Page 27 of Hard Check

I ran a hand through my sweat-dampened hair, fingers trembling slightly. My first instinct was to dismiss it—just a dream, meaningless imagery, nothing to analyze.

The same way I'd dismissed that flutter in my chest when Anderson, my college teammate, had hugged me too long after our championship win. The same way I'd ignored how I sometimes found myself watching certain players during NHL highlights with an attention that went beyond studying technique.

"This isn't me," I whispered, but the words sounded hollow even to my ears.

Part of me felt almost angry at Carver—for being Carver, for getting under my skin, for making me question things I'd carefully avoided examining. Another part felt something closer to relief, like finally identifying the source of phantom pain.

I couldn't un-know it now. I couldn't pretend what I felt was only admiration or professional respect. I couldn't file it away as simple friendship.

I reached for my phone, thumb hovering over my text history with Rachel, the girl I'd dated last summer—our relationship had been pleasant but ultimately lukewarm. I'd attributed the lack of spark to poor timing, hockey season looming, and a dozen other external factors. Now, I wondered if there had been another explanation all along.

The realization felt like stepping onto thin ice—that momentary vertigo when you hear the first creak underfoot but keep moving anyway.

It was attraction—visceral, complicated, and profoundly inconvenient. Attraction to a teammate, my mentor, someone who represented everything stable about my hockey identity while simultaneously threatening to upend it.

I sat up, suddenly restless, and moved to the window. Hockey had been my constant, my framework for understanding myself. Every decision I'd made since I was nine had been filtered through a single question: Will this help or hurt my career?

I'd built my identity around the game's expectations—be tough but not brutal, confident but not arrogant, close to your teammates but not too close.

And where exactly did wanting to kiss your grumpy veteran mentor fit into that framework?

Part of me—the part raised on hockey culture and locker room codes—recoiled from the thought. But another part, a quieter voice gaining strength, wondered if this feeling was worth facing down that fear. After all, Dane and Leo found each other last season.

I pressed my forehead against the cold glass, thoughts pinballing between extremes. One moment, I planned to maintain strict professional distance; the next, I imagined what might happen if I simply acted on this feeling.

Pride and shame, excitement and dread, recognition and denial—all coursed through me simultaneously, none winning out.

"What am I doing?" I whispered to the empty room.

The silence offered no answers. Only the distant hum of my refrigerator and the sound of my uneven breathing—the soundtrack to a realization that couldn't be unlearned.

Chapter seven

Carver

CoachMacPherson'sofficesmelledof coffee grounds and dry-erase markers. Not the worst combination at five forty-five in the morning, but not exactly what I'd hoped to inhale before sunrise. He'd called me in early—earlier than our usual pre-practice meetings.

I knocked twice on the scarred wooden door.

"Enter."

He hunched over his desk beside a mountain of paperwork threatening an avalanche. The cramped space barely accommodated his weathered desk and two chairs, let alone his broad shoulders and the ghosts of all the players he'd counseled over the years.

"Sit." Coach gestured without looking up.

I folded myself into the chair opposite him, my knees practically hitting the desk. "If this is about that hit on number twenty-two from Worcester—"

"It's not." He closed the folder he'd been examining and finally met my gaze. It was the look he reserved for conversations nobody wanted to have.

My stomach knotted.

He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "Situation's like this, Carver." Three clipped words, then a pause—classic MacPherson.

"We're in the rebuilding phase. Still filling those holes, Whitaker and Campbell left. Need to develop leadership in the younger players." He delivered each sentence as a separate mission objective without unnecessary words—military efficiency in everything, including bad news.

Younger players—that didn't mean me.

"This is my final season, isn't it?" The words erupted without consideration. My filters weren't awake yet.

---