Page 60 of Her Player

Victoria smoothed her hands down her pencil skirt. “I’m going to need a pair of my own hockey skates if we’re going to do that again.”

And just like that, the locker room erupted into cacophonous laughter.

“Miss C! Let me tell you,” Jett said as he stood from his perched position, “I ain’t ever seen a woman like that trek out onto the ice like you and Bry did.”

“Yeah,” Moose said as he came tearing through the locker room doors, “that was some pretty awesome stuff. Hate that I missed it, what with my head beneath someone’s asshole and all.”

“Moose!” Bry exclaimed.

She pulled away from Coach and rushed toward him, throwing her arms around his neck for a tight hug. Victoria came up behind her, chucking her finger beneath Moose’s chin as she studied the soft bruise all of us now saw beneath the fluorescent lighting of the locker room.

“Just the bruise?” Victoria asked.

Moose nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

She lowered her finger. “I want a copy of the doctor’s files for my records.”

He nodded. “Already told ‘em, Miss Caldwell. I got it put on your desk before I came in here.”

She patted his arm before turning back to Coach. “Seriously, though. Skates. I’m not doing that again in heels. You guys are on your own the next time around.”

Jett barked with laughter. “Hey, just give her a bullhorn and we can make those bitches cry before they ever start the doggie pile.”

That tugged a soft smile across Victoria’s face as the locker room fell apart in laughter once more. She gave Moose a one-armed hug before he made his way to his locker. I stood long enough to pat him on his back while Coach ushered him to sit down.

He plopped down onto the bench in front of his locker, pressing the ice pack to his face, and sighed heavily.

“So the New York Big Shots, huh?” he asked with a crooked grin. “You know they’re weak on their backsteps, right?”

Coach smirked. “Right. Which is why we’ll specifically drill plays that take advantage of that. But for now?”

“We get Victoria some anger management classes?” I asked.

A round of chuckles made their way through the locker room as I looked over at Victoria. And I swear, those gray eyes softened on me just a tad. It was a look that wasn’t as harsh, or as pointed as the looks I’d become accustomed to in public. She wasn’t scowling. She wasn’t pinning me with any sort of a glare. She wasn’t flatly looking at me with that frustrated downturn of her lips that she wore whenever she walked around Caldwell Arena. In fact, I could have sworn that the corners of her lips ticked up ever so slightly.

I couldn’t help but stare her down for just a second longer than I should have before I looked back over at Coach.

“For now,” he said before clocking everyone in the room with his eyes, “we rest. Go home. Get showered. Eat a decent meal. Tomorrow is our rest day. And Sunday, we’re back at it.”

But before he got there, my eyes found Victoria one more time.

She was already looking away. Smoothing her blazer. Pulling that composure back around herself like armor the way she always did the second she caught herself being watched. But I’d caught it, that half-second before the shutters came back down, and I held onto it the way I held onto everything she gave me without meaning to.

She’d looked at me like I was the only person in the room.

After everything that happened tonight. The brawl, the officials, the forfeiture, the wildcard news. After she stormed onto that ice in those heels and pulled men twice her size off our goalie by their jerseys. After she stood at the boards and threatened a PHL official with consequences that I was fairly certain she could actually deliver. After all of it, in a locker room full of thirty men celebrating the best bad news we’d ever gotten,

She looked at me.

Like she was checking that I was still there.

I tucked that look away somewhere it would last a long time.

Then, with a clap of his hands, we were dismissed.

21

VICTORIA