Chapter 3 - A Familiar Face

"Save some energy for the rest of us, man."

Lucas leans against the boards, energy bar hanging from his lip, watching Elias run backhand passing drills with the focus of someone who genuinely enjoys suffering.

His curly hair is a mess, his grin is enormous, and he has absolutely no filter.

"Half the women in Toronto would pay good money to watch you train like this," he adds cheerfully.

Elias doesn't look up. He repositions, lines up the angle, and sends the puck snapping off the boards with clean precision.

Full-contact practice starts minutes later.

Tyler Grant—left wing, notorious flirt, walking highlight reel of bad decisions—skates up and deliberately shoulder-checks Elias in the chest.

The impact bounces right back.

Tyler stumbles, grabs the boards, and stares at his own arm like it betrayed him.

"What the hell, Weston. Do you even have body fat?"

"You're one to talk," Lucas calls over. "You look like a bear in skates."

Tyler rolls up his sleeve and starts skating toward Lucas with clear intentions.

Rick Eaton, the team's goalkeeper, watches from the crease with his stick planted on the ice and says nothing, but the corner of his mouth gives him away.

The locker room after practice smells like coffee, and Tyler's ongoing story about last night, which three of the younger guys are hanging on every word of.

Rick sits apart from the noise, methodically checking each buckle and strap on his gear.

A few of the younger players keep stealing glances at Elias—the red pressure marks from his chest plate still visible across his abs, adding something almost aggressive to the overall picture.

When he bends to pick up his towel, the waistband of his sweats shifts low enough to be a problem.

"New fans at the window," Rick says flatly, not looking up, chin gesturing toward the glass.

A cluster of girls has their phones pressed against the exterior window, faces flushed, completely ignoring the No Photography signs.

Elias pulls his hoodie on without a word, jaw tight. The fabric does very little to solve the problem.

"With Claire Nox absence, they're definitely getting bolder. After all, who would dare to compete with our queen bee for the team's ultimate prize?" Lucas teases, arching a suggestive brow as he watches the cheerleaders linger nearby.

Everyone knows about her ruthless obsession with Elias, a devotion he treats with the kind of freezing indifference that would break a lesser woman.

"She's a nightmare to work with, but at least she keeps the vultures at bay," Lucas continues, leaning against the locker. "As long as she's fixated on Elias, she keeps everyone else under her thumb, and the rest of us can actually breathe."

Lucas waits until Elias is tying his skates for the afternoon session, then drops his voice and crouches beside him.

"Hey. Heard we're getting a new team physio. From overseas. Like—actual prodigy level."

Elias's fingers pause. Half a second. Then they resume, pulling the lace tighter than necessary, knuckles going pale.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Caught the assistant coach talking to Professor Williams yesterday." Lucas grins. "Maybe she can finally fix that shoulder of yours before it becomes a real problem."

Elias says nothing.

He stands, snaps his chest plate buckle shut with a sharp metallic click, and pulls his helmet on.

The conversation is over.

But behind those gray-blue eyes, something shifts—cold and subtle, like a door closing in a dark room.

Afternoon practice is brutal by design.

Coach Danny Wilson runs them hard, every drill built around the kind of contact that forces old injuries to either adapt or announce themselves.

Elias's right shoulder announces itself, sharp, electric, shooting from the joint down through his arm. He swallows it. Doesn't break stride.

Two seconds later he cuts left, accelerates through a gap that shouldn't exist, and puts the puck in the net so cleanly the sound rings off the rafters.

"That's my guy!" Lucas punches the air. "That's why he's MVP!"

By the time Elias finally leaves the facility, the sun is low and amber, stretching his shadow long across the sidewalk.

A small group of students waiting near the entrance rush forward—one of them, cheeks red, holds out a notebook with both hands.

Elias scrawls his signature across the fan's notebook with a jagged, impatient stroke. He mumbles a curt thanks, brushing off his teammates' rowdy invitations for a night out before retreating to the most secluded corner of the dining hall.

He chews his poutine mechanically, the gravy-soaked fries tasting like ash, and his phone face-up on the table.

A message from the team physio.

[Anderson]: Latest MRI shows increased shoulder inflammation. You need to rest.

He stares at it for one second. Deletes it. Opens his training stats instead.

Shooting accuracy: 87%. Skating speed: up 0.3 seconds from last week. But rightward breakaway attempts down 15%.

He memorizes the number.

These icy, unforgiving numbers are the only anchor he has, the only thing keeping him from spiraling into the frustration of his own breaking body.

