“Sure.” She takes another sip of her coffee. “That’s why you’ve got your hand in your hair and your jaw doing that thing it does when you’re two seconds from losing it.”
My hand is, in fact, buried in my hair. I yank it down.
The team watches this with interest. Shep has completely abandoned his punishment laps and sags against the boards, mouth hanging open.
“We should all probably be taking notes,” he whispers to nobody in particular. “This is historical.”
“Sawyer, I swear to—”
“Bennett.” Gisele cuts me off, her voice softer now but no less pointed. “I’m not here to rescue you. I told you yesterday. I’m not going to smooth this over or pretend it didn’t happen or let you retreat back behind your walls until the next time you crack.”
“Then why are you here?”
She smiles. It’s not comforting.
“To watch you realize you can’t outrun it this time.”
The words hit like a check into the boards—hard enough to rattle, hard enough to leave a bruise. Because she’s right, and we both know it. I’ve been trying to outrun this since I peeled myself off that asphalt. Trying to muscle my way back to normal, to control, to the version of myself that holds everything together through sheer force of will.
But the team’s already seen the cracks. The whole town has. And Gisele LaRue is standing in my arena, in front of my players, making it very clear that she has no intention of letting me pretend those cracks don’t exist.
“Practice is over.” I hear myself say the words without deciding to say them. “Cool down, stretch, get out. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
Protests immediately. Confused looks. Shep actually raises his hand like we’re in elementary school.
“Cap, we’ve only been at it for forty-five minutes. The power play sequence—”
“Tomorrow.”
I skate toward the bench, toward the exit, toward anywhere that isn’t here with her eyes on me and my team watching me unravel in slow motion. My legs feel foreign. My chest is too tight.
But before I can make it off the ice, Gisele steps into my path.
“Nope.” She doesn’t touch me, but she might as well have. The force of her presence stops me cold. “You don’t get to end practice early and call it control. That’s avoidance. Different thing.”
“Move.”
“Make me.”
We’re standing close enough that I can smell her—floral and sharp, underneath the coffee and the cold rink air. Close enoughthat I can see the determination in her eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw.
She’s not going anywhere.
“What do you want from me?” The question comes out raw, unfiltered. Not the captain voice. Not controlled. Just... me.
“I told you.” She holds my gaze, steady and unflinching. “Participation. Real engagement. Emotional honesty that doesn’t resemble sitting in the middle of a street because you don’t know how to ask for help.”
“And you think showing up to my practice and humiliating me in front of my team is going to accomplish that?”
“I think nothing else has worked.” She shrugs. “So yeah. We’re trying something new.”
Behind her, the team files off the ice—slowly, reluctantly, several of them literally skating backward so they don’t miss a second of whatever this is. Shep actually waves at me as he goes, like this is the best entertainment he’s had in months.
Traitor.
When I look back at Gisele, she’s still standing there, arms crossed, completely unmoved by the fact that she just dynamited my authority in front of twenty professional athletes.
She looks proud of herself.
