Page 1 of Bar Down

Chapter One

Marcus

Sixty seconds left on the clock, and Marcus Adeyemi could feel the odds tipping in their favor—barely. The Charm City Chill had momentum, but Boston's defense still had weak spots he could exploit. Just like a chess match where he was three moves ahead.

Coach Vicky's voice cut through the noise as the players gathered around the bench. "Boston's collapsing their defense when Kane drives center."

Marcus nodded, his mind rapidly processing patterns from the previous six possessions. "Their right D is cheating too low," he said, tapping his stick on the board. "If Kane pulls him in, Dmitri's got daylight from the left dot. They've left that same gap open all period."

His teammates exchanged glances—the usual reaction when he spotted something everyone else missed. At 6'2" with the solid build of a shutdown defenseman, Marcus didn't look like the team's secret weapon off the ice, but the Chill had learned to trust his eyes.

"Speak English, Spreadsheets," Jax Thompson grunted beside him, the enforcer's massive frame dwarfing even Marcus.

"They're overloading right," Marcus simplified, jaw tight. "Left side will be open."

Coach Vicky gave a nearly imperceptible nod. "Kane, you heard him. Draw them in, then find Volkov."

From the corner of his eye, Marcus spotted Stephanie Ellis watching from her position near the media section. The Chill's PR director had one eye on her phone, no doubt already crafting the narrative regardless of outcome. The slim brunette's expression remained professionally neutral, but he caught the slight tension in her shoulders, the barely-there tap of her heel against the floor—telltale signs of the same tension thrumming through his own veins.

She caught him looking and arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow—her standard response when challenging him. He'd cataloged at least five of her expressions over the season, this one ranked third most common. Marcus quickly returned his attention to Coach Vicky, ignoring the sudden warmth under his collar. Some reactions defied analysis.

The buzzer signaled the end of the timeout. Players returned to the ice. Fifty-three seconds remained.

Marcus took his position on the blue line, mind automatically reading the play before it developed. As a defenseman, he prided himself on execution—the exact stick placement to break up a pass, the perfect gap control based on the opponent's speed. Hockey might look like chaos to spectators, but to Marcus, it was a system he could decode—bodies moving through space, patterns emerging for anyone smart enough to see them.

The faceoff went to Kane, who drove straight up the middle as planned. Boston's defensemen collapsed around him, drawn to the threat exactly as Marcus had predicted. Kane feinted right, then slipped the puck through to Dmitri on the left wing.

One-timer. Top shelf. Bar down.

Perfect execution. Marcus felt the familiar rush—better than any adrenaline shot—as the puck pinged off the crossbar and dropped in. He joined the celebration with a restrained smile, accepting Jax's glove tap while already replaying the sequence in his mind. Beautiful hockey was predictable hockey.

"Nice call, Adeyemi," Coach Vicky said when they returned to the bench, the hint of a smile breaking through her game face.

"Just reading the play, Coach." He shrugged, but couldn't suppress the satisfaction warming his chest.

"Yeah, well, your reading just gave us a three-point lead in the division."

As the final seconds ticked down, Marcus returned to the ice for one last defensive stand. He cleared the zone twice more before the buzzer sounded on their 3-2 win.

Victory never got old, especially when it validated his approach to the game. Tomorrow he'd review the footage and compile adjustments for the defensive pairs to implement at practice, but for now, he'd savor the win—the smell of fresh ice, the burn in his legs, the roar of the crowd still echoing in his ears.

The locker room buzzed with post-victory energy. Players were in various states of undress, some heading to the showers while others spoke with media representatives carefully managed by Stephanie's PR team. Marcus sat at his stall, already unlacing his skates while mentally reviewing key moments from the game.

"There he is," Dmitri called out, still in his base layers, hair damp with sweat. "The wizard who called the play!" The Russian winger bounded over, wrapping Marcus in a sweaty half-hug that made him stiffen. "Your hockey brain makes me look like genius."

Marcus extricated himself from Dmitri's enthusiastic embrace, unable to completely fight off a smile. "Nothing wizardry about it. Boston's been running the same defensive scheme all night. They were due to get burned."

"Beauty call, man," Kane said, emerging from the shower area with a towel around his waist. The captain's grin was all teeth. "Just don't let Ellis hear you. Caught her telling ESPN we scored because of our 'intuitive chemistry' or some PR bullshit. Nothing about your systems."

Marcus frowned, reaching for his glasses case from his stall. He only needed the reading glasses off-ice, but they felt like armor as he put them on. "That's not what happened. The play was—"

"Relax, professor," Jax Thompson interrupted, his massive frame occupying a corner stall. The enforcer was carefully wrapping his knuckles, scraped raw from a second-period fight. "Ellis is just doing her job. Making us look good for the cameras."

"By spinning fiction instead of fact?"

Oliver "Chenny" Chenofski looked up from his phone with a smirk, his fingers pausing mid-tweet. "Would you prefer she tell the world, 'Our stat-nerd defenseman spotted a weakness, so we exploited it like the tactical geniuses we are'? That doesn't exactly sell tickets, bro."

The locker room erupted in laughter. Even Coach Vicky, entering with her assistant coaches, cracked a smile.

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