Page 27 of Cold Comeback
Knox was right. I was already in deeper than I'd thought.
My phone sat on the counter, with Thatcher's contact still saved, never deleted. I could text him. Apologize for being a coward. Explain that I was scared and stupid and wanted him more than I'd wanted anything in years.
Instead, I set it down and went to bed, knowing that tomorrow would bring another excuse to seek him out. Another reason to be close to him. Another opportunity to pretend I had any control over this situation.
The captain who'd built his identity on steel discipline was losing the battle against wanting Thatcher Drake. Fighting it felt pointless now. I needed to stop pretending I could win a war I'd never really wanted to win in the first place.
Chapter seven
Thatcher
Iwalked into Dot's Place expecting the usual chaos of twenty hockey players descending on a small-town breakfast diner.
I thought,Dad would call this settling, meeting up with my peers in some backwater diner instead of a proper restaurant.
What I didn't expect was the intricate seating politics that would make navigating a Southern church potluck look easy.
The place was exactly what you'd find in any hockey town—vinyl booths with cracks held together by duct tape and coffee strong enough to wake the dead. The morning crowd of construction workers and early commuters had already cleared out, leaving the diner to us.
There was an order to it all that I was only beginning to understand.
Rookies clustered near the door, close enough to make a quick escape if they said something stupid. They spoke in hushed tones and ordered off the cheap side of the menu. The veterans claimed the back booths like kings holding court, spreading out with newspapers and coffee refills that never stopped coming.
Leadership—Gideon, the assistant captains, and a few of the older guys—had taken up residence at the counter, where they could see the whole room and maintain casual authority over the proceedings.
"Over here, Drake!" Linc waved me toward a middle booth where he and Pluto had saved me a seat—perfect neutral territory. I wasn't presumptuous enough to join the leadership table, but neither was I relegated to rookie row.
I slid in next to Pluto, who was methodically working through a stack of pancakes that could have fed a small village.
"Morning, sunshine," Linc said, pushing a coffee mug toward me. "Sleep okay in your cursed bedroom?"
"Still breathing, so I'm calling it a win."
The door chimed, and Jet walked in wearing khakis, a polo shirt, and the Grim Reaper skull head from his mascot costume. He moved through the diner, treating it as entirely usual, nodding to teammates as he passed.
I stared. "Is he—?"
"Oh, yeah." Pluto paused mid-pour to create what appeared to be a syrup peace sign on his pancakes. "Jet never takes the head off in public. Says it helps him stay in character. Personally, I think he likes the excuse not to make small talk with strangers, but who am I to judge a man's coping mechanisms?"
Jet slid onto a counter stool next to Knox. The waitress—a middle-aged woman with graying hair and eyes that had seen everything—barely glanced at him.
"The usual, hon?" she asked, refilling his coffee mug.
"Thanks, Dolores," came the muffled reply from inside the skull. "Extra bacon today."
Nobody batted an eye. It was the surreal becoming routine in minor league hockey.
I looked around the room with new eyes. Knox was deep into a rant about his ex-wife trying to get more alimony. A couple ofveterans discussed refinancing their mortgages. Near the door, Bricks and another rookie nervously joked about making rent.
These weren't merely hockey players killing time between practices. They were men who'd chosen to build lives around the game, even when the game couldn't promise them fame or fortune.
Is that settling, or is it commitment?
When Coach walked in, the entire energy of the diner shifted. Conversations didn't stop, but they dropped in volume. Postures straightened slightly.
Gideon sat with the coaching staff, but I caught him glancing at our table multiple times. Each time our eyes met, he looked away quickly.
The food was better than expected—eggs cooked properly, bacon that didn't taste like cardboard, and coffee that tasted like more than brown water. I understood why breakfast at Dot's was a team tradition.
