Page 4 of Her Player

“That means,” Coach exclaimed as I whipped my attention back to him. He shot me a look before he went back to addressing the team, “that you will follow the schedule I have set out TO THE LETTER on my office door. Write it down. Get out your calendars. Tell your parents⁠—”

Jett chuckled. “Tattoo it on your dick.”

Coach blew his whistle. “Sprints! Now!”

Brynn cackled from the stands. “Get those chicken legs going, Jett!”

He cackled as he skated to one side of the rink like someone just bestowed a crown upon his head instead of a punishment. “Better than the ham hocks you’re runnin’, Bry!”

“JETTSON!” Coach bellowed.

I heard Brynn’s stunted laughter from the stands as we all watched Jett grin before he kicked off the ice. And while he ran sprints behind us…

“TELL! YOUR! PARENTS!” Coach practically roared above our heads while Jett continued his huffing and puffing behind us. “Do whatever it is you have to do in order to memorize this schedule. Because if you miss even one practice—even one weight session—between now and that game, you’ll be benched for the rest of the fucking season. This is where we lay it on the line, boys. This is where we show everyone exactly what we’re capable of.”

Langley chuckled. “Haven’t we been doing that all season, Coach?”

He turned his eyes toward my teammate. “No. You’ve earned your paychecks all season, that’s what. But this game? With the Detroit Pirates? This is where we show our city that their support has a purpose.”

I felt the conglomerate rise of every chest around me, and I couldn’t help but join. Even Jett mindlessly stopped his sprinting, just to shove his way beside me with his head held high.

Coach nodded as Jett, standing there, huffing and puffing and drenched with sweat, still partook in the pride he earned. The pride we all earned with our first undefeated start to a PHL season as a team.

And fuck, I needed this game.

I was twenty-seven years old, and twenty-seven was either the start of a man’s prime or the start of his decline, depending on whose ass you asked. Hockey wasn’t a forgiving sport. I’d watched guys get cut at thirty. I’d watched guys get cut at twenty-eight. I’d watched a center two seasons ago, a man who could read the ice like Bea Arthur read a punchline, get traded to a minor league team in Saskatchewan because his knees couldn’t take the hits anymore. He was thirty-one.

So when Coach said this is where we lay it on the line, what I heard was: this is your fucking line, Stone. Right here. The Detroit Pirates and the championship behind them and the league that had spent three years calling us a charity project and a disgraced coach’s roster of castoffs. This was the game that said whether I was a man who got to keep doing this, or a man who got traded somewhere cold and forgotten when the next captain signed for cheaper.

I’d ridden the bench my first year in Vegas. Second-string at best. I’d dug myself out of that hole one practice at a time, one weight session at a time, until our old coach gave me a shot at center during a lucky scrimmage my second year on the team. And I’d earned the captaincy with my goddamn teeth.

I wasn’t giving any of it back.

Not the C on my chest. Not the team I’d bled with for three years. Not the city that had started showing up to my games. And not the chance to walk into the Detroit Pirates’ rink in nine days and prove to forty thousand people that the Vegas Vipers were not a fucking joke.

But I couldn’t have told you what Coach said next, because a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. And I darted my gaze toward the shadowed movement just in time to see Victoria sashay those broad hips of hers down the hallway back toward her office.

A couple months. That’s how long it had been since the PHL season started. Since I changed out that tire at Victoria’s place. Since I felt the curve of her thigh against the outside of mine, or heard her laughter as she giggled at a Golden Girls episode. A couple months of cold showers that never quite got the memory of her out of my head. Those curves beneath that soft, plush robe she wore that night.

God damn it, I had it bad.

I barely registered Coach dismissing us from practice. I hardly remembered getting out of my shit in the locker room. Jett said something and everyone laughed, so I managed a chuckle, even though I had no clue what the fuck we were laughing at. Metal locker room doors slammed closed one by one as dirty jerseys and sweaty ass gear got tossed into the massive roll-away laundry totes. Brynn came striding in, her smile practically in all caps as she made a beeline for Coach.

The second their lips smacked, I knew my time had run out in the locker room.

But instead of turning right down the hallway with the rest of the team to make my way out of Caldwell Arena, I turned left.

Heading right for Victoria’s office.

3

VICTORIA

I tapped the end of my pencil against my clipboard and ran the numbers a second time, just to be sure. Then a third, because the only kind of estimate I trusted was a conservative one, and the figure staring back at me from the bottom of the page was the kind I needed to triple-check before I let myself believe it.

It held.

Holy hell, it held.