Page 29 of The Longest Shot
twelve
ROOK
The nosebleed seatscertainly offer a different perspective.
Up here in the cheap seats, you can barely make out jersey numbers, let alone see the puck. The air tastes stale, and the plastic seats have developed that special shade of gray that comes from ten thousand different asses sitting on them over the years.
It's perfect, actually.
A shithole throne for a total fraud of a captain.
I slouch deeper into my seat, the cold plastic biting through my jeans. My knee won't stop bouncing, thanks to that restless energy just having nowhere to go. Two hours ago, I was down there with my team, pissing away our season opener like beer-league heroes.
Championship hangover,Coach Pearson had called it.
He hadn't yelled or screamed because we all know the problem.
We'd been soft, selfish, and undisciplined.
A team of heroes who turned into zeroes.
Pearson had given a long, calm dissection of the game, not sparing anyone or any moment. His voice never raised, andhis eyes never stayed on one of us for too long, but I felt like every moment was aimed at me. Not directly—Pearson's too professional for that—but the subtext was clear.
This is on you, Captain, after an off-season of clowning and lax standards.
And the truth is, he's right. A thousand times at practice, I'd let Kellerman get away with some rookie mistake I should have been on his ass about. I'd let Schmidt try to do everything himself. I'd let the whole system collapse because I was too busy being everyone's buddy and the loudest guy in every room.
And I'd spent no time actually leading.
The locker room afterward had been a tomb. No music, no jokes, just tape being ripped off shin pads with barely controlled violence. The silence had pressed against me until I wanted to scream, but for once, I'd kept my mouth shut and escaped.
I'd wandered campus, avoiding the texts inviting me to post-game parties, and then the texts that were asking if I was OK. As my already tired legs turned over, I'd been caught in a blur of self-recrimination. Only after an hour did I decide I wanted to watch the women's game, so I'd put a hood over my head and entered.
Now I'm here, hiding in the dark like some hockey phantom of the opera, minus the mask and the talent. There's nobody around me, because the women's team doesn't sell out the arena like we do, so all the fans who are here are concentrated in the lower levels while I'm up here, alone in the quiet.
But the quiet doesn't help.
It never does.
It just makes room for yesterday's memory.
Morgan in that towel.
The image hits with physical force. The water droplets still clinging to her collarbone, that flash of pale thigh before she'd yanked the terry cloth higher, the way her wet hair had darkenedto burnished copper against her neck. My body remembers too well, even through the self-loathing.
But it's not just the visual that guts me, but what came after. Galloway's thick hand landing on my shoulder, possessive and casual. His eyes consuming her like she was his personal centerfold. The way he'd saidkiddowith that patronizing chuckle.
And me?
Well, as his gaze traveled up her legs, slow and deliberate, making sure she knew he was looking, I'd just stood there like a department store mannequin. You know, the kind with the vacant smile, and for the first time in my life, I'd been quiet.
The human foghorn, silenced.
Galloway thinks I walk on water, and I know that one word from me, in that room, filled with those guys, and he would've backed off. I had a whole lot of power in that room and Morgan had none, and I'd used it to do absolutely nothing.
The only other time I'd ever felt that frozen had been that last night with Morgan at the senior-year hockey camp. After two weeks of bliss—top-level hockey during the day, and fireworks with her at night—her gray eyes had locked onto me in the moonlight.
"So what happens when we leave here?" she'd asked, her voice soft.
