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CHAPTER 2

Camden

I’m waiting outside Coach’s office, trying not to worry about why I’ve been summoned or how long this will delay me getting home. I’m also trying not to eavesdrop, but it’s hard with all the yelling leaking out from behind his closed door.

I don’t catch every single word, since Coach, the Appies’ team owner, and someone else are yelling over each other. But I do get the gist, and it’s not good. Sounds like there’s trouble between the Appies and our NHL team. A rift is not good because when push comes to shove, players are assets. Not people. We can be moved around at will. Even with contracts and agents giving some semblance of security, I’ve seen a guy dress for a game only to be pulled out of the locker room because he got traded.

But serious tension between an NHL team and their affiliate is not good.

Before I can put together any concrete details, the door is thrown open and the Appies’ owner stomps by. Larry is followed by the head of the Appies’ legal team. He winces when we make brief eye contact.

Definitely not good.

Stepping forward, I knock lightly on the doorframe. “Hey, Coach. You wanted to see me?”

Coach Davis is staring down at his lap, elbows on the desk and both hands clutching his bald head. “Camden Cole,” he says. “Come in and close the door.”

I take a seat across from his desk and wait. My hair is a little longer than I usually like it, and right now, it’s dripping onto my collar since I came straight from the showers after our optional morning practice. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in this spot, and I don’t like it. It reminds me of a few principal’s office visits from so many years ago. Especially when he’s calling me by my full name and not just by Cole like usual.

I might be in trouble—if only for playing like half of me is somewhere else this season. Which is … accurate. Nothing so far has helped me fix it, though, and I doubt a heart-to-heart with Coach will change that.

Finally, he sighs and sits back in his chair, assessing me with tired eyes. He looks almost worse than he did at the end of last season when he realized his daughter had married Van, the one guy on the team who loves to push Coach’s buttons.

“I need help and thought you might be a good guy to ask.” When I don’t say anything, he continues. “You might have heard we’ve started a new set of classes for youth and?—”

“No.”

He rears back. Probably because I didn’t let him finish. Or maybe it was the hardness in my voice, surprising even me.

“No, thank you ,” I amend, but it doesn’t soften my delivery.

“You didn’t even hear what I was going to ask,” he says, a furrow appearing between his brows.

I shake my head. “If it has to do with working with kids, ask someone else.”

Coach’s face is an understandable mark of confusion. “Do you not like kids?”

A muscle in my jaw tics. “I’m just not … good with them.”

“I find that hard to believe.” Coach narrows his eyes.

I hold his gaze, though what I want is to get up and walk out the door. “It’s true.”

It’s sort of true. I don’t have a ton of experience with kids, but I failed hard enough recently to make me want to stay away altogether. Disappointing one boy was enough. And I’m not sure I could work with kids without the very painful reminder being thrown in my face.

“You don’t have enough guys to help?” Now that he’s bringing it up, I remember hearing some of the guys talking about this earlier. Like most of the locker-room talk lately, it floats around me, never quite landing.

“We did. And we’re rotating Saturdays when we don’t have games. But we had a record number of kids sign up.” He scrubs a hand down the side of his face. “And then, a few minutes ago, Tucker and Dumbo had a little … issue.”

My lips twitch. Those two guys are the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumb(o) of our team. “What kind of issue?”

“They taught a group of five-year-olds the lyrics to ‘Baby’s Got Back’ while they were gearing up.”

I choke back a laugh. “Why? How?”

“It’s Tucker and Dumbo.” Coach throws up his hands. “I don’t question anything when it comes to those two. It did not go over well with the parents, as I’m sure you can imagine. The point is, I could use one more person. Dominik is helping?—”

“You asked Dominik?”

“He offered.” Coach smiles at this. “The Kid’s come a long way.”

Even though Dominik is no longer the youngest on the team now that we’ve acquired the eighteen-year-old twins from Texas, people still call Dom “the Kid.” It’s even started catching on with our fans. And he has come a long way. Dominik arrived in the middle of last season with an attitude larger than his homeland of Russia. I’m not sure if there was one specific turning point or just the continuous influence of a team with no room for attitude or ego, but he’s definitely matured.

