The apartment was cold as the heating hadn’t kicked in. I pulled on sweats and made coffee, standing at the window while it brewed and watching the city wake up below me. Denver at dawn was different than Chicago—quieter, maybe, or just less familiar. The mountains were visible in the distance, dark shapes against the lightening sky.
My phone buzzed. A text from Marco:How you feeling? Ma says you’re cleared to skate again.
I typed back:Yeah. First training session today.
The response came almost immediately:That’s great! You nervous?
I stared at that question for a long moment, trying to figure out how to answer it honestly.A little. Want to make sure I’m ready.
You’ll be fine. You’re tough. Love you.
Love you too.
I set the phone down and finished my coffee. Checked the time—six-oh five. I should eat something, but my stomach was doing things that suggested food was a bad idea. I settled for a protein bar and another cup of coffee, then grabbed my gear and headed out.
The hallway was quiet. Odin’s door was closed, no light visible underneath. I wondered what time he woke up, whether we’d start running into each other in the mornings, whether this was going to be as awkward as I was making it in my head.
Probably not. He seemed like a normal person. I was the one making everything complicated.
The drive to the arena took twenty minutes in early-morning traffic. The driver dropped me, and I grabbed my bag, makingmy way inside through the back entrance. The building was mostly empty at this hour, just a few staff members getting ready for the day, the cleaning crew finishing up.
The locker room lights were already on when I got there. I dumped my bag on the bench in front of my stall and started changing into my gear, moving through the familiar routine with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing this since they were six years old. Skates, shin guards, pants, shoulder pads, jersey. Each piece going on in the same order it always did, muscle memory taking over where my brain was too anxious to function properly.
I was lacing up my skates when I heard footsteps in the corridor. Heavy, deliberate, the ones I’d learned to recognize over two months of watching him move.
Kincaid appeared in the doorway, already in his coaching gear—Dragons jacket, whistle around his neck, tablet in one hand. His eyes found me immediately, and something flickered across his face before settling into professional neutrality.
“Russo,” he said. “You’re early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I admitted, then immediately regretted it because that sounded like I was nervous, which I was, but he didn’t need to know that.
“That’s normal before your first skate back.” He moved into the room, set his tablet down on one of the benches. “How are the ribs?”
“Good. No pain.”
“And the head?”
“Clear. Cinder okayed me yesterday.”
He nodded, studying me with intensity that made me want to look away. “Let’s get on the ice,” he said finally. “We’ll start with some basic drills, see where you are.”
I followed him out of the locker room, down the corridor to the rink. The building was still mostly empty, our footsteps echoingoff the concrete. The arena felt different at this hour—bigger, somehow, without the crowd noise and the game-day energy. Just us and the ice and whatever happened next.
Kincaid stepped through the gate first, gliding across the surface with that effortless grace that came from decades on skates. I followed, taking a moment to adjust to the feel of it again after almost two weeks off.
“Let’s start with some basic skating drills,” Kincaid called, already setting up cones at center ice. “Figure eights, transitions, nothing complicated. I want to see how your ribs handle the movement.”
I nodded and started the drills, focusing on the familiar patterns. My body remembered what to do even if my brain was still catching up. Forward crossovers, backward crossovers, tight turns that made my ribs ache but didn’t stop me.
Kincaid watched from center ice, his eyes tracking every movement, and I tried not to think about the fact that we were alone in this building. That his attention was entirely on me for reasons that were completely professional and would never be anything else.
After fifteen minutes of skating drills, he called me over and handed me a stick.
“Shooting practice,” he said. “I’m going to feed you pucks. I want you to take the shot without thinking about it. No second-guessing, no hesitation. Trust your instincts.”
My instincts. Right. The same instincts that had gotten systematically dismantled by Antoine and then made me think my coach was interested in me in ways that were more than just one of his players.
But I took the stick and moved into position at the top of the circle. Kincaid was at the blue line with a pile of pucks, and when the first one came sliding toward me, I one-timed it without thinking.
