Page 16 of The Longest Shot
Three days ago.
The day after I'd publicly humiliated Morgan and her entire team by spraying her with ice like some kind of territorial animal pissing to mark its turf. The memory of the look in her eyes hits hard, those pale gray eyes that used to look at me like I mattered going completely blank.
Not angry. Not disappointed. Just… empty.
Stop. Make noise. Fill the space.
"Chaos scenarios are essential for team-building," I announce to the room at large, my voice bouncing off the walls. "You never know when?—"
"When you'll need to dodge flying pucks while hopping on one foot?" Leo Cooper's voice cuts me off, although he doesn't even look up from where he's methodically re-taping his stick, each wrap as precise as a surgeon's suture. "Revolutionary tactics, Rook."
"Cooper, you're killing me here." I press my hand against my chest dramatically, stumbling backward until I collide with Ben Kellerman's locker. The kid jumps like I've hit him with a defibrillator, his phone clattering to the floor. "Kellerman! Were you watching porn?"
"What? No! I was—" His face goes tomato-red. "I was texting my mom!"
"Even worse," I bellow, scooping up his phone and holding it high above my head. He stretches for it, all six-foot-four of gangly limbs and anxiety. "What kind of sick shit are you sending to dear old… oh… is that a picture of a casserole, or some weird fetish?"
"See?" he protests.
I glance at the screen again, and yeah, his mom definitely sent him a photo of what appears to be a casserole. "Is this tuna? Christ, Kellerman, you poor guy."
I toss the phone back to him, already moving, already searching for the next distraction, because I know that just on the other side of this wall, Morgan and her team are getting ready fortheirtime on the ice, after our time—longer, more conveniently timed, and more frequently available—came to an end.
Since the 'Ice War' (as Cooper termed it), the women's team has been a collection of ghosts haunting the arena. Twenty setsof eyes that look through us at every possible opportunity unless forced to engage, while Morgan herself hasn't acknowledged my existence once.
Not a glare. Not a sneer.
Nothing.
And they're winning. Not on the ice, because the season hasn't started yet, but in this psychological warfare, they're absolutely destroying us. You can see it in the way my teammates' jokes have gotten forced, their laughter pitched too high. They're trying to bond with the women's team and getting nothing back.
Yesterday, Kellerman tried to hold the door for Mills—a sweet gesture from a kid whose mom clearly raised him right—and she walked past him like he was furniture. He stood there, still holding the door open to nothing, looking like a golden retriever whose owner just pretended he didn't exist.
"Hey, Rook!" Javier Martinez's voice cuts through. "You good, Captain?"
No. I'm dreading the first game because it might reveal I'm an impostor, while being simultaneously scared shitless and unable to stop thinking about the woman who's probably less than thirty feet and a wall away, and I'm an inch away from failing… well… every subject…
"Never better, Javi!" I grab a roll of tape and launch it at his head. He ducks, laughing. "Your reflexes are getting better. Must be all that?—"
The sound starts as a whisper, then turns into a groaning rumble from somewhere deep in the building's bowels. Everyone freezes. Even my manic energy stutters to a halt as we all turn toward the shower area, where the sound is getting louder, angrier, building to something distinctly apocalyptic.
CRACK.
The noise is catastrophic, and, for one perfect second, we all stand frozen.
Then the water comes.
It doesn't trickle or leak or politely request entry. It explodes from under the utility room door in a rust-brown torrent. The stench hits first, and fuck, you know it's bad if hockey players used to sweat-filled locker rooms are gagging and running for the other side of the room.
"HOLY FUCK!"
The locker room erupts. Schmidt vaults onto a bench with his bruised leg, landing hard and releasing what sounds like extremely creative German profanity. Kellerman's doing some kind of interpretive dance to avoid the rising water. Martinez is pressing himself against his locker.
I'm grabbing gear at random—jerseys, pads, and somebody's lucky jockstrap that absolutely should have been washed six months ago—throwing them onto higher ground while the water keeps coming. It's ankle-deep now, warm in a way that makes my skin crawl, with chunks of… something… floating past.
"My laptop!" someone screams.
"My jersey!"