Still. I’m surprised he volunteered to help with the youth classes. And more than a little bit chagrined now that I’m refusing to do the same. If Dominik is willing, then I should?—

No . This has to be a no.

In addition to the fact that I am not someone who should be working with kids given my current headspace, I need to get home. I don’t want to get home. But I need to.

I’m still getting acclimated to this twitchy feeling of worry when I’m not home. And since I haven’t told Coach or anyone else about my new houseguest and my new reality, no one understands my sudden need to hurry out of the building and back home. Probably because I’ve been like a ghost all season. They might not notice a difference.

“What about Theo and Carter?” I suggest. “The twins are high energy.”

“They’re helping next week.” Coach pauses. “I’m not sure you know this, but the guys look to you as a leader. Especially with Alec gone.”

I almost laugh.

Alec, our captain, retired midseason after injuring his knee one too many times. Coach has been giving different guys the opportunity to be captain or alternate for games. I’ve worn the C on my jersey twice. We lost both games, and I had nothing to say in the locker room.

Logan speaks up, and Felix always has something smart to say when he wants to. Van’s always running his mouth, though not in a captain kind of way. There might be a bit of a power vacuum going on, but I am not the one to fill the void.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“It’s hard to see in yourself what others see in you.”

“Maybe, but you’re wrong about this.”

Coach sighs heavily. “I don’t need you to believe it—not yet. I just need you to do it. Help out today, Cole.”

I stand. “I wish I could help out, but I can’t.”

Coach sizes me up for a moment, like he’s trying to read what is a very closed book. I haven’t talked to anyone about anything since last summer, no matter how much they’ve all pried. I’m not going to crack for Coach.

I’m not.

He keeps staring.

I’m probably not going to crack.

Thankfully, he speaks before I do. “I know we don’t need to talk about this until the summer, but are you thinking you want to stick around?”

My contract is up this summer, and my agent has been asking the same questions. I’ve been dancing around an answer for a while now.

I like it here, but … I don’t know. It’s been two years, and signing a contract to stay longer feels like such a commitment. I’m honestly surprised Coach is even asking, considering how I’ve played this year. But he doesn’t make the final decision, so he’s probably just getting a feel for where my head’s at.

Too bad my head is miles away. On the same island where it’s been since summer.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I tell him.

“Sure. You’ve got time,” Coach says, but I can see his disappointment.

Time for a topic change. “That meeting seemed pretty intense. Everything okay with the bigwigs?”

Coach’s lip lifts in the smallest of sneers. I’ve yet to meet anyone who genuinely likes the Appies’ owner, Larry Jenson. Instead of hiring a general manager to handle the business and team, he’s a control freak of the highest degree and has insisted on acting as both. Which wouldn’t be terrible if he weren’t terrible.

The Appies’ success has very little to do with him or his decisions, though he definitely gives himself all the credit for it. And the past year or two, he’s been running the organization into the ground, insisting on all kinds of extra events to capitalize on the viral social media success the team has had.

Like this youth hockey thing, which normally would not be run by pro hockey players.

“Nothing new,” Coach says, then mutters, “And nothing good.”

As I remember the snatches of conversation—yelling, really—I heard when I walked up, the uncomfortable feeling that’s been swirling in my gut intensifies.

“Do we need to be worried?”

“Honestly,” he says with a heavy sigh, “I don’t know.”

Maybe I don’t need to worry about signing an extension after all.

Coach’s words and the defeated look in his eyes hang over me as I head through the locker room to grab my bags. Despite the urgency to get home still pounding like a drum in my head, I take the long way and pass the rink. Maybe because I’m curious or because I feel guilty about saying no.

Whatever the reason, I find myself on our bench, glancing out at the chaos. Kids from toddlers to pre-teens are skating or falling or holding onto the walls. Some have sticks and are clearly familiar with hockey while others appear to be on skates for the very first time. Cones and long black pads break the rink up into stations, though there is little order. Groups of parents watch from the stands, some pressed close to the glass, phones up and filming.

