Lanes

"Which shoulder?" you ask Sloane, with your best blank face.

Her smile doesn't falter. "Whichever one he's been favoring."

"I've only been here a week. Everybody's favoring something." You rip the tape off the roll and smooth it over Bash's wrist. "Bash, for example. Favors drama."

"Exactement," Bash says solemnly.

Sloane laughs, light and pretty, and hands you a business card. Thick paper. Embossed. "If you ever want to talk. Off the record. I know how lonely it is, being the new girl in a building full of men." She tips her head. "Tell Rhys I said hi."

She clicks away down the tunnel in heels that have no business on rubber matting.

You look at Bash. Bash looks at the ceiling.

"Who is she?"

"A reporter."

"Bash."

He sighs, a big goalie sigh that fogs his visor. "Sloane and Cal. Two years. Very serious. Everybody thought ring, wedding, little babies with perfect hair." He wiggles his gloved fingers. "Then one day, poof. Over. He doesn't talk about it. She writes about him more now than when they were together."

You look down at the card in your hand. Sloane Devereux. Senior Hockey Writer. There's a handwritten cell number on the back.

She came prepared.

The first time Mats Lindqvist brings you coffee, you think it's an accident.

"They gave me two," he says, holding out a paper cup at the bench door. He's tall and loose-limbed, with white-blond hair that sticks up in the back no matter what he does to it, and a sunny, open face that looks like it belongs on a cereal box. Green eyes. Dimples. Twenty-three and handsome in a way that has nothing to hide. "Oat milk. I guessed."

"You guessed right."

"I'm good at guessing." He grins. "I'm bad at backchecking. Coach says. But good at guessing."

The second time, two days later, it's a cinnamon roll in a paper bag from the bakery on Wharf Street.

The third time, he lingers.

"You know a lot about knees?" he asks, leaning on the boards while the forwards run power play drills behind him.

"Some."

"My knee clicks. Here." He points. "When I squat. Is this bad?"

"Do you have pain with it?"

"No. It's just a click." He smiles. "I wanted an excuse to talk to you, Ava."

You laugh, startled, and he laughs with you, a little pink in the cheeks, and for a second it's simple and nice. A cute boy. A coffee. A rink.

Then the whistle blows for one-on-ones.

Mats pushes off toward the line, still grinning back over his shoulder at you. He takes the puck at the blue line and goes in fast, dancing, quick hands, heading for the corner.

Rhys is waiting.

He doesn't hit him the way he hit him last week. He doesn't need to. He just steps up and closes the lane like a door slamming, and Mats bounces off him and sits down hard on the ice, stick skittering away.

The bench laughs. Mats laughs, flat on his back. He's always laughing.

Rhys doesn't laugh. He skates past the bench door, close, and for one second his eyes meet yours through the glass. They're cold as January.

Then he does it again on the next rep.

And the next.

By the fourth time Mats gets up slower, still smiling, but rubbing his hip. Coach is yelling at Rhys to ease off, it's a drill, not a war. Bash has pushed his mask up and is watching with an expression of deep and personal joy.

You wait until practice ends.

You catch Rhys alone at the end of the tunnel, where the hallway bends toward the loading dock and nobody goes.

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

"You put Mats on the ice four times."

"He was in my lane."

"It's a one-on-one drill. Everybody's in your lane. That's the whole point of the drill."

Rhys unbuckles his helmet. His hair is soaked, falling in his eyes, and he shoves it back with one glove. You hate that your stomach does a slow flip watching him do it. You hate that half the office staff watch him do it from behind the glass every single day like it's a television show.

"Kid needs to learn to keep his head up," he says.

"With his head up, he was looking at me."

"I noticed."

"So you admit it."

"I admit nothing. I'm a defenseman." He starts walking. "He brings you coffee every day."

"Twice."

"Three times. There was a pastry."

You stare at him. "Were you counting?"

He stops. Turns. And he's suddenly very close in the narrow hallway, close enough that you can see a drop of sweat sliding down his neck, close enough that you can smell ice and sweat and cedar.

"He's a rookie on a one-year deal, Doc," he says quietly. "He wants the head physio to like him so he gets the good table and the extra time. That's all that is."

"Or maybe he just likes me."

Something moves behind his eyes. Fast. Gone.

"Maybe," he says. "He was still in my lane."

"I'm not a lane, Rhys."

The words come out sharper than you mean them to. They hang between you.

He looks at you for a long beat. Then he steps back, all the way back, like you shoved him.

"No," he agrees. "You're not."

He walks away. His left arm is tucked tight to his side, and he's holding it the way he does when it hurts and he wants nobody to know. You realize, too late, that he spent all of practice hitting with that shoulder.

Because of you.

You stand in the hallway feeling like you won an argument and lost something else.

Your phone buzzes as you're heading back to the training room. Not a text from 4B. An email, from the GM's assistant.

Ms. Ashcombe would like to see you in her office. Now, please.

Bettina's office is on the top floor, all glass, with a view of the harbor cranes and the gray water beyond. She doesn't get up when you come in. She's reading something on a tablet and doesn't look up for a full ten seconds.

"Sit, Ava."

You sit.

She sets the tablet down, folds her hands, and gives you the polished smile you're starting to learn is a warning.

"You've been here a week. You've had your hands on every player on my roster." She leans forward slightly. "So I'll ask you once, woman to woman, and I'd like a straight answer."

Your pulse picks up.

"Is there anything about Rhys Calloway," Bettina says, "that I should know?"