Page 41 of The Grumpy Defenseman

He stood and put a hand on the back of my neck the way he did with rookies after a hard shift, big and warm and absolutely not negotiable, and squeezed once.

“Yeah.”

He let go of my neck and walked toward the door. Halfway there, he stopped and turned.

“And McKinney.”

The last name was back, as if a switch had flipped and the friend was gone, the team leader back in place.

“Yeah.”

“Six-twenty without a spotter. If you ever do that again in my room, I will tell Sully, and Sully will bench you, and you will deserve it. You’re a defenseman. Defensemen do not crush themselves under leg presses because their feelings are hurt.”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

The door closed, and the room went quiet.

Because the only person in it now was a man who had been told the truth and had nowhere to put it down.

I drove home with the windows up and the radio off.

I sat on the couch in the dark and did not turn on a lamp.

My phone was face down on the coffee table. I picked it up. Opened the thread.

Sam.

I set the phone down on the coffee table, screen-up, where I could see it.

Then I sat in the dark and let the guilt stay where it belonged.

I did not text her.

I did not sleep either.

Tomorrow, when she walked into the rink, I would hold my ground and tell her the version that cost.

Chapter eighteen

Samantha

Iwore my armor the way you wear a second skin, so close to the body no one could see where the real person ended and the performance began.

Hair back. Coffee black, because anything with sugar in it felt like a concession to softness I could not afford. I walked into the Stampede’s training facility at seven fifty-eight, two minutes before anyone expected me, because punctuality was a weapon when wielded correctly.

The weight room was already populated. The clang of plates. The low grunts of men who believed pain was a productive use of their morning. Standard atmosphere. Standard day.

Except it was not.

Evan was at the cable machine, back to the door. He did not turn when I walked in.

He always turned when I walked in.

Not dramatically. Not the way Brick waved or the rookies nodded, just that fractional adjustment in his posture, the slight rotation of attention that said he had registered my presence in the room.

Today, nothing.