Page 2 of Her Player

I made it to the east corridor before I let myself exhale.

There was a crack in the baseboard molding near the supply closet. I’d put in a maintenance request for it in October. It was now March. I made a note. Something to follow up on. Something productive to do with my hands while I stood in a corridor instead of going back to my office the way I absolutely intended to.

Ryan would have laughed at me.

He would have seen right through this whole song and dance the same way he saw through everything I did, with that infuriating patience of his that never once felt like judgment. He would have leaned in the doorframe with his arms crossed and that look on his face. The one that meant I’m not going to say it, but we both know what I’m thinking. I would have told him to mind his own goddamn business, and he would have said you are my business, Vic, and that would have been the end of it.

I straightened the already-straight lapel of my jacket.

Ryan had been gone for fourteen years.

In those fourteen years I had built three things. A consultancy I sold for enough to buy a hockey franchise. A foundation that bore my husband’s name. And a wall around myself so well-constructed that most people simply assumed it was my personality.

Fine. That was by design. The wall kept things orderly. The wall kept things manageable. The wall was the whole reason I’d been functional for fourteen years instead of a puddle on the kitchen floor.

The wall had not, apparently, been built to withstand a six-foot-seven hockey player with callused hands and the audacity to show up at my house unasked and be kind about it.

Goddamn it.

I wrote down the maintenance request in full. Date, location, nature of the issue, original ticket number, number of follow-ups.

From inside the rink, I heard the whistle chirp again. Sprints starting up. The collective grunt of two dozen men kicking off the boards in unison. The scrape and hiss of blades. Brynn’s voice cutting through from somewhere in the stands with something that made half the team laugh mid-stride. Then Coach’s voice rising again. The speech I’d heard him give in some form a hundred times. The Pirates. Nine days. This is where we lay it on the line.

He’d be wrapping up soon.

I turned and walked back toward my office before he could.

My heels clicked against the arena floor. Tick, tick, tick. Unhurried. Deliberate. I did not look back through the glass as I passed it.

I did not.

I was almost certain I did not.

2

RHETT

The stadium fell silent. The shrieking of blades against ice brought everything to a grinding halt. The puck flying through the air bounced off Moose’s mask, sending our goalie flying to the ground from the force of the impact against his helmet’s bars. Sweat and fury saturated the air. Pads clanked together as Moose leapt to his skates, staring down the body gripping the stick that sailed the puck in his direction.

But when he took off his gloves, I pushed off from the wall. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Moose!”

“You did that on fucking purpose, Jett! God damn it!” Moose exclaimed. “What the fuck have I told you about going for my fucking mask in practice, asshat?!”

Jett cackled as he thrust his fists into the air. “I did it! I hit it again! Langley, you owe me twenty fucking—holy shit!”

“Fuck you, Jets!” Moose bellowed.

I slammed right into Moose before he got his arms around Twiggy Jett. I left my stick somewhere on the ice behind me, throwing the whole of my body weight into our massive goalie. Jett kept laughing from somewhere in the background, with Langley yelling above the cacophony about how he doesn’t understand how Jett makes those damned shots every single fucking time.

It wasn’t until Coach’s whistle chirped that I knew we were fucked.

“Get off me! Let me at him!” Moose grunted from beneath me as I pinned him to the ice.

I knew if I let that bear of a man up, he’d fucking kill my best friend.

“I can’t leave to take a shit for five minutes!” Coach bellowed before he chirped his whistle again. “Places! We get to end this practice with sprints until your legs dissolve!”

“Quit being a bitch, Jett!” Brynn called out from the stands. “Or I’ll break your nose before this championship game!”