Page 84 of The Best Parts of Him
“Sports management.”
“Let me guess—you want to be a sports agent someday.”
Van Asten grinned, showing off a slight gap between his front teeth. “Totally.”
Good for him, already knowing what he wanted to do when he was done with hockey. Ryland hadn’t had a clue what would come after he retired. Had been so focused on hockey for years that he hadn’t thought much about it.
But then Dabbs had stressed teamwork, and he’d met Roman Kinsey, and he’d begun implementing some team-bonding stuff with the Pilots, and voilà! He was a director of player engagement in training.
Unofficially.
Miles had once called him Roman Kinsey 2.0, and Ryland had been immensely delighted by that.
Because it had worked. Slowly, little by little, the team had come together. Amid retiring and departing players and welcoming new acquisitions, it hadn’t been easy maintaining a team culture of trust, respect, communication, and unity. With Kinsey acting as a mentor of sorts over the past three years, it had allowed Ryland to bounce ideas off him.
The Pilots had made it to the playoffs three seasons running. That wasn’t all attributed to Ryland’s dogged efforts at dismantling the team’s cliquey culture, obviously, but it had played a part. Coach Fahey took a job out west, and the new coaching staff stepped it up. Add in a new emphasis on player development, and everything worked in tandem to make the playoffs happen.
The first two seasons, they’d been eliminated in round one. But this past season, they’d made it all the way to the conference finals before being eliminated in game seven.
By the goddamn Vermont Trailblazers.
Smiling to himself as he walked Van Asten through the rest of the athletics facility, Ryland twirled his wedding ring around on his finger.
Despite agreeing to keep work and their relationship separate, there’d been some bumps in their marriage during the two-week period in May that their teams had played against each other. Tensions had run high on both sides, the pressure from sponsors, fans, and management eating them both up from the inside.
Ryland very much did not recommend playing against one’s husband in the playoffs less than a year after getting hitched.
Of course, they could laugh about it now, months later. But at the time, things had felt . . . wobbly. They hadn’t argued, exactly, but the air between them had been thick.
It wasn’t until Dabbs’ post-game interview after the Trailblazers had won game seven, cementing their spot in the Stanley Cup Finals, that the tension had cracked.
“You won against your husband tonight. How does it feel to win such an important game while playing on opposing teams?” an interviewer had asked.
Dabbs, normally so even-keeled, had narrowed that gray-eyed gaze and snapped, “How do you think it feels?”
Ryland had dragged him aside after that and hugged him to death, and he hadn’t let go for a very long time.
Would he have liked to make it to the finals during his last season before retirement?
Sure.
Would he have liked to win the cup?
Obviously.
But he wasn’t the only retired player without a Stanley Cup under his belt. He’d get over it.
Besides, now he had this sweet gig as the manager of player aesthetics, which was just a fancy term for player engagement, and his job was to do for the Glen Hill College Mountaineers what Roman Kinsey did for the Vermont Trailblazers.
In fact, the college had offered the position to Kinsey first, but the man would live and die a Trailblazer, and no money in the world would make him leave the organization.
So he’d given them Ryland’s number.
“And that’s it,” Ryland said, walking side by side with Van Asten back toward the athletics facility’s main entrance. “Any questions?”
“There’s even a pool in the building,” Van Asten said in awe. “Are we allowed to use it?”
Ryland nodded. “It’s the only community pool in Glen Hill, so it’s open to the general public, and sometimes it closes for private or small-group classes, but there’s a schedule on the website.”
