Page 159 of Uncoachable

Epilogue: Cash

Few months later

I have survived playoff hockey, which is basically just a polite term for legal assault on ice.

I’ve survived broken ribs that made breathing feel like a hobby I couldn’t quite afford. I’ve survived a locker room speech from Callahan after a particularly brutal mid-season loss—the kind where he doesn’t yell, he just looks at you with a profound, soul-crushing disappointment that makes you want to apologize to your own ancestors.

I’ve even survived a snowstorm in the White Mountains that turned the team bus into a rolling sauna of panic, bad decisions, and a very questionable sing-along to nineties power ballads.

None of it, absolutely none of it, prepared me for the reality of Scottie Reed becoming my agent.

Six months ago, I was still under the delusion that my life had edges. I thought I knew where I started and where the game ended.

Now, I’m standing in Iveline Talvi St. James’ kitchen—a place that smells suspiciously like expensive espresso and actual domestic stability—holding a cup of coffee I didn’t even ask for.

Across the room, her fiancé, our former captain and current domestic menace, is currently losing an argument with a florist on speakerphone regarding the structural integrity of peonies.

And Scottie Reed? She is stationed across the marble island, already methodically reorganizing the entire trajectory of my future with a swipe of her thumb.

I’d heard the rumors about The Shark long before I ever heard the rhythmic, intimidating click of her heels. People whispered about how she took mid-tier players with “attitude problems” and turned them into legends.

They talked about how she made General Managers break out in a cold sweat without ever raising her voice above a pleasant hum.

There was even a legend that she once rewrote an incentive clause so cleanly and ruthlessly that the league office sent her flowers out of sheer respect for the craft.

Nobody hires Scottie Reed by accident.

She is currently leaning against the counter, her suit crisp enough to intimidate a small nation and her smile sharp enough to cut through safety glass.

Somehow, impossibly, she’s doing all of this while balancing a color-coded wedding binder for Ivy, a tablet overflowing with my contract drafts, and a leather briefcase that smells faintly of expensive vanilla.

I’ve faced some of the most terrifying enforcers in the league. I’ve had three-hundred-pound defensemen threaten to turn my ribs into toothpicks if I even thought about crossing the crease. None of them have the sheer, concentrated power of Scottie Reed in a pair of Louboutins.

When she looks at a contract, the ink practically rearranges itself on the page out of fear. She is the only person I know who can make the word synergy sound like a death threat and marketing sound like a promise of imminent world domination.

I spent my whole career thinking I was the one in control because I was the one with the puck on my stick. But Scottie just walked into the room and reminded me that while I might play the game, she is the one who owns the arena, the air rights, and the parking lot.

It is terrifying; it is exhilarating.

And it is making me seriously consider buying an entirely new wardrobe just so she doesn’t look at my favorite flannels like they are a gruesome crime scene.

“Hi, O’Connell,” she says, her voice as bright as a sunbeam and twice as blinding. She doesn’t even look up from her tablet. “I own your career now. Try to keep up.”

I choke on my coffee, spraying a fine mist of caffeine across the pristine counter. It’s a great start. Really professional.

“This feels illegal,” I manage to wheeze out once I can breathe again. “I’m pretty sure there are labor laws against this level of intimidation.”

She finally looks up, and she grins. Her teeth are impossibly white and her lips are painted a dark, dangerous red. “You signed the papers. I have the digital trail to prove it.”

I did. I absolutely, one hundred percent did.

My last contract was a mess—it left money on the table, years on the line, and my body was starting to do math that my brain refused to acknowledge. I knew I needed someone who was ruthless enough to protect me from my own worst impulses.

Unfortunately, I picked Scottie.

Don’t ask me when the decision became final. Don’t ask me why I thought I could handle this. It’s possible I was under duress. It’s more likely I was just distracted by her eyebrows, which are terrifyingly precise in a way that demands immediate obedience.

Across the room, Ivy is leaning against Callahan’s chest, the two of them looking like a living advertisement for “happily ever after.”