Page 13 of The Longest Shot
Then she does something worse than yelling, worse than fighting back. She wipes the ice from her face with one deliberate swipe of her glove, slow and controlled, like she's wiping away something disgusting and beneath her notice. The gesture is so coldly dismissive it might as well be a middle finger.
"Let's go," she says to her team, her voice steady and professional as she turns her back on me. "We'll run a practice outside."
They follow her in perfect formation, not one of them looking back. The sound of their skates on the rubber flooring is measured, disciplined. Everything I'm not. Everything my team is not. And, as Schmidt skates over, I can feel his disapproval radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
"Dude," Schmidt says, but even he seems to realize there's no good way to finish that sentence.
I'm standing at center ice, ice shavings melting into puddles around my skates, feeling like the world's biggest asshole. Because I had the chance to be better, to talk to her or apologize, and instead I sprayed ice in her face and called her a name meant to hurt her and win me more laughs, more noise, more chaos.
And the worst part?
She didn't even give me the satisfaction of a reaction. She just… left. Took her team and walked away like I'm not worth the energy it would take to fight back. Like I'm nothing. Background noise. A minor inconvenience to route around, like a pothole or a piece of gum on the sidewalk.
Now, standing here, watching her walk away again, I realize I fucked up. Again. Because apparently that's my thing with Morgan Riley—taking something that could be good and setting it on fire just to watch the pretty colors, then regretting that there's nothing but ash left behind.
"Practice is over," I say, my voice coming out rougher than intended. "Clear ice."
Nobody argues. They can probably smell the self-loathing rolling off me in waves, mixing with the stench of my gear. As they file off, Schmidt catches my eye. He doesn't say anything—he never does—but his expression says enough:You fucked up.
Yeah. I know.
I stay on the ice after everyone's gone, staring at the spot where she stood. Three years ago, I let her walk away because I was too scared to be real. Today, I drove her away because I'm too broken to be better. Same result, though. She's gone, and I'm exactly who she knew I was.
I finally move, skating toward the bench with all the enthusiasm of someone heading to their own execution. My phone's probably already blowing up with the guys replaying the moment, turning it into a legend that'll last longer than I will here.Remember when Rook iced the captain of the women's team?
They'll tell that story for years.
But the woman Idesperatelywanted to give me some sort of reaction other than stony-faced silence—because I can't handle silence—won't tell it at all. She'll just file it away as confirmation that I'm exactly as worthless as she suspected, after yet another example of being let down by me.
I grab my water bottle from the bench, but my hands are shaking too much to get the cap off. Pathetic. I'm the guy who stops hundred-mile-per-hour slap shots with my face, and I can't open a fucking water bottle because a girl with red hair looked at me like I was nothing.
No, actually.
Worse.
Exactly what she expected.
six
MORGAN
I'mthe last one into our locker room, and the door slams shut behind me with a metallic crash that reverberates through my bones. The sound is a physical manifestation of the rage roaring inside of me after JamesfuckingFitzgerald's pathetic performance on the ice.
I can still feel the cold spray of ice chips melting against my neck, trickling beneath my collar. My hands curl into fists at the insult, but I force myself to loosen them and to calm down. Because, just like retreating rather than escalating, it's necessary.
Because no matter how much I wanted to demonstrate exactly how a hockey stick can become a weapon, doing that would have been the wrong move. Sure, it might have felt good in the moment, humiliating the big-swinging-dick in front of his buddies, but I wasn't going to do that at the expense of my team.
Now I just need to convince them that walking away was the right move.
Their eyes are all on me, twenty women tracking the ice melt dripping from my clothing, searching for cracks in my armor. They don't know me well yet, because we're strangersbound together by recruitment promises and a shared dream of legitimacy.
And this is the moment we might become a team.
Half of these girls transferred from other schools, burning bridges for a chance at something that doesn't even exist yet, under a leader they have no choice but to trust. The other half are walk-ons who were already at PBU, who showed up with duct tape on their skates and more heart than skill.
But right now, they're unified, because every woman has feltthisbefore.
Every one of those girls knows the specific feeling of Fitzgerald's dismissal. They've all met that boy who breaks your science project for laughs, who takes up three bus seats with his hockey bag while you stand, who treats your existence as either entertainment or inconvenience but never as equal.
