1
SIENNA
The strapping tape came off the roll with a familiar rip. Sienna wound it around Lou Calder's left wrist in tight, overlapping strips, pressing her thumb along each layer to smooth it flat. Lou sat on the edge of the treatment bed still as stone, scrolling through her phone one-handed while Sienna worked.
The medical room smelled of adhesive and antiseptic, the sharp chemical tang that Sienna associated with game days. Overhead, the fluorescent lights cast everything in flat, unforgiving brightness. Outside, the corridors of the Valkyries' arena were filling with the muffled clatter of skate guards on rubber mats, the thump of sticks being leaned against walls, the low murmur of a team getting ready.
"Tighter on the second pass," Lou said without looking up. Her voice was low and dry, as it always was. Lou Calder didn't waste words, on or off the ice.
"I know." Sienna pulled the next strip taut. Lou's wrists were scarred and battered from years of blocking shots, the skin roughened beneath the tape's adhesive. Calluses over calluses. She'd been the Valkyries' captain since before the PWHL hadcome calling, and her hands showed every one of those seasons. "How's Max?"
"Ate a sock yesterday." Lou's voice was flat. "Camille's furious. Third one this month."
Sienna wound another strip of tape around the wrist, pressing it smooth. "Golden retrievers."
"Golden idiot." But the corner of Lou's mouth twitched, and the dog could clearly do no wrong in Lou Calder's eyes. Sienna tore the tape, pressed the final edge flat, and started on the right wrist.
Mara Ellison leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching. The head coach's greying blonde hair was pulled back tight, her Valkyries polo snug across broad shoulders. Her eyes were already sharp and game-focused. She'd been prowling the back corridors since early afternoon, and Goldie, her ancient golden retriever, had retreated to her office to sleep through the disruption.
"Mars texted me," Mara said. "The Toronto coach has been running a physical system all week. Their defensive lines are going to come out hard and try to shut down our transition game."
Lou looked up from her phone. "Good. We'll match it."
Mara pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room. "We'll be smart about it." Her eyes moved to Sienna. "Park, you ready for a rough one?"
Sienna tore the last strip and pressed it into place. "Medical bag's packed. Extra ice packs in the cooler. I've prepped additional strapping for the second period in case anyone needs re-taping." She paused. "If Toronto's playing physical, I'll stay closer to the bench entrance. Faster response time."
Mara nodded once, satisfied, and turned back to Lou. The two started talking defensive pairings, Mara's voice dropping into the low, focused register she used when strategy was all thatexisted. Sienna gathered her tape and scissors and moved to the counter to prep the next round of supplies.
She was cutting strips of kinesiology tape for post-game applications when the door swung wider, and Elise Moreno walked in.
Sienna's hands stilled on the tape.
Elise was in a sports bra and compression shorts. Dark hair pulled back from her face in a neat ponytail, a few loose strands curling at her temples. The overhead light mapped the definition of her arms, the long slope of her shoulders, the lean lines of an athlete who'd spent a decade refining her body into an instrument. Her skin was flushed from a warm-up stretch, a pink tinge visible along her collarbones. She moved with that unhurried, confident stride that Sienna had been trying to stop noticing for the past few months.
She smelled clean and warm. Vanilla, maybe. Or coconut. A scent that had no business being as distracting as it was in a room full of antiseptic.
"Lou." Elise dropped into the chair beside the treatment bed, one long leg stretched out, the other bent. "If they're playing Kowalski on the right side tonight, we need to switch the breakout pattern. She reads the standard outlet pass too fast. We were lucky last time."
"Agreed," Lou said, flexing her newly taped wrists. "Lex can take the wide lane. I'll cover the middle outlet."
Sienna turned back to the counter and began cutting strips of tape she'd already cut. Heat climbed her neck, prickling beneath the collar of her polo shirt. She bit the inside of her cheek. Elise Moreno in compression shorts and a sports bra, in her medical room, three metres away, was never going to stop being distracting.
It had been like this since the beginning. Since Sienna's first week at the Valkyries, when she'd walked into the locker room tointroduce herself and Elise had been the one to shake her hand and say, "Welcome to the chaos." She'd been wearing a towel and nothing else, fresh from the shower, and Sienna had spent the entire orientation meeting afterward unable to remember a single thing that was said.
That had been months ago. The attraction hadn't faded. If anything, it had sharpened, becoming persistent and low-grade, a hum beneath every interaction.
Mara pulled up her tablet. The three of them huddled together, Elise gesturing with her hands as she described the pattern she wanted, Lou nodding, Mara swiping through formations. Their voices layered over each other in the shorthand of people who'd been doing this together for years.
Sienna kept working. Organising the tape rolls by width, restocking the glove box, checking the ice packs she'd already checked twice. She wiped down the treatment bed's vinyl surface with disinfectant, the sharp alcohol scent cutting through the room. Behind her, the conversation shifted from defensive pairs to forechecking pressure, and Elise's voice dropped lower as she sketched a play for Lou, her hand moving through the air.
Sienna didn't turn around. Mara's stylus scratched across the tablet. The chair creaked as Elise leaned forward. That was already too much information. She was forty-one years old and a licensed physician and she was wiping the same spot on the treatment bed for the third time.
Her parents would be horrified. Not by the attraction itself, though that had taken them years to quietly not-discuss, but by the lack of control. Dr. Hyun-Soo Park and Dr. Min-Ji Park had raised their daughter to be focused, disciplined, immune to distractions. They'd succeeded, mostly. Sienna had spent decades building a life around that structure: undergraduate, medical school, residency, sports medicine fellowship, and thenthe careful, contained world of treating athletes without ever becoming personally entangled.
Fourteen months at the Phoenix Ridge Valkyries and the containment was cracking.
In her time here, she'd treated most of the roster. Sprains, strains, the routine maintenance of bodies that were punished five nights a week. But Elise Moreno had been remarkably healthy. A hip flexor tweak that resolved in two days. A blister. That was it. The woman's body was durable, reliable, built to last, and Sienna had never had to put her hands on it for anything more than a cursory assessment.
