The alternate captaincy is a huge responsibility. It means the team trusts you to lead when the captain can't. It means you represent the organization on and off the ice. You get to attend sponsor events and charity appearances.
I'm not Cole or Novak. I don't light up a room, but I've been showing up for this team for six years, and the organization saw that. When Coach told me, I shook his hand and said I wouldn't let him down.
Talking to strangers about things that aren't hockey doesn't come naturally. But I’m doing my very best. “Cole's idea of a joke.”
Nolan doesn't look up from his phone. “Just stand in the corner and look intimidating. That's basically your personality anyway.”
I deadpan .“Thanks.”
“I'm helping.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, expecting Blake or the team group chat.
It's a number I don't have saved.
Hi Logan. It's Jasmine Bennett. I wanted to let you know my firm has been assigned to handle the Renegades' sponsorship contracts, and I'll be the lead on the account. I'm sure we can keep things professional. Hope you're well.
I read it twice.
The living room shrinks. Jasmine.MyJasmine. Well, not mine anymore. She hasn’t been mine for a long time. My face twitches. I close the message and put my phone back in my pocket with a shaking hand.
2
Jasmine
“The Renegades account,” Mabel starts, flipping open a folder on her desk. Her office is on the twenty-fifth floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Sixth Avenue. She’s earned every square foot of it. “Walk me through where you are.”
Mabel Scott has been managing partner at Caldwell, Price & Associates for eleven years.
She built the practice from a three-person team to the largest department in the firm. She's in her early fifties, with silver-streaked hair that she wears in a sharp bob.
She brought me under her wing four years ago. I was two years into the firm, grinding away on mid-level contracts nobody else wanted, billing more hours than any associate at my level. Mabel called me into this office, sat me in this exact chair, and said she'd been watching my work. She said I had potential and that potential was useless without direction.
Then she assigned me my first major client.
I've been trying to earn her approval ever since. She's the first woman I've met in this industry who built what she built without apology, and I want to be sitting in her chair in twenty years.
“I've reviewed all twelve active sponsorship agreements,” I say. “The biggest priority is the Tier 1 sportswear brand renewal. Their contract expires at the end of the season, and the sponsor is pushing to expand the deal. I have a call with the Renegades' Director of Corporate Partnerships to discuss specifics.”
Mabel nods. “What else?”
“I flagged a compliance concern with the sports betting partner. Their in-app integration may not meet the current New York State Gaming Commission guidelines. I'm drafting a memo.”
“Good. That's the kind of thing that blows up quietly and costs everyone money.” She closes the folder. “The Renegades are a high-visibility client, Jasmine. The partners are paying attention.”
“I understand.”
“I expect you at the game tonight and the sponsor appreciation event on Saturday.”
At the mention of the game, my stomach turns to water. When I took on this assignment, I knew that at some point I would have to see Logan. But I pushed that frightening thought to the back of my mind, figuring that it was a future me problem.
Except the future is here now, and I’m no more prepared now than I was then.
I followed Logan’s career for a few years, and every time I saw him on screen, the pain came all over again. But that was then. I was younger and still raw from the way his mother dismissed me, and still angry that he didn't fight.
I'm not that person anymore. I'm a senior associate at one of the best firms in Manhattan. I have my own career and my own life. Logan Shaw is just a player on my client's roster.
We are adults. Whatever happened between us was a decade ago, and we were children. “I'll be at both.”
