Chapter 9

ETHANAfter Maya leaves, silence settles over the penthouse like smoke. It’s dense and invasive, filling every room until the quiet itself begins to feel hostile.I stand at the kitchen counter with a glass of water that I don’t drink, jaw tight, shoulders still carrying the ghost-pressure of a game that ended hours ago, but it isn’t the game sitting under my skin anymore.It’s him.Cal Mercer in that hallway, broad shoulders blocking the exit, eyes heavy-lidded and knowing as they dragged slowly over me. The memory lands low in my body with humiliating precision. I grip the edge of the counter harder.This is ridiculous. One conversation. One moment too close in a narrow space, adrenaline still high, tempers still hot, and somehow my body reacted to him with more immediate hunger than it’s ever reacted to anyone.More than Maya. More than any other woman I’ve ever been with. The realization feels less like discovery and more like exposure, like something buried deep is clawing violent

Chapter 10

Six Weeks LaterThe conference room on the twenty-second floor of the Denver Rockies offices smells faintly of coffee, polished walnut, and money. The wall of windows looks out over downtown Denver, the late summer sun turning glass buildings into sheets of gold, but nobody around the table is paying attention to the view.They're looking at numbers.Salary projections. Contract lengths. Retirement paperwork. A depth chart projected across the seventy-inch monitor dominating one wall."Well," says Jim Holloway, General Manager, pushing his reading glasses farther up his nose, "we've officially got ourselves a problem."No one argues. They've known this meeting was coming for almost a month.Darren Mills, forty-one, Head Coach of the Rockies, broad-shouldered and prematurely grey around the temples, folds his arms. “Unfortunately, Lars is done."Lars Henriksen had worn a Rockies sweater for fifteen seasons, won two Cups, broken more bones than anyone could remember, and quietly informe

Chapter 11

ETHANSix weeks after winning the Stanley Cup, I’m standing barefoot in my kitchen at eleven-thirty in the morning, weighing grilled chicken on a digital scale.There are people who assume discipline is loud, that it announces itself in brutality, in deprivation, in the kind of punishing commitment that looks impressive from the outside. But most of the time it’s quieter than that, smaller than that, less dramatic and therefore harder to admire.It’s four ounces of chicken, and brown rice measured to the gram. It’s water instead of coffee after noon, sleep instead of bars, stretches before bed, recovery work done when no one is watching and no one will ever know if I skip it. It’s choosing, again and again, not to negotiate with weakness or sloth.Summer camp is easy compared to the season, lighter skates and shorter drills and strength work designed to maintain rather than destroy. But I’ve never seen the point in letting my body forget what’s expected of it, simply because the calend

Chapter 12

ETHANMy jaw locks. “Unbelievable.”“It’s not just that.”“But it is that.”“It’s partly that.”“At least lie better.”“I’m not going to lie to you.”That, actually, is true. Darren Mills has many faults, but dishonesty is not one of them. He’ll manipulate, omit, delay, reframe, and use silence like a weapon when needed, but he will not give a man a lie and expect him to build trust on it.“The media attention matters,” he says finally. “And so do ticket sales, broadcasts, jersey projections, sponsorship angles, all the things people upstairs care about because this is not just a sport, no matter how badly we all want to pretend otherwise.”I stare at the mountains until the edges blur. “And what exactly do you want from me?”“I want to know whether my captain can handle him.”The words move through me slowly, too slowly, because the answer should be immediate:Yes. Of course, coach. I can handle anyone.I’ve built my career on control, on taking rooms full of oversized egos and bruise

Chapter 13

CALThe barbell crashes back into the rack with enough force to make the entire frame shudder. Metal rings against metal, one-hundred-pound plates vibrate on either side. The sound echoes through the empty weight room before disappearing into the steady hum of fluorescent lights and industrial fans.I lie there for another breath, chest heaving, sweat running into my ears, forearms trembling from the last rep.Fifteen. Should've been eighteen.I sit up anyway. Failure is still failure.The gym belongs to the team, but it's almost empty this time of year. Summer camp is optional beyond the scheduled skates. Most of the guys lift earlier, before the heat settles over the city, before the trainers start wandering through with clipboards and hydration lectures.I like it better alone.Iron doesn't ask questions. Weights don't care if you lost the Stanley Cup. They don't replay mistakes. They don't remember the last shift. They sure as fuck don't remember one goddamn hallway.I stand, wipe

Chapter 14

CALSomewhere inside me, anger rises because it knows the shape of the room and wants to fill it, wants to slam a fist through the mirror, wants to call Seattle and say every vicious thing sitting behind my teeth, wants to make this about betrayal and business and hockey because those are all survivable categories.But beneath the anger is something worse.A pull. A quiet, terrible pull toward the exact things I should be fighting:Denver. Ethan. His locker room. His ice. His standards. His voice. His authority.The word lands wrong inside me.Authority.Not as a threat, but as something my body recognizes before my pride can reject it.I end the call without remembering exactly how the conversation finishes, something rough and noncommittal thrown at Mike before my thumb cuts him off. Then the weight room is silent again, except it’s not silent at all because my pulse is loud in my skull, and the fluorescent lights hum like nerves, and the mirror in front of me refuses to look away.