Page 113 of Uncoachable

She flinches, just a small hitch in her posture before she pulls the door open. “Stop,” she says quietly. “Please. Just stop.”

Then she’s gone. The door closes softly behind her, the click of the latch sounding like a gavel.

I stand alone in the darkened room, my heart pounding against my ribs and my pulse high. The ache hits slow, then all at once, settling in the space she refused to stay.

30

Iveline

A reporter shoves a microphone toward my face the second I step out of my car, the gravel of the arena parking lot crunching under my boots.

“Coach Talvi—care to comment on the photos?”

I don’t slow my pace. I keep my eyes fixed on the staff entrance, my jaw set. “No.”

“Are you denying the relationship?”

That word again.

Relationship.

As if proximity automatically becomes a narrative. As if a hand held out to prevent a fall is a binding contract of the heart.

I stop abruptly.

I turn fully to face the man with the recorder, letting the silence stretch just long enough to reset the balance of power in the parking lot. I wait until the red light on his camera feels like a spotlight.

“I’m denying the implication that my work is defined by a man,” I say. “Any man.”

A camera shutter snaps nearby. Someone else inhales sharply, like they’re about to push for a follow-up, but I don’t wait for it. I head for the arena entrance, moving with a purpose that discourages pursuit.

Avoidance is a skill.

It is one I’ve refined over years of navigating the minefields of this industry.

I perfected it in boardrooms full of skeptics, in locker rooms where I was the only woman, and in press conferences where every question was a trap.

I even perfected it at family dinners where ghosts sat at the table pretending they were alive, and we navigated around the wreckage of my mother’s memory.

Avoidance isn’t panic.

It’s not denial.

It is precision.

So, when I avoid Callahan, I do it cleanly. I make it a surgical procedure.

I start arriving at the rink earlier than him.

The cold metal benches bite through the fabric of my coat as I sit alone in the stands or by the glass, waiting for the ice resurfacer to finish its rounds. Echoing footsteps carry through the empty rink like heavy reminders of what I’m trying to ignore.

When he eventually arrives, the silence between drills stretches longer—an absence I’ve learned to count in heartbeats.

On the ice, I stand on the opposite side of the bench, separated by Rick and the other assistant coaches. I route every single piece of communication through Jenna or the assistants whenever possible. I make eye contact with every person in the building—the scouts, the trainers, the fourth-line grinders—except him.

If anyone thinks it’s accidental, they don’t know me at all.

It takes an exhausting amount of mental energy to not look at someone. It requires a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree awareness of the room at all times. I have to maintain a mental map of where he is every second so I can ensure my gaze lands exactly three inches to the left or right of his silhouette.