“Toni.”
“Max.” We stare at each other through the steam. The amber glow catches the line of her jaw. The loose hair. Two years ago she laughed and it pulled that hair sideways, and I’ve thought about it since. “Why didn’t you just pretend you didn’t recognize me?” she asks.
The question settles in the air between us. No buildup. Just the question. I hold it for a second. Then: “You know why.”
“Say it anyway.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees again, and look at her directly. “You were my most unforgettable night, then you disappeared as though I was something to escape.” The honesty costs me more than I expect. I’m not built for it. Not in this direction, anyway. Give me a fight on the ice and I’ll bleed without flinching. But this? Sitting in the sauna and telling a woman she mattered? Different kinds of exposure.
Her jaw is locked. But her eyes give her away. They always do. “I had reasons,” she says.
“I know. The job. The rules. The father who’s officiated games for decades and already hates players like me.” I tilt my head. “How amI doing?”
“Twenty-nine years, he’s officiated. You’ve been doing research.”
“You do research. I pay attention.” The steam thickens between us. She looks at the wall, then back at me. She's deciding something. I can see it in the way she's holding herself, the cautious version, doing battle with the one I know from Rockford. I saw her tonight before she saw me. Sitting out there in the parking lot for four minutes. Head forward. Just breathing. She looked like someone surviving something. Not sure what it costs her, being so buttoned up. But I saw what it looked like in Rockford when she stopped trying. “Still running?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. Doesn’t snap at me or reach for the clipboard she doesn’t have. Just considers. “There was an unfortunate history with a hockey player before we met. I followed him against my father’s wishes.” The air shifts around her. Her shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. She draws nearer instead. Not close enough to touch. But more personal than professional. Closer than safe. Near enough that I can see the faint flush across her collarbones that isn’t just the sauna. “This conversation isn’t happening,” she says.
“No?”
“No. And if you mention it?—“
“I won’t.” She and I lock eyes. “I don’t want an audience for you.” That one echoes differently than anything else I've said all week. I watch it move through her. The flicker. The way she stills.
She steps back.One step. Back to her bench. Her spine straightens, hands resting atop her lap. “Get some sleep, Max,” she says. “You’ve got a seven-thirty session tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes narrow. She almost smiles. Doesn’t. The door opens, and she’s gone. The cool air from the hallway cuts through the steam for exactly three seconds before the heat seals back around me.
I sit in it.
Outside, through the hallway, I hear the click of her heels picking back up the rhythm they’d lost when she walked in barefoot.
Leaning my head back against the wall, I let out a sigh.I don’t want an audience for you.This week, I’ve said a lot of things. Smart things, dumb things, things designed to get a rise out of her.
That one I meant. The woman I want is the one she only lets exist in private. She knows it. That's what costs her.
Chapter Ten
Max Stevens
I know it’s him before I see the number. The way he moves across the ice during warm-ups. It’s that particular economy, the absence of wasted motion, that lingers in my mind long after I’ve named it.
Forty-one. Frank Amato. Here for the Chicago-Detroit game on a Thursday night that I didn’t check the officiating roster for because I never check the officiating roster. I check the other team’s third line and the defensive pairings and whether their goalie has been running hot. I leave the officials to the officials.
Tonight I wish I hadn’t.
With the same attention he brings to everything, he runs the line check with no performance, just the work of a man who has done this long enough to reduce it to pure function.During warm-ups, he avoids making eye contact with me. He doesn’t need to. The roster is in his packet. My name is on it. He has already decided how to read this game before the puck drops.
The first period is clean. My hard work is dedicated to keeping it that way. Because Trey is observant of everything, he notes that I’ve transformed two potential ugly wins into correct ones, and he skates past me during a line change to remark “nice read” in the distinctive captain’s voice that signifies he’s aware of my actions and not currently seeking an explanation. I don’t answer. I’ll take the next shift and do it again.
The second period is where Frank Amato starts being a problem.
Not wrong. That’s the thing I have to hold onto. He’s not making incorrect calls; he’s making precise ones. A hooking call on me in the neutral zone that goes both ways on this ice approximately twenty times a game and gets called approximately twice. I was hooking. The call is right. I sit two minutes and watch Detroit press on the power play and think about how Frank Amato positions himself on the ice.
He’s been observing my hands closely. I noticed this behavior during my first shift back. He’s the one who takes the angle when I’m engaged in a board battle, and he’s the one who positions himself so that his direct field of vision includes my stick arm. It’s obvious he has made a decision about what to watch. He has watched a thousand players and learned a thousand patterns and decided mine is in my hands. He’s right. My hands are theproblem.
