Page 25 of Offside for Christmas
"That's what everyone says when they mean no."
"Then I'll think about it and actually mean it."
Ellie's lips twitched. "We'll see."
After the session ended, Cole stayed in the training room for his required cooldown. Ellie had been very specific: fifteen minutes of gentle stretching, followed by ice on the shoulder, followed by more stretching.
"You skip the cooldown, you undo all the work we just did," she'd said, pointing at him with the intensity of a general issuing battlefield commands. "Don't make me come find you again."
So Cole stretched, iced, and stretched some more, alone in the quiet training room while the team filtered into the locker room next door.
And through the walls—thin walls, apparently—he could hear everything.
Mac's voice, loud and cheerful: "Okay, guys, Secret Santa assignments! Everyone take a name, no trading, no complaining."
Someone—the guy named Luke, maybe—groaning about getting Coach again.
Another voice: "Die Hard is absolutely a Christmas movie."
"It's a Christmas movie that happens to have action. There's a difference."
"There's no difference! It's set at Christmas, it's about Christmas, it's a Christmas movie!"
Laughter. The sound of lockers slamming. Someone's phone playing Christmas music.
Mac again: "Don't forget, kids' skating party next Saturday. We need volunteers. Cole's supposed to help too—Ellie, you told him about that, right?"
Ellie's voice, faint but audible: "Not yet. He's barely been here a week, Mac."
"Well, tell him! The kids are gonna love him. Big scary NHL guy teaching them to skate? They'll lose their minds."
More laughter. Someone making a joke Cole didn't quite catch.
Cole sat on the PT table, ice pack pressed to his shoulder, and felt something uncomfortably close to longing settle in his chest.
They actually like each other, he thought.It's not just a job. It's not just a team. It's…
When was the last time he'd had that? New York, maybe, his first year before the trades started. Or junior hockey, back when he was nineteen and stupid and thought having teammates meant having friends.
But the trades had taught him better. People left. Teams changed. Attachment was a liability.
Except these guys didn't seem to know that. They seemed perfectly happy to treat each other like family, to care about each other's lives, to show up for kids' skate parties and Secret Santa exchanges like it mattered.
The training room door opened. Ellie poked her head in.
"How's the shoulder?"
Cole looked down at the ice pack like he'd forgotten it was there. "Sore."
"Good sore or bad sore?"
He considered. The pain was different than it had been—deeper, but cleaner somehow. Like his body was actually healing instead of just holding itself together with spite and painkillers.
"Good, I think," he said. "Feels like it's actually working instead of just... existing."
Ellie's face lit up—just slightly, just enough that Cole caught it—and he realized that was the first genuinely positive thing he'd said to her.
"Progress," she said, pleased. "Keep up the ice tonight. Twenty minutes before bed."
