Page 50 of Unmanageable

Instead, she’s been buried in her phone, her thumb flying across the glass screen in a blur of frantic energy, her face set in a mask of professional detachment so frigid it makes the rink look like a sauna.

The locker room door bangs open, echoing in the empty arena, and Herb “The Wall” Ganz shuffles out onto the rubber matting.

Herb is at minimum seventy years old, wearing a faded nylon tracksuit and carrying a battered plastic bucket of pucks like they’re his own grandchildren.

He was the best goalie coach in the league before he abruptly walked away from the money, retiring to the middle of nowhere to grow heirloom tomatoes and ignore the hockey world entirely.

“O’Connell,” Herb grunts. “You look like you’ve been sleeping in a dumpster behind a dive bar.”

“Good to see you too, Herb,” I say, pushing off the goal line and skating out to meet him at the hash marks.

“Don’t try to sweet-talk me, kid. I’m only here because your agent is a goddamn bulldog.” He cuts his eyes toward the bench, gesturing with his chin. “She called my house eighteen times, Finnian. Eighteen. I told her explicitly that I was retired. She told me I wasn’t retired, I was just bored. Then she had a courier deliver a wooden crate of Italian wine to my front porch with a typed note that just said See you Tuesday.”

I look over at Scottie. She doesn’t smile, nor does she offer a wave.

“You’re burning daylight, Herb,” she calls out, her voice echoing perfectly across the ice. “The ice is paid for until exactly eight o’clock. Let’s get to work.”

Herb chuckles, a dry, raspy sound that turns into a brief coughing fit. “Scary woman. I like her style. Get back in the net, boy. Let’s see how much of an absolute mess you’ve made of your glove hand while you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself.”

The next two hours are a living hell.

Herb doesn’t believe in modern, fancy European skating drills or sports psychology. He believes in brutal, unyielding repetition until your groin muscles scream for mercy and your brain shuts off from exhaustion.

He’s got the local college kid we hired—a lanky defenseman named Miller who can hit a dime from the blue line—drilling heavy wrist shots repeatedly at my lower left side.

“Again!” Herb barks, slamming his stick against the ice.

Thwack.

The puck explodes off Miller’s blade and hits my leg pad. I drop into a tight butterfly to smother the rebound, but a sharp, biting twinge shoots directly through my reconstructed shoulder. I flinch, just a fraction of a second, but Herb catches it instantly.

“Again! You’re cheating the movement! Stop overthinking the damn injury and start playing the puck!”

I’m sweating profusely through my layers of gear, my breath coming in desperate gasps that instantly fog up the plastic cage of my mask.

Every single time I reset my stance and scrape the snow away from the crease, my eyes involuntarily dart toward the bench.

Scottie is there, but she isn’t really there.

She’s watching every play, taking rapid notes on a tablet, but every time I manage to catch her eye, she looks down or checks her phone. She’s hovering right on the edge of the glass, her posture so rigid and tense it looks like she’s ready to bolt for the exit if I step even a foot too close to her side of the ice.

“O’Connell! Eyes on the shooter, not on the girl!” Herb yells.

Miller lets another one fly without warning. It’s an absolute ripper, tracking hard toward the top shelf on my stick side. I snap my glove hand up, catching the puck purely on raw instinct. The sting in my palm radiates up my forearm, and for the first time all day, it feels good. It feels real.

“Better,” Herb grunts. “Take five. My knees hurt just watching you move around out here.”

I skate over to the bench, my legs feeling like columns of solid lead. I pull my mask off, letting it hang from my blocker hand, my sweat-soaked hair plastered flat against my forehead.

I grab my green plastic water bottle, squeezing a stream into my mouth, silently waiting for Scottie to give me her usual post-skate rundown.

She doesn’t even look up from the glowing screen of her tablet.

“Herb says your lateral movement is improving, but you’re still leaning too heavy on the right skate when you push off,” she says, her tone perfectly flat, as if reading a grocery list.

“Scottie.”

“Miller’s ready for the next shooting set as soon as you are,” she says, looking up to meet my eyes for a fleeting second. Her gaze is guarded, her expression carefully neutral. “Don’t waste the ice time, Cash.”