Eli, one of my teammates, catches my eye from where two little kids are whacking him on the shins with their hockey sticks. Help , he mouths.

Grinning, I shake my head. It’s clear saying no was the right call.

There are half a dozen of my teammates plus most of our assistant coaches out there. Even Parker, our social media manager, is on skates with a group of kids. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation.

But my hands aren’t needed; they’ve got this.

Probably.

I’m just turning to go when two of the more advanced pre-teen skaters zoom by and then both stop, spraying a snow shower of ice on a kid a little younger than them who’s barely keeping himself upright.

Punks , I think, as I watch the older boys laughing.

The younger kid got a face full of ice, which isn’t easy to wipe off because of the cage of his helmet. I don’t catch what they’re saying, but I don’t need to hear it. His cheeks turn red as he tries to unbuckle his helmet with his gloves on then almost eats it. The other boys start imitating him, pretending to lose their balance.

“Hey!” I’m already making my way down my bench.

Three heads whip my way, and I wince when the smaller kid falls to the ice. The other two try to skate off, but I hop over the low wall, blocking their exit.

They stare up at me, mouths open. I’m not sure if it’s because they recognize me or because the look on my face is so intense. I take a breath and try to remind myself that I once had a punk-kid period too. I never forgot how some sharp but true words made a lasting impact on me. There’s time yet for their little brains to shift and grow.

“Hockey is a team sport,” I grit out, barely holding my temper in check.

“He’s not on our team,” one boy sneers. “He’s with the baby skaters. They’ve got stuffed animals instead of pucks.”

Okay, maybe I was a little too optimistic about being able to make any headway here.

To his credit, the other older boy doesn’t laugh. He still looks like he’s about to pee his pants.

Good. There’s a shred of hope for humanity left.

I narrow my eyes at the unrepentant one. “You want to play in the NHL?”

He scoffs. “I don’t want to. I will .”

“You know what coaches want to find in recruits? You know what they tell scouts to look for and ask about when they’re watching up-and-coming players?”

“Yeah,” he says, and I swear I can see his little chest inflating with misguided pride. “Goals. Points. Wins. And someone who can skate.”

He throws this last line to the younger boy still trying to get his feet under him.

“Sure. They look at those things. But those aren’t the only things, and there are a thousand kids out there just as good if not better than you.” He looks ready to argue, but I turn to his partner in crime. “Do you know what coaches want to see?”

He shakes his head. “No, sir.”

I retrain my gaze on the first boy. “Coaches will ask your coaches and even sometimes other players about you. Not just how you conduct yourself on the ice. In the locker room. If you’re polite to your mom. If you show respect for your coaches and others in authority. And”—I lean forward, using my height to tower over him—“how you treat your fellow skaters. This kind of behavior will not have teams and coaches fighting over you or even looking at you. This is going to ensure you’re passed over again and again, kid.”

“Whatever,” he mutters.

His sneery little face as he starts to skate away backwards is the kind that will become very punchable in a few years.

“You’re just an AHL player. Couldn’t hack it in the NHL,” he says, laughing as he spins and skates back to his group.

Not the kind of insult he may think it is. Some guys, guys like me, are career AHL. They might dabble in the NHL, have a decent two-way contract, but mostly stay in the minors. And it’s not a bad life. Less pressure. I still get to skate, and the money is fine. Especially with the Appies.

No use explaining any of this to the kid. He’s gone anyway.

To my surprise, the other little instigator has actually helped the younger kid up and is saying something in a low voice that sounds an awful lot like an apology.

Warmth starts to swell in my chest, like maybe it wasn’t stupid of me to jump in and pretend I had any business jumping in. But then the younger boy, the one who looks as wobbly as a newborn giraffe on skates, glances up at me.

Every muscle in my body tenses with shock. Because I know this face. And it belongs to a kid who absolutely shouldn’t be anywhere near Harvest Hollow and definitely not here on my rink.