That was the complicated part.
I wanted the ice, the speed, the pressure, the violence cleanly contained by rules and boards. I wanted the draft. I wanted the league. I wanted to be so good nobody could argue about it.
I just didn’t want all the hands that came with being wanted.
Coach’s voice lowered slightly. “Protect the room. Protect each other. Protect the standard. Everything else is noise.”
The meeting ended ten minutes later with chairs scraping, guys standing too fast, voices overlapping, and Briggs immediately announcing that if Coach didn’t want felony-adjacent behavior, he needed to stop making crime sound athletic. The room spilled into motion around me, but I stayed seated for half a second longer, letting the disorder arrange itself before I stepped into it.
Easton remained beside me because, unfortunately, loyalty sometimes looked like harassment.
“So,” he said, drawing the word out. “Party.”
I grabbed my phone off the desk. “Preseason party?”
“Pre-semester pre-party.”
“You already changed the branding.”
“I refined the mission.”
Briggs appeared over the row in front of us, twisting around with a grin already loaded. “Please tell me Wade invited Aura by calling it a pre-semester pre-party. That’s the most game he’s had in two years.”
Easton pointed at him. “Nobody asked you.”
“Nobody ever has to. I arrive where I’m needed.”
Rider came up beside Briggs, water bottle in hand, expression smooth as ever. “Aura’s coming?”
Easton tried to look casual and failed in a way that offended me personally for being so fake. “Possibly.”
Briggs slapped a hand over his heart. “Our boy is growing up.”
“She’s bringing friends?” Rider asked, and his gaze slid briefly to me because Rider, unlike Briggs, usually noticed things before making them everyone else’s problem.
I slid my phone into my pocket. “Why would I know?”
Briggs’s grin widened with such immediate violence that I regretted speaking.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mercer. Maybe because your soul left your body the second Wade said Aura, because Aura means—”
“My soul is intact.”
“Barely. I saw it hover.”
Easton laughed under his breath.
I stood, forcing Briggs to step back because I had two inches and twenty pounds on him and occasionally enjoyed reminding him. “If you’re throwing a party, keep it controlled.”
Briggs gasped. “Controlled? At Hockey House? During a pre-semester pre-party? With freshmen arriving feral and emotionally unsupported?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Rider. “He says controlled like he doesn’t live with us.”
Rider shrugged. “He means no broken windows, no fights, no ambulances, and don’t let Tyler Neely drink jungle juice because he still looks like his mom tracks his location.”
“That kid is absolutely going to puke in a planter by ten,” Briggs said.
