I push through the door and walk the corridor alone. I don’t want to admit that the correction was right.
I felt it the moment she adjusted the position. The difference was small but undeniable.
She was right.
And she knew she was right, and she held me there in front of my team until everyone else knew it too.
I push open the exit door. Zane would have had a lot to say about this.
But Zane’s gone, signed to a development deal, and the thought of it sits somewhere below my sternum. Pressure.
He made it out.
I’m still here.
ELIDA
I am absolutely not going out.
I’m tired. I’m still adjusting to the time difference. I have session plans to write up and notes from this morning to organize and a million things I’d rather do than sit in a bar making conversation with people I’ve only met. I hate the small talk phase of getting to know new people.
Someone knocks on my door.
I open it and Tara Lorimer is standing in the corridor in a red coat with a bottle of wine under one arm and an expression of such uncomplicated warmth that it’s almost disarming.
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” she says. “It’s the leads from the women’s program. Low key, I promise.”
I glance back at my notes spread across the desk.
“Give me ten minutes.”
She beams.
The bar is called Tierney’s - dark wood, low lights. The kind of place that takes no particular pride in its décor and is better for it. Tara introduces me to the women’s team leadership as we settle into a booth near the back: two coaches, the team manager, a physio assistant whose name I immediately lose in the noise.
They’re nice. Genuinely nice, not professionally nice, and they’re excited about the program which is infectious even through my tiredness. They ask questions about figure skating and about Sweden and fill me in on the Blackwood gossip until I find myself getting caught up in the conversation.
Tara refills my glass.
“Okay,” she says, after the second round, leaning forward on her elbows. “How was this morning? Honestly.”
“Interesting.”
“I heard you corrected Russo,” the team manager says, with barely concealed delight.
I take a sip of wine. “I corrected several players.”
“But especially Russo.”
“He’s the captain. The standard has to come from somewhere.”
Tara is grinning. “He’s not going to like that.”
“No,” I agree. “He didn’t.”
I’m in the middle of a conversation with the assistant physio when movement at the bar catches my eye.
Mateo Russo is standing at the bar with Chen and a couple of others I recognize from the ice. He’s in a grey Henley and dark jeans and looks entirely different without the gear. He hasn’t seen me. He’s talking to Chen, relaxed in a way he wasn’t this morning, and he’s laughing - it changes his face completely.
