Page 51 of Uncoachable

The team grinds to a halt.

Nico drops his puck. Cash stops mid-stride, his mouth hanging open. Leo nearly trips over his own shadow, and Brick squints as if trying to calculate the exact amount of chaos that just entered his sanctuary.

Scottie doesn’t just enter a room; she colonizes it.

Within thirty seconds, she has managed to offend the sanctity of an NHL practice while simultaneously charming every man with a pulse.

I watch Callahan out of the corner of my eye. He is standing perfectly still, his stick blade resting on the toes of his skates, looking at Scottie and Dean like they are a catastrophic breach in security.

I realize, with a small, wicked surge of satisfaction, that he is jealous. He has no idea who they are. To him, they are just two attractive, familiar people who have the audacity to shout my name and look at me with an intimacy he’s been forbidden from touching.

Dean catches Callahan’s glare and holds it. He’s the quietest man I know, but he has the “protective older brother” stare down to a science.

While Callahan uses his physical size to command the ice, Dean uses silence like a legal trap. He is the most sought-after sports lawyer in the States for a reason—he doesn’t argue, he just dismantles.

“Ivy,” Scottie says, pulling back from a rib-crushing hug to look at me, her eyes immediately darting toward the boards. “Who is the brooding one over there? He looks like he wants to either fight Dean or marry you. Possibly both. Honestly, I’m into the energy.”

“He’s the captain,” I hiss, my face heating up until I’m sure I’m matching her hair. “Behave yourself. This is a professional environment.”

“I never promised you a professional environment; I promised you a friendship,” she winks, turning her gaze back to the team.

I take a deep breath, trying to reclaim my composure as the guys start to drift closer, curiosity getting the better of them. “Scottie, Dean. Please. Sit down. We are in the middle of a tactical walkthrough. And be quiet.”

Scottie grins, entirely unbothered by the weight of the stares. “Quiet? Me? You’ve known me fifteen years, Ivy. You know that isn’t an option.”

She charges forward again, enveloping me in another hug that nearly sends us both sliding across the ice. Dean wraps his arms around both of us, a silent, steady anchor.

For a heartbeat, the pressure in my chest becomes too much, and I feel tears threaten to sting my eyes.

“Missed you guys,” I murmur into Scottie’s shoulder.

She pulls back just enough to look me over, her hands resting on my shoulders with a grounding weight.

In her eyes, I’m not the youngest coach in the league or the woman fighting for a seat at a table made of ice.

I’m just Ivy.

The same Ivy who sat beside her in seventh-grade biology, trading whispered secrets and dreaming of lives we hadn’t lived yet.

We’re still the same girls—just in adult clothes, carrying bigger bags and bigger dreams, laughing at the same jokes, and healing the same hearts.

We grew up, sure, but the core of us never changed.

That realization is a sudden, sharp anchor in the middle of this whirlwind season.

I steer them toward the side seating area near the bench. As I skate back to the center of the ice, I hear the whispers.

“Who is that?” Nico whispers to Leo. “She looks familiar.”

“I think she’s a model,” Leo mutters back.

Cash is the one who puts it together. He’s been staring at Scottie with a look of dawning realization.

“Wait… red hair? That coat?” He pales slightly. “Is that… The Shark?”

The nickname ripples through the team.

Everyone in professional sports knows of The Shark—the most ruthless, high-profile sports agent to come out of Boston in a decade. She is famous for being a ghost in the media but a nightmare in the boardroom.