Page 24 of Stand Your Ground
Coach McCabe stepped into the doorway, his hands shoved into the pockets of his quarter-zip, his sharp eyes scanning over us like a hawk surveying prey. The second we noticed him, the chatter dimmed — not completely, but enough to make the shift in energy obvious.
That was the effect Coach had.
He didn’t yell often. He never had to. He was one of the youngest coaches in the league and had taken Tampa from a team barely considered competition to one of the best. The respect the team gave him was well-earned.
He’d always been a bit of an enigma to me, though. I understood him as a coach, as someone who loved hockey. But I had no idea who he wasoffthe ice. Unlike most coaches in the league, he didn’t have a wife and kids to go home to. And yet, he never went out with the players, never indulged in a way that landed him in any sort of limelight.
I had no idea who he was when he left the rink.
But I knew he was a damn good coach, one I trusted implicitly — one who was healing me from a coach who’d royally fucked me up years ago.
“You played like you wanted it tonight,” he said simply, his voice cutting through the room like a skate blade over fresh ice. “That’s the standard. That’s who we are.”
He paused, his gaze dragging from one end of the locker room to the other, resting on each of us in turn. And for a moment, there was a flicker in his eyes — something unreadable, something almost… tired. But then it was gone, replaced with the same unrelenting fire I’d seen since the day I joined the team.
“Celebrate the win. You earned it. But don’t get comfortable,” he finished, lifting his chin. “Shower up, ice baths if you need them, and bus leaves in forty-five.”
With that, Coach stepped aside, the roar of the locker room returning as quickly as it had quieted. But I couldn’t help watching him as he lingered in the hall for a second longer, jaw tight, like his mind was somewhere far away.
“Jesus, Fabio, you got magnets in your glove or what?” Aleks Suter asked, smirking at me as he stripped his base layer off. “Give the other centermen a fighting chance.”
I couldn’t help my goofy grin at the compliment, especially considering Aleks had given me a harder time than anyone else on the team. He was one of our newer players, a transfer from Seattle, and he had a reputation around the league — and the gossip magazines — for getting into trouble. He was absolutely deadly on the ice, though, which made it impossible not to want him on your team — even if he did end up in the penalty box more than on the bench.
He’d been downright mean to me last season — but that was before he and Mia got together. He’d turned as soft as a bunny then.
Okay maybe notthatsoft, but at least he wasn’t riding my ass all the time now.
I had earned a fraction of his respect, proving to him that I could show up for him and the rest of the team the way the veteran center before me had.
The Ospreys paid a lot of money for my contract. With that deal, they said they believed in me, that they saw my potential to fill the shoes of the player retiring ahead of me.
It was an honor.
It was also an insane amount of pressure that felt like it could crush me at any minute if I stopped long enough to think about it all too hard.
“Yeah, you were on fire that first period, Fabri,” Jaxson piped in. “That no-look pass to Suter was slick.”
Jaxson Brittain was a defenseman and a close friend, one of the few who had given me pep talks and told me I could achieve what I wanted well before anyone else took the time. And it wasn’t because he’d felt bad for me. I knew he genuinely wanted me to stay in The Show. He wanted me to play for the Ospreys and not be sent down to the AHL.
Unfortunately, that had been the case for me for a few years — but I got the hang of things in that last season. When Ifound out a veteran center was retiring and opening a space that needed to be filled, I saw my opportunity.
And I knew I couldn’t blow it.
That was when I signed up to work with the team’s sports psychologist, when I’d found a therapist, when I’d saidenough is enough.
I was far from where I wanted to be, but I’d made progress.
If only that progress transferred to my sex life.
Before my mind could veer off into Livia Young territory, Daddy P clapped me on the shoulder. “Sure, you played alright in the first, but don’t think we’re going to let you live down that dangle.”
It was Vince Tanev’s turn to pipe in, his warm laugh rumbling through the locker room. “Oh, Carter went full highlight mode with that turnover. Did ESPN call and beg for blooper reel gold, or was it just that the Zamboni crew needed a little help sweeping the ice?”
The guys laughed, and I joined in — even if my chest stung a little. They weren’t coming down on me. It was all playful, all love, and I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t take a little razzing.
But there was a little truth beneath those jokes, and it was so fucking hard sometimes for me not to take them personally, not to take those remarks home with me and let them beat me to a pulp.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “Keep talking, Tanny Boy, and I’ll pay the camera crew for footage of that failed attempt at a bar down shot you made in the third and put it on repeat in the team gym.”
