Page 32 of The Longest Shot
Not when I just spent the last forty minutes listening to some junior administrator with a polyester tie and a condescending smile explain "fiscal realities" to me. It had been Coach Walsh's idea—hit them hard with a request for more resources right after a stirring win—and it hadn't achieved anything.
The suit had given us the kind of explanation you'd give a toddler about why they can't have ice cream for breakfast. He kept calling Coach Walsh "sweetheart" and referring to our program as "the girls." And his final suggestion was that we should be "grateful for the opportunity to play at this level."
Grateful.
The word sits in my gut like spoiled milk, curdling into something toxic. My temples throb with each heartbeat, and my hands hurt from being fisted in my pockets while he dronedon about how the men's team "drives revenue" and we're "still finding our footing."
Coach Walsh had shot me a warning look—the kind that saidnot now, not here—and I'd bitten my tongue so hard I could taste copper. She was right, of course. Making enemies wouldn't help. But God, the restraint it took not to shove his laptop down his throat…
We just shut out Princeton.
We just proved we belong.
But apparently that's irrelevant when you're "the girls."
I push through the heavy door leading from the administrative wing, guilty that I couldn't get what my team needed when they gave me everything they had. While the men's team gets custom-fitted everything down to their goddamn socks, my players have to beg, borrow, and make do.
Hell, Mills had to tape her skate blade back together at intermission because we can't afford backup equipment, and?—
Movement catches my eye at the far end of the hall, interrupting my fury.
James Fitzgerald.
Alone for once, not surrounded by his usual circus of clowns.
He's leaning against the wall outside the men's team study room, head tilted back against the cinderblock, eyes closed. For a second I can just look at him without the performance, without the audience, and without his eyes boring into me.
Three years have filled him out. He's broader through the shoulders and chest in a way that makes his team hoodie strain when he shifts. The lankiness I remember has been replaced by something more solid. Even exhausted, even with those shoulders slumped forward, he takes up space differently now.
He looks like someone with the world on his shoulders.
But then his eyes open, and our eyes meet across the distance.
There's still a warmth in his eyes, but there are lines around them now that weren't there before, the kind you get from three years of being everyone's favorite clown. The exhaustion makes him look real instead of the walking energy drink commercial he usually plays.
I see the exact moment he registers my presence—his whole body straightens, spine snapping taut. For a second, I think he's going to turn and walk the other way, which would be classichim, running from anything that might require an actual feeling.
But he doesn't.
He pushes off the wall with visible effort and starts walking toward me. No swagger. No bounce. No arms spread wide for his adoring public. Just… walking. He's got his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his shoulders hunched slightly forward.
He looks tired and human.
He looks… vulnerable.
I hate that I notice. I hate that some treacherous part of my brain catalogs the faint bruise on his neck from a stray puck, and the way his lower lip is bitten raw in places. I hate that I remember exactly how those lips felt between my teeth, and between my legs?—
Stop!
We meet in the middle of the hallway under the harsh overhead lights. He stops about three feet away, outside my personal space but close enough that I can smell that particular warm-spicy scent that's just him. And then I realize with horror that afteryearsmy brain still has his pheromone signature on file.
Christ! What a spectacular waste of neural storage!
"Good game tonight, captain." His voice is quiet, rough around the edges, with none of the usual boom and bluster.
After coming straight out of the disastrous resources meeting, the casual validation coming from him lands like aslapshot to the chest. As if his opinion is the gold standard I've been waiting for, the acknowledgment from on high. As if I need JamesfuckingFitzgerald to tell me what my team has accomplished.
A sound escapes me, a half-laugh that crawls up from that place where I keep all the lessons I learned that summer. It makes him flinch, shoulders drawing up defensively, and the confusion flooding his face would be hilarious if I weren't so far past humor I can't even see it in the rearview mirror.
