Chapter 5 - Rehearsal

Coach Danny Wilson walks into the locker room at 4:30 PM, a tablet gripped in his hand.

"Listen up." He raps the tactics board sharply. "Next Saturday. International Cultural Showcase. The organizers want us there as featured guests."

The room goes briefly quiet before everyone starts talking at once.

"A cultural showcase? So we're mascots now?"

"Half the crowd won't even know what icing is."

Danny lets them run for a moment, then swipes to the next screen. "It's being broadcast live. ESPN. Full cultural segment, dedicated interview block, and—" He lets the weight of it land, "—national exposure for the franchise."

The room goes quiet in a different way.

A low voice comes from the direction of the showers. "What kind of broadcast?"

Elias walks out toweling his hair, his eyes already locked on the tablet. Danny turns the screen toward him.

"ESPN cultural special. They're building a segment around the team's presence, plus a post-event interview." Danny swipes again. "New sponsorship eyes. National."

Elias takes the tablet and scrolls slowly. He pauses on one page for just a second, his brow lifting almost imperceptibly.

It's a rehearsal photo: a woman with dark hair, her back to the camera, backlit as she directs a technician on lighting angles. The line of her shoulders is unmistakable. Something about it snags in the back of Elias's memory.

He looks at the name beneath the photo. Mia Conti.

His thumb rests there for two full seconds. Then, "We'll go."

Every head turns. Lucas stares at him with undisguised shock. Jason, who had been the loudest about skipping, suddenly closes his mouth.

Elias hands the tablet back, presses an ice pack to his right shoulder, and says nothing else.

***

Three days before the showcase, Mia is on her knees at the edge of the temporary stage in the civic plaza, pressing her fingertips along the floor seams.

"This needs an extra grip layer," she tells the technician, rising gracefully. "Classical ballet has a lot of rotational work. This surface will catch wrong."

Ellie jogs over with water. "Already on it! And the costume?"

"My mother's package arrives today."

Since her parents found out she is performing, Mia feels their excitement radiating through every call—and her father's quieter worry about her wrists, which she answers with a firm promise to stay within her limits.

"Mia." Ellie drops her voice and leans in. "The Raiders are coming. The whole team. Did I mention Elias Weston personally confirmed it?"

Mia is mid-lunge, right leg extended. She holds the position without wavering, the line impossibly clean. "Hockey players and a ballet performance. Interesting combination."

"The tickets sell out in under an hour once the announcement goes out," Ellie says, her voice pitching higher. "ESPN is live broadcasting. CBC sent an interview crew." She grabs Mia's arm. "Are you nervous? You're not nervous, are you?"

Mia gently removes Ellie's hand from her wrist. "I'm fine."

She has performed in front of thousands before. The nerves stopped being nerves a long time ago; they have become something else, something closer to focus.

Back at the apartment that evening, the package from Milan is already waiting outside her door.

Mia kneels on the floor and opens it carefully.

The costume comes out like water—a romantic-era ballet dress in pale ice blue, layers of silk tulle, the bodice hand-embroidered with white feather detailing.

She holds it against herself in the mirror for a long moment. Her phone lights up on the nightstand.

[Ellie]: Forgot to say, full dress rehearsal tomorrow. And the hockey team is coming to walk the venue.

Mia smiles, sets the dress down, and goes to prep her pointe shoes.

***

The rehearsal venue is louder than expected.

Camera crews are everywhere, ESPN branding litters every surface, and the crowd is nearly the size of a full audience.

Mia keeps her head down and aims for backstage, but she doesn't make it.

"Mia! Here!" Ellie is at the foot of the main stage, flanked by several men whose collective shoulder width suggests a different branch of human evolution.

"This is our ballet performer, Mia." Ellie is already mid-introduction, practically vibrating. "Mia, these are a few of the Raiders. They were asking about the staging."

"Hello." Mia smiles. "I'm Mia. I'm from Italy, and since my French is terrible, I'm grateful to do this in English."

"Happy to accommodate." A blond player flashes a wide grin.

She nods, glances around, and that's when she sees him.

Elias is across the space with a venue schematic in hand, talking to the stage manager. He studies the layout with a focused intensity, like he is disassembling something to understand it.

The airport. The escalator. Those gray-blue eyes.

And starting next month, her direct working contact.

"So this dance," Lucas says beside her, making an enthusiastic hand gesture, "it's the big skirt, lots of spinning?"

Mia pulls her attention back. "Classical ballet, romantic era. Yes, quite a bit of turning—"

The group shifts. A familiar presence moves through it, and people step aside without being asked.

"We're in Section B," Elias says, his voice low and even. "Center-front. Should be fine."

His gaze moves to Mia, and something crosses his expression—not surprise, exactly, but a confirmation of something he already half-knew. "We've met."

"We have." Mia meets his eyes steadily. "Hello, Elias Weston."

He doesn't ask how she knows his name.

"What did I interrupt?" He looks at her with that particular stillness that somehow occupies more space than most people's full attention.

"Your teammate was asking about ballet." She turns to Ellie smoothly. "I need to change for the run-through. See you all out there."

She is behind the curtain before anyone can respond. Lucas turns to Elias the second she is gone, his face twisted into something complicated. "How do you know her?"

Backstage, Mia steps into the ice-blue dress and lets the silk settle against her skin.

She takes one slow breath.

He's just a normal person.

A tall, gray-eyed person she will be working beside in four weeks, who once freed her suitcase wheel in three seconds, and who should not be making her pulse do anything at all.

She walks out onto the stage. The noise stops. Every face turns.

The music starts. Mia finds her center and begins.

Five years away and her body remembers every word of the language—the placement, the extension, the way the silk carries each movement a half-beat further than the body alone.

When she reaches the traveling combination across center stage, she registers that Elias has moved.

He stands at the front of the viewing area now, arms crossed, his expression stripped of its usual careful neutrality. He watches the way he watches game tape—taking her apart to understand her.

"Is he breathing?" someone murmurs.

"First time I've seen him look at anything that isn't a puck," another voice answers quietly.

The performance is so hauntingly beautiful that every person in the room finds themselves holding their breath, caught in a spell they didn't see coming.

After the run-through, the team clusters near the seating area.

"Did you see the extension?" Tyler is still staring at the empty stage. "I've never seen anything like that."

"Nobody asked you to compare," Lucas says.

"I want to know where she trained," Jason adds. "That's not recreational. That's years."

"Eleven years, from what I heard," Rick says quietly. He glances sideways at Elias, whose gaze follows Mia's exit all the way until the curtain falls. "Interesting, that."

Elias looks back at the empty stage. He uncrosses his arms. He says nothing. And that, somehow, says everything.