Page 33 of The Longest Shot
"Follow me," I hear myself say, the words clipped and cold.
Because thelastthing my team needs is me making a scene.
I turn on my heel and head for the service corridor that runs behind the locker rooms. It's where they keep the maintenance equipment, the spare mats, and all the unglamorous infrastructure that keeps this place running. More importantly, it's private.
No cameras and no one to witness what I'm about to do.
No one to stop me from finally saying what I should have said three years ago.
I hear his footsteps behind me, and the door swings shut behind us with a metallic clang that echoes in the confined space. When I'm sure we're alone, I whirl around so fast he almost runs into me. He stumbles back, and now he's trapped between me and the door.
Good.
Let him feel unsteady for once.
"Good game?" The words come out like a poison. "Is that what you think this shit between us is about? Hockey?"
I step closer, close enough that he has to look down to meet my eyes. Close enough that I can see his pupils dilate in the dim light. Close enough that there's nowhere for him to hide behind jokes or grins or that manic energy he uses as armor.
"You're a joke, Fitzgerald." My voice is low. "You're a court jester dancing for a predator who looks at my players like they're items on a menu. You lead a pack of entitled assholes who treat our space like their personal playground, and you have the audacity to tell me 'good game'? You think that makes any of this OK?"
His face cycles through shock, then hurt, then something darker. His jaw tightens, a muscle pulsing beneath the skin, and color floods his cheeks. Then the words explode out of him, his voice bouncing off the concrete walls. "What the hell do you want from me, Morgan?"
It's the first time I've heard him genuinely angry—no performance, no audience, just raw frustration that makes his voice crack on my name. Good. Because, for once, it'shimfeeling some of the confusion and hurt and anger that I felt three years ago, and I now feel every day as my team gets shafted.
"I saved your player! I pulled that bar off Mills! And I can't control what Galloway does! I'mtryinghere, OK?" His hands come out of his pockets, gesturing wildly, and I can see they're shaking. "I'm trying to keep my team in line, trying to share the space, trying to?—"
He breaks off, running both hands through his hair in pure exasperation. His chest heaves, and there's something wild in his eyes. But those two words hang in the air—I'm trying—and something inside me goes very still. The rage doesn't dissipate, it crystallizes, becoming something colder and more dangerous.
He's trying.
Now.
Three years too late, when it costs him nothing, when there's no risk, when he's the king of his world with all the resources he wants, and I'm the ice queen who has to beg for scraps and accept being leered at to get them. Now he wants a participation trophy for not being a complete asshole.
But not then.
Not when it mattered.
Not when I stood there with my heart cracked open, showing him everything inside, and he decided it was all a joke.
"From you?" My voice drops to barely a whisper, but in the narrow corridor, it might as well be a scream. "I don't want anything from you."
I take one more step forward, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. Close enough to see each individual eyelash. Close enough that if I were a different person, if I hadn't learned my lesson, I could rise on my toes and?—
No.
"I learned that lesson three summers ago." The words come out, precise and surgical, and I watch his forehead crease in confusion for just a moment before I deliver the killing blow. "The last time we were alone together, James. The first time I heard the joke masquerading as emotion."
The silence that follows is absolute.
I watch the blood drain from his face in real time. His mouth opens and closes.
His eyes go wide, wider, widest.
He knows.
And now, for once in his life, he has absolutely nothing to say.