He needs a distraction, and the team's VIP reservation at The Blade tonight is the only thing on the schedule that might offer a temporary escape from the pressure.

Elias tugs the brim of his baseball cap lower, his face a shadowed mask as he dissolves into the thick, faceless rush of the evening crowd.

At the sharp turn of the corner, his gaze snags on a figure standing by the bus stop— brown hair, white shirt, dark jeans, a ponytail pulled clean and high. She's holding grocery bags in both hands, scanning the transit map.

The evening light catches the edge of her jaw. Something tugs at the back of his mind.

A bus roars through the intersection and cuts the moment in half.

By the time it passes, the stop is empty. She's already gone, swallowed by the crowd heading the opposite direction.

Elias walks on. Doesn't stop. Doesn't look back.

***

Saturday morning, Mia wakes up to the smell of bacon.

She opens her bedroom door and finds the kitchen already in full production—Ellie at the stove.

"Morning, sleepyhead!" Ellie slides a plate toward her. "Eat fast. We have a full day."

"Ellie, you didn't have to do all this—"

"Campus is huge and we're doing the whole thing." Ellie drops into her chair. "You need fuel."

Mia sits down and doesn't argue further.

Their first stop is the oldest quad on campus—stone archways, Gothic spires cutting into a clear blue sky, red ivy climbing the walls, fallen maple leaves crunching under every step.

Raiders banners hang from the lampposts the entire length of the main path.

"These buildings date back to the 1850s," Ellie says, sliding into full tour-guide mode. "But don't worry—the medical facilities are completely state of the art. The research lab at Terrence Hall is the best in the country."

She pauses, hands pressed together. "And since you'll be working with the Raiders—the actual Raiders—I'm going to need you to understand what a massive deal that is."

Mia smiles.

Thanks to three days of Ellie's enthusiastic briefings, she now knows the Raiders roster better than she knows most pharmacological charts.

She'd also, finally, looked Elias Weston up online the night before—and recognized him immediately.

The man from the escalator. Of course it was him.

She glances at Ellie, who is still mid-rhapsody about his eyes or his wrists or something.

Better not to mention it.

They cut through the main green, past clusters of students in Raiders caps and hoodies and full jerseys, and find a bench near the medical library to rest.

Two girls on a picnic blanket nearby are deep in conversation.

"—he actually signed my jersey after practice. Up close, his eyes are even more—"

"Did you see the locker room photo going around? Someone leaked it and honestly I'm not even sorry—"

Ellie catches Mia's eye and mouths, without sound: The city's religion.

Mia smiles and goes back to her campus map, quietly marking the lab building, the library access points, the route to the affiliated hospital.

The afternoon covers the main library and the student center.

Walking back past the stadium, a bus pulls up and a full hockey team spills out in matching training gear, and the sidewalk briefly loses its mind.

"Junior development squad," Ellie explains. "Not the Raiders, but a few of them could get drafted eventually."

"I'm starving," Mia says.

"There's a sushi place two blocks from here that will solve every problem you currently have."

It does.

Over dinner, Ellie delivers an unofficial, extremely detailed briefing on every major professor in the medical faculty—their research specialties, their moods, their preferences in seminar students.

"Professor Williams is strict but completely fair," Ellie says, chopsticks mid-air. "He's the one who built the partnership with the Raiders. Rumor has it he played hockey at Harvard, which—honestly tracks."

Mia files that quietly.

That's probably where he met Dad.

Williams wasn't just her academic supervisor—he was her entire entry point to the Raiders medical team.

"Speaking of the Raiders," Ellie lowers her voice, leaning in. "They won last night in Ottawa. Which means tonight, they'll probably be at The Blade."

Mia nods and says nothing.

She doesn't give the local sports gossip a second thought. She's more focused on the weight of the groceries in her hand than the proximity of the city's star athletes.

"It's a bit of a coincidence, honestly," Ellie remarks as they step out of the supermarket, the sliding doors hissing behind them. "The Raiders' training facility is practically in our backyard."

Before Mia can offer a reply, Ellie lets out a sharp, panicked yelp. "Wait! My bag—I left it in the locker inside! Mia, don't move, I'll be back in a flash!"

Mia stands at the bus stop, shopping bags in hand, laughing quietly. She shakes her head.

Three minutes later, Ellie bursts back out at full speed, grabs Mia's arm without slowing down, and they fall into step together heading home.

For the first time since landing, Mia thinks—yes. This is going to be okay.