Page 123 of Unmanageable

Cash doesn’t argue. He just resets, his massive shoulders dropping three inches, his skates digging back into the crease as he adjusts his depth by two inches—no more, no less.

“Again,” Wade mutters.

I look down at my ledger, trying to force my thumb to coordinate with my index finger to slide the pen across the page.

Oklahoma GM flight delayed until 2:00 PM, I write, the letters shaky from the chill. Wade session 1: Depth recovery metrics stable. Cash’s lateral slide response time decreased by 0.14 seconds under stick cue.

My phone buzzes against my thigh inside the three layers of jackets. It’s a text from the agency office in Boston.

Is O’Connell on the ice? Scouts are asking if the shoulder rumor is real.

I look back through the scratched Plexiglas.

Cash is currently dropping into a full butterfly, his massive limbs expanding to cover the bottom four inches of the net as a puck comes screaming off the automated shooting machine Wade set up at the slot.

The puck hits his chest protector with a blunt, wet thud, dropping dead into the snow between his skates. He gathers it with his glove, drops it, and resets before the machine can click again.

I type back with one thumb: Shoulder is fine. Regular maintenance skate.

“He’s letting the left heel float,” a voice says right next to my ear.

I jump, my pen skittering across the ledger page in a long, blue streak.

Wade has moved from the blue line to the bench opening without making a single sound on his leather boots. He’s standing right over my folding chair, his face a landscape of gray stubble and deep, permanent wrinkles from thirty winters in the Western Hockey League.

“Mr. Wade,” I say, my voice sounding tight from the cold as I try to stand up.

“Sit down, girl,” he grunts, not looking at me. “You look like a frozen turnip. Why aren’t you inside the warming room?”

“The warming room window has three coats of yellow paint over it,” I say, rubbing my numb knuckles together. “I can’t see him from there.”

Wade lets out a dry, rattling sound from his throat that might be a chuckle. He leans his hip against the wooden boards of the bench, his ancient hands still buried deep in his track jacket.

“He’s a big lad. Stubborn.”

I look down at my shoes. “Mr. Wade, I wanted to apologize about yesterday. The cancellation. It was unprofessional on my part. We had some… logistical delays, and I should have managed the notification better. The agency—”

“The agency can kiss my wrinkled ass,” Wade says smoothly, his tone not changing by a single octave. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a white winter mint, and pops it into his cheek with a loud click against his teeth.

“I’ve been in this game since the six-team era, dear. I know what a boy looks like when his brain is full of mud. If he’d skated yesterday, he’d have spent sixty minutes fighting his own shadow and he’d have pulled a groin trying to prove something to a scout who wasn’t even in the building yet.”

I freeze, my thumb stopping on the edge of my notebook. “What did he tell you?”

“He called me,” Wade grunts, his gray eyes turning down to look at me for the first time. “Said he wasn’t taking the ice. Said he needed twenty-four hours to take care of someone he loves.”

My breath hitches sharply, my fingers tighten around the leather planner so hard the cardboard core bends.

Someone he loves.

Cash has never said those words to me. We aren’t together. We aren’t a couple.

We’re an agent and a client who crashed through a boundary line on a dark highway, and hearing it dropped into the cold air of an Oklahoma rink makes my pulse do a frantic, terrifying sprint against my ribs.

Wade watches the sudden, frantic color flood into my face. The corners of his eyes crinkle into a deep set of wrinkles, his mouth twisting around the mint.

“And from the way you just reacted to that,” Wade says, “I’m guessing that was you.”

“Mr. Wade, it’s not—we aren’t—the professional arrangement is strictly—”