Page 6 of Cross Checked
Coach Little had been talking for nine minutes and thirty-two seconds when Easton leaned close enough for me to smell spearmint gum and bad judgment.
“Throwing a party tonight,” he whispered.
I kept my eyes on Coach. “No.”
Easton’s shoulder knocked mine lightly. “That wasn’t a question.”
“It should’ve been.”
Across the film room, Coach Little paced in front of the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker in one hand and the exhausted patience of a man who had spent too many years trying to convince twenty-year-old hockey players that talent did not make them invincible. Behind him, the projector showed last season’s final rankings, preseason conditioning expectations, and a neatly organized list of ways we could apparently embarrass the university before October if we forgot how to act like adults.
I was trying to listen.
Actually trying.
Preseason mattered. Structure mattered. The first meeting back always set the tone, and the tone for this year needed to be clean, disciplined, and ugly in the ways that won games. We had the roster for it. Speed. Depth. Goaltending. Campus worship. Alumni pressure. The kind of preseason attention that made everyone outside this room think the Frozen Four was already ours to lose.
Which meant Coach Little was already irritated. Which meant I needed my Goalie and friend, Easton Wade, to shut the hell up.
“You hear me?” Easton whispered.
Unfortunately, yes.
I heard him, the hum of the ancient projector, Briggs tapping his pen against his knee three seats ahead of us, Chris Rider tearing the label off a water bottle with surgical precision, the air vent rattling overhead every fourteen seconds, and the faint squeak of somebody’s shoe dragging against the floor behind me. I heard all of it whether I wanted to or not. My brain had never been polite enough to filter the world down to one thing unless that one thing mattered enough to devour everything else.
Hockey usually did… Bliss Bennett sometimes did.
Which was inconvenient as hell, considering she was not currently in this room, not remotely related to Coach Little’s preseason expectations, and not something I needed taking up space in my head while my team was being reminded that half the school expected us to become legends by Christmas.
“Mercer,” Coach Little snapped.
My eyes cut to him immediately. “Yes, Coach.”
His stare narrowed. “Since you look so focused, tell me what I just said.”
Easton coughed into his fist like the coward he was.
I did not look at him. “No off-campus incidents, no stupid fights, no viral videos, no hazing, no running your mouths to campus media, and if anybody gets arrested before the season opener, you’ll personally make sure we wish we’d picked golf.”
A low ripple of laughter moved through the room.
Coach Little stared at me for two seconds longer before pointing the marker in my direction. “Correct. Which tells meyou can listen while Wade flaps his gums in your ear, but I’d prefer you didn’t encourage him.”
“I’m not encouraging him,” I said. “That is all natural.”
“You exist,” Briggs called from the front row. “That encourages him.”
Easton grinned like an idiot.
Coach Little rubbed a hand over his face. “Lawson, I have not missed you.”
“Hurts, Coach.” Briggs mocks with a pout.
“It was meant to.”
The room settled again, but the energy had shifted into that familiar Fury rhythm I knew better than almost anything. Too many bodies in one space, all of us fresh off summer conditioning and already restless for ice. The film room smelled like athletic tape, cold coffee, laundry detergent, and the faint chemical bite of the rink that seemed permanently embedded in every wall of the building. Some guys sat forward, elbows on knees, already locked in. Others sprawled like they were allergic to authority. Briggs looked like he was one bad decision away from turning the meeting into performance art, and Rider sat beside him with that infuriating calm he had, like nothing in the world could surprise him because he’d already decided he was too pretty to react.
Easton, unfortunately, was still breathing next to me with purpose.
