Page 16 of Uncoachable

Not yet.

5

Callahan Eli Moore

8:42 PM

Cash: you talked to her

Me: how do you know that

Cash: I have eyes

Cash: and instincts

Cash: and a soul bond with drama

Me: she was just… clarifying something

Cash: she clarified your entire existence

Me: Finn

Cash: she told you you’re a distraction

Cash: A DISTRACTION

Me: I’m blocking you

Cash: you can’t block destiny

The problem with group chats, and with Cash specifically, is that they never truly die. They do not fade or lose momentum; instead, they metastasize.

One sarcastic message turns into a full-blown narrative with a soundtrack and a live studio audience before you can even lock your screen.

I glance up from my screen to find Cash sitting across the locker room, one skate on, the other dangling.

He doesn’t say a word.

He knows better than to break the cardinal rule of the room—what happens in the chat stays in the chat, especially when the guys are already on edge. But his face is doing enough talking for both of us.

He catches my eye and gives me a slow, exaggerated wiggle of his eyebrows, a silent “I see you” that makes me want to hurl my water bottle at his head.

He knows I followed her out and he’s currently enjoying my silent internal combustion far too much.

Cash thinks he is being funny, and usually, he is. That is his role on this team—the court jester who keeps the tension from snapping us all in half during a losing streak.

But today, the joke is on me, and I am not laughing.

I look around the room at the aftermath of our first session under the new regime. Most of the guys are in that post-practice haze, staring blankly into their lockers or scrolling through their phones with heavy limbs.

The locker room is my sanctuary, a place where the rules are simple: play hard, stay loyal, and do not let the outside world in.

Yet I can still see her standing on the ice, silhouetted against the bright white light of the rink. She didn’t look like a daughter or a favor. She looked like a general.

The fact that my body responded to her authority before my brain could even formulate a protest is what is really eating at me.

I drop my phone onto the bench harder than necessary and drag a towel over my head, hoping it might muffle the noise still ricocheting inside my skull.