
Fourteen years.Gone.
The logo.The locker room.The fucking ice that’s soaked in my blood.Gone.
“Where,?I ask, voice iron.
Because I won’t give him grief.Won’t give him rage.I’ll request logistics.
“Portland,” he says.“The Orcas.”
I close my eyes.My pulse doesn’t spike.It drills.I should’ve been ready.Marlowe warned me.Said it might happen.Said it made sense.I’ve aged out of their future.
But this isn’t about a jersey.
My brain flashes so fast I almost see it as images: highway through pines, the lake at Juniper Ridge, the rink lights.Vesper’s laugh.Vesper’s mouth.The way she looks when she’s pretending she isn’t hurting, like she’s trying to outsmart pain by being louder than it.Portland is a city, sure, but it’s also a proximity.
It’s geography conspiring against the careful distance we’ve kept between ourselves and the thing we ruined.
Devon Kincaid keeps talking, but it’s white noise now.
“This puts you in a position to compete immediately.Their core is?—”
“A captain,” I cut in, voice low.“They want a face.A name.”
