"Coaching session ran long." She pulled the coffee mug closer, wrapping both hands around it.
"Must have been a productive session. You came in looking like someone had scrambled your brain."
Lex took a sip. Too hot. She set the mug down. "We talked. About things that weren't hockey."
Elise put her phone down and turned to face her fully, dark eyes sharp with interest. "Things like what?"
"The photoshoot. Feminism. Sports, women's bodies, who gets to decide how we present ourselves. Then it just kind of drifted. Her family. My family. The stuff that shaped us." Lex rubbed the back of her neck. The soreness from yesterday's practice was still there, a dull knot below her hairline. "She's different when it's just the two of us. Less armored. She actually listens."
"So you had a real conversation." Elise set her toast down on the counter.
"Yeah."
Elise studied her. Her expression was careful, the careful that meant she was choosing her words.
"There's a thing between you two," she said. Not a question.
Lex looked at the counter. There was a scratch in the laminate, a pale line in the dark surface, and she traced it with her thumbnail. "Maybe."
"Maybe." Elise's eyebrows lifted a fraction.
"Okay. Yes. There is. But it's not going to go anywhere. She's my coach. She's twenty years older than me. She'd rather eat glass than cross that line, and honestly, I don't think she even knows what she wants from me. One minute she's looking at me like I'm a problem she needs to solve. The next she's telling me about growing up in Canada and how her father never came to a single one of her games. That's not flirting. That's just a person opening up because she's lonely and I happened to be there."
Elise picked up her toast and took a deliberate bite, chewing slowly, watching Lex with an expression that was equal parts sympathy and skepticism.
"What?" Lex set her mug down harder than she intended. It clacked against the counter.
"Nothing."
"That's not a nothing face. That's an I-have-opinions face."
"You came home last night looking like you'd been hit by a bus. And now you're standing in our kitchen trying to convince yourself it doesn't mean anything?" She tilted her head. "That's exactly what people do when it means a lot."
Lex opened her mouth, closed it, and drank her coffee. It burned her tongue and she didn't care.
"It probably won't go anywhere," she said again.
Elise smiled, picked up her phone, and went back to scrolling. The skepticism was still there, quiet and immovable, like a tide mark on a sea wall.
Practice was a grind.
Mara ran them through defensive cycling drills that had every player gasping inside twenty minutes. Lex threw herself into the work, her edges cleaner than a month ago, her reads improving. The system was clicking. When she played within it, the hockey was beautiful.
Thirty minutes in, a loose puck squirted free at center ice. Her legs fired before her brain intervened, chasing, and she snapped a wrist shot that Dani barely gloved. Gorgeous play. Complete abandonment of the coverage assignment.
"Landry." Mara's voice was ice. "What was your assignment?"
Lex knew the answer. She skated back to position and said nothing.
"Run it clean or sit down."
The words stung. But last night had changed the equation. Sitting in Mara's office, watching the armor come down piece by piece until the woman underneath was visible. That version ofMara had trusted Lex with her real self. Defaulting to defiance now felt like betraying that trust.
She ran the rest of practice without breaking formation. It took everything she had. The instinct to chase and improvise screamed for release, but she held it. Because the look in Mara's eyes wasn't anger. It was the same look her mother used to give her when she stayed out past curfew:I expected more from you and you let me down.
And that was the thing Lex couldn't stand.
The shower was scalding. Lex stood under the water with her palms flat against the tile and let the heat carve into her shoulders and back. The locker room was loud behind her. Camille was singing a French pop song off-key. Frankie was telling a story about her dog eating an entire rotisserie chicken off the counter, bones and all, then looking at her with what Frankie described as "zero guilt and maximum satisfaction." Lou was laughing so hard she had to sit down on the bench, and even Dani cracked a smile from inside her stall. "The vet said he'd never seen a dog so unrepentant," Frankie added. "She wagged through the entire X-ray." Normal sounds. Team sounds. Sounds that should have made Lex feel like she belonged but instead made her feel like she was watching from a distance, separated from the group by a distance she couldn't close.
