Page 124 of Unmanageable

Wade waves a thick, calloused hand, cutting me off before I can launch into an administrative protocol. “Oh, girl, I don’t care about your relationships.”

He turns his eyes back to the ice, his ancient hand resting flat on the top of his wooden stick. “I just know he took the break he needed, and now everything is alright. Look at him out there. He’s playing like a star.”

He turns back to the ice, raising his stick six inches off the floorboards.

Tap.

Cash instantly snaps his head toward the bench.

“The glove is dropping when you move south, Finnian!” Wade shouts. “You’re tucked in like a pregnant hen. Keep the thumb up or I’m turning the machine up to ninety.”

Cash doesn’t say anything. He just raises his left hand two inches, his glove pocket opening up like a net, his body going perfectly still as the machine clicks into gear again.

“He’s better than the tape they sent me from Boston,” Wade says, his voice dropping back into that low, private rattle. “In Boston, he was playing like he wanted to break the posts. Out here, he’s just… taking up space. That’s what a goalie is supposed to do. Be a wall that doesn’t have an opinion.”

“He has a lot of opinions,” I mutter under my breath.

“Not when he’s on the ice,” Wade says.

***

“You look like a blue crab, Scottie.”

“My toes have been dead since seven-thirty,” I say, my teeth clicking together as I try to stand up. My knees groan from the prolonged chill. “If we stay here another ten minutes, you’re going to have to wheel me into the GM meeting on a hand truck.”

Cash drops his hand onto the top of my head, his fingers cold and damp from the glove liners but his palm still throwing off an incredible amount of body heat. He gives my head a small shake, his mouth twisting into that familiar, lazy smirk that means the Gary Potts persona hasn’t entirely left his system.

“That old man is a lunatic,” he rumbles. “He told me my lateral recovery looked like a duck with a broken hip.”

“He said you look like a cement mixer when you’re angry,” I say, wrapping the fleece tighter around my shoulders as we start walking toward the dressing room.

“The old man is right about the heel, though,” Cash grunts, pulling his goalie pants down over his hips as we hit the threshold of the small, white-tiled room. “I’ve been letting the left skate drift since the preseason. Nobody else saw it.”

“Wade saw it from sixty feet away without his glasses,” I say, sitting down on the wooden bench across from his stall. “The Oklahoma scouts called twice while you were on the ice. They heard a rumor about the shoulder.”

“What did you tell them?” He doesn’t look up, his fingers working the thick leather straps of his leg pads, dropping them onto the floorboards with two thuds.

“I told them you were doing regular maintenance,” I say.

“Maintenance,” he echoes, the word coming out as a low, dry chuckle. “What am I, a Ford F-150 with a loose alternator?”

“Basically,” I reply, leaning back against the wooden lockers and crossing my ankles. “I told them that your joints are fully optimized for stealing games away from anyone foolish enough to doubt it. And then I asked if Boston was still struggling with their power play percentage, because I figured they had too much free time to be calling me directly.”

Cash laughs out loud then, a rich, full sound that bounces off the white tile and fills up the empty dressing room. He drops the rest of his gear with a clatter and strides across the floor, stopping right in front of the bench.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” he says.

“You spend like 50 percent of your time on my bad side,” I point out, offering a dry little smile. “You did play out of your mind today. You were terrifying, actually.”

“That’s the goal.”

Down the concrete hall, a heavy door swings open, followed by the low, polite rumble of the home team’s general manager.

Cash rolls his eyes toward the hallway, letting out a breath, but the lazy smirk is back on his face.

“Duty calls.” He grabs a fresh black polo from his stall, tugging it over his shoulders as he steps out to greet him. “Hold down the fort, Scottie. Try not to sell off my goalie sticks while I’m being polite to our host.”

“No promises,” I say as he moves toward the door. “If the price is right, those pads are getting listed by two o’clock.”