I squeezed my eyes shut. Pressed my fists to my temples.
Professional. Detached. Coach.
The words rang hollow, no matter how many times I repeated them.
Long season. Yeah. No shit.
Chapter 9
Billie
The cold bit through my gloves as soon as I stepped onto the ice. Perfect. I wanted to feel it. Wanted it to cut through everything soft left in me. First one out. Always would be. The boards creaked, the hum of the lights sat low in my ears, and the smell—scraped ice and rubber—settled in my chest like oxygen.
Calder stood near the blue line, arms folded, hood up over his baseball cap because apparently he was too cool to wear a helmet. His stare found me before the whistle did.
“Warm-up laps. Hard pace.”
The shrill blast split the air.
I dug in, edges carving deep, legs burning before the second bend. Each stride ground out the noise in my skull—Nate, a couple of days ago, this morning, all of it. Nothing existed past the next turn.
By the fourth lap, the others were filtering out. Laughter, chatter, blades clattering against the door frame. I ignored every sound except the scrape of my own skates.
“Donovan, pick up your stick. You’re gliding like it’s Sunday brunch.”
I bit my tongue and kept going. His voice carried, sharp, cool, steady. It had that authority you didn’t have to earn; it just lived in him.
He ran us hard. Edge drills, pivots, quick transitions. By the second set, my lungs burned raw. When I clipped a cone during a tight turn, his whistle pierced again.
“Do it again.”
I looped back. He didn’t even look at the others. Only me.
“Lower. Keep your eyes up. You lose vision, you lose the puck. Again.”
The girls exchanged looks as I reset. The third attempt was clean—but not clean enough for him.
“Better. But you’re half a second late.”
“Then time me,” I muttered under my breath, the words frosting in the air.
“What was that?” His tone didn’t rise, but it filled the space between us.
“Nothing, Coach.”
He moved on, but the others were whispering. Loud enough that silence would have sounded fake.
“Does he hate her, or is he trying to sleep with her?” one of them said behind a water bottle.
The words cracked like thin ice. My stride didn’t break. I pushed harder.
Next drill—zone exits. Two groups, rotating through. When it was my turn, he blew the whistle mid-route.
“Stop. Again. Alone this time.”
I dropped to a knee, tightened my laces for the extra second it bought me, then stepped back into position. Everyone watched—sticks resting on crossbars, masks tilted. I ran the line again. Tape to tape. Cleared the blue.
“Again.”
