Page 22 of Top Shelf

Sloane’s eyes move over my face, and she hands me the tablet next. “You have seven minutes.”

Carina points at the protein bar. “Eat.”

I tear open the wrapper with my teeth, then shove some into my mouth. The first bite tastes like peanuts and chalk, and I glare at Carina before letting my eyes drift toward the window. Through the glass, I can see a thin slice of the parking lot.

Viktor and Priscilla are long gone, but for a moment I can feel his thumb back under my chin, and the snapping sound of the helmet visor. The way he called me precious cargo.

I look down at my lap. My hands want to shake, so I make them fold the shiny wrapper instead. Once, then twice, until it’s in small, neat creases. Then I flick it into the trash, tap on my tablet, and reach for the door.

Room four. Mr. Alvarez. Wedding shoes, and a daughter to walk down an aisle.

Then funding. The lease. And the rest of my life.

The air goes all the way down when I breathe in this time, and I walk into the treatment room, smiling like my future isn’t on fire.

“Mr. Alvarez,” I say, setting my tablet down. “I hear we have important shoes to discuss.”

Chapter four

Viktor

The rink is the easiest place in my life.

Not because hockey is easy. Hockey is pressure and speed and decisions made so fast the body often finishes them before the mind has realized. It is a shoulder braced against glass and a puck coming fast enough to break bone if the angle is wrong.

I arrive at the arena three hours before puck drop with my suit jacket over my arm, and the feel of my phone vibrating in my pocket. It has been doing this since the Moreno Clinic. I do not look at it, because I know who it will be. Mamma. Freja. Lund. Maybe Anton, who has decided today is the day we should speak calmly about the thing he intends to cut apart.

But I have not answered him, which is maybe not mature, but it is definitely satisfying.

The players’ entrance is cold as I walk in and ignore the social media admin videoing me, while other staff move through the hall with clipboards and radios. A trainer passes with three rolls of tape stacked on his wrist. Music thuds from the locker room, and from somewhere around the corner I can hear my teammate Chase Walton already laughing at a volume that suggests he is either telling a story or committing to a dare.

“Vik.”

Reid Hutchison stands near the hallway that leads toward the family room, with his daughter strapped to his chest in a carrier. Retirement suits Reid in a way he pretends not to enjoy, but he still comes in a few times a week as a consultant for the goalie staff.

Mostly, though, he is Ivy’s father.

She is eighteen months old, wearing noise-canceling headphones pushed crookedly over her dark hair, and her fist is wrapped around the drawstring of Reid’s hoodie. She looks at me with an expression she clearly inherited from Carina.

“Your daughter is judging my suit,” I say.

“She judges everyone. It’s advanced social development.”

Ivy kicks a small foot. “Bah!”

“Yes,” Reid nods down at her. “Exactly.”

“Carina is in surgery?”

“Trauma case ran long.” He adjusts one of Ivy’s headphone cups. “Zoe’s taking this one to the family room before warmups, once she’s finished teaching Chase about not giving babies too many pretzel sticks.”

From down the hall, Chase’s voice carries. “You’re just jealous!”

Reid closes his eyes.

“Bah!” Ivy exclaims excitedly.

Before I can comment, Zoe Carlson appears around the corner, her long dark hair falling over her shoulder, brown eyes sharp with the look she gets when she’s already negotiated with three hockey players, a member of the press, and Chase Walton all within the same hour. There is green Arapaho beadwork at her ears, dangling bright against her black blazer, and a child-sized backpack hanging from her hand.