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M arcus
Sixty seconds left on the clock, and Marcus Adeyemi could feel the odds tipping in their favor—barely. The Charm City Chill had momentum, but Boston's defense still had weak spots he could exploit. Just like a chess match where he was three moves ahead.
Coach Vicky's voice cut through the noise as the players gathered around the bench. "Boston's collapsing their defense when Kane drives center."
Marcus nodded, his mind rapidly processing patterns from the previous six possessions. "Their right D is cheating too low," he said, tapping his stick on the board. "If Kane pulls him in, Dmitri's got daylight from the left dot. They've left that same gap open all period."
His teammates exchanged glances—the usual reaction when he spotted something everyone else missed. At 6'2" with the solid build of a shutdown defenseman, Marcus didn't look like the team's secret weapon off the ice, but the Chill had learned to trust his eyes.
"Speak English, Spreadsheets," Jax Thompson grunted beside him, the enforcer's massive frame dwarfing even Marcus.
"They're overloading right," Marcus simplified, jaw tight. "Left side will be open."
Coach Vicky gave a nearly imperceptible nod. "Kane, you heard him. Draw them in, then find Volkov."
From the corner of his eye, Marcus spotted Stephanie Ellis watching from her position near the media section. The Chill's PR director had one eye on her phone, no doubt already crafting the narrative regardless of outcome. The slim brunette's expression remained professionally neutral, but he caught the slight tension in her shoulders, the barely-there tap of her heel against the floor—telltale signs of the same tension thrumming through his own veins.
She caught him looking and arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow—her standard response when challenging him. He'd cataloged at least five of her expressions over the season, this one ranked third most common. Marcus quickly returned his attention to Coach Vicky, ignoring the sudden warmth under his collar. Some reactions defied analysis.
The buzzer signaled the end of the timeout. Players returned to the ice. Fifty-three seconds remained.
Marcus took his position on the blue line, mind automatically reading the play before it developed. As a defenseman, he prided himself on execution—the exact stick placement to break up a pass, the perfect gap control based on the opponent's speed. Hockey might look like chaos to spectators, but to Marcus, it was a system he could decode—bodies moving through space, patterns emerging for anyone smart enough to see them.
The faceoff went to Kane, who drove straight up the middle as planned. Boston's defensemen collapsed around him, drawn to the threat exactly as Marcus had predicted. Kane feinted right, then slipped the puck through to Dmitri on the left wing.
One-timer. Top shelf. Bar down.
Perfect execution. Marcus felt the familiar rush—better than any adrenaline shot—as the puck pinged off the crossbar and dropped in. He joined the celebration with a restrained smile, accepting Jax's glove tap while already replaying the sequence in his mind. Beautiful hockey was predictable hockey.
"Nice call, Adeyemi," Coach Vicky said when they returned to the bench, the hint of a smile breaking through her game face.
"Just reading the play, Coach." He shrugged, but couldn't suppress the satisfaction warming his chest.
"Yeah, well, your reading just gave us a three-point lead in the division."
As the final seconds ticked down, Marcus returned to the ice for one last defensive stand. He cleared the zone twice more before the buzzer sounded on their 3-2 win.
Victory never got old, especially when it validated his approach to the game. Tomorrow he'd review the footage and compile adjustments for the defensive pairs to implement at practice, but for now, he'd savor the win—the smell of fresh ice, the burn in his legs, the roar of the crowd still echoing in his ears.
The locker room buzzed with post-victory energy. Players were in various states of undress, some heading to the showers while others spoke with media representatives carefully managed by Stephanie's PR team. Marcus sat at his stall, already unlacing his skates while mentally reviewing key moments from the game.
"There he is," Dmitri called out, still in his base layers, hair damp with sweat. "The wizard who called the play!" The Russian winger bounded over, wrapping Marcus in a sweaty half-hug that made him stiffen. "Your hockey brain makes me look like genius."
Marcus extricated himself from Dmitri's enthusiastic embrace, unable to completely fight off a smile. "Nothing wizardry about it. Boston's been running the same defensive scheme all night. They were due to get burned."
"Beauty call, man," Kane said, emerging from the shower area with a towel around his waist. The captain's grin was all teeth. "Just don't let Ellis hear you. Caught her telling ESPN we scored because of our 'intuitive chemistry' or some PR bullshit. Nothing about your systems."
Marcus frowned, reaching for his glasses case from his stall. He only needed the reading glasses off-ice, but they felt like armor as he put them on. "That's not what happened. The play was—"
"Relax, professor," Jax Thompson interrupted, his massive frame occupying a corner stall. The enforcer was carefully wrapping his knuckles, scraped raw from a second-period fight. "Ellis is just doing her job. Making us look good for the cameras."
"By spinning fiction instead of fact?"
Oliver "Chenny" Chenofski looked up from his phone with a smirk, his fingers pausing mid-tweet. "Would you prefer she tell the world, 'Our stat-nerd defenseman spotted a weakness, so we exploited it like the tactical geniuses we are'? That doesn't exactly sell tickets, bro."
The locker room erupted in laughter. Even Coach Vicky, entering with her assistant coaches, cracked a smile.
Charlie, Oliver's gentle pit bull service dog, wagged his tail with enthusiasm. The dog's presence was a recent but welcome addition to home games, his calming effect on Oliver having translated to better play since the winger met the dog last season when Jax's wife Lauren had arranged for a meet and greet.
"Enough," Coach said, claiming the room's attention. "Good win tonight. Boston's a tough team, and you executed when it mattered." Her sharp eyes found Marcus. "Adeyemi, solid defensive game. Three blocked shots, and that outlet pass in the second was textbook."
"Thanks, Coach." He nodded, the words hitting him in a sweet spot. He might analyze everything, but praise still felt good.
She nodded, then addressed the team. "Recovery practice at eleven tomorrow. Media obligations first, then ice time." Her gaze swept the room. "And somebody remind Ellis that I need to approve her press releases before they go out, not after. That 'intuitive chemistry' line sounds too stuffy."
As if summoned by her name, Stephanie appeared in the doorway, scanning the locker room. Her eyes landed briefly on Marcus, lingered a beat too long, then moved to Coach Vicky. The familiar kick in his pulse was immediate and frustrating.
"The New Haven Register wants five minutes with you," Stephanie said. "They're asking about the decision to pair Ethan and Jax on the penalty kill."
"Tell them it was based on matchups," Coach replied.
Marcus bit the inside of his cheek, then spoke up. "Actually, the data shows Jax's reach percentage combined with Ethan's—"
"It was based on matchups," Coach Vicky repeated firmly, giving him a pointed look.
Stephanie smiled, her professional mask firmly in place. "Matchups it is." But there was a flash of something in her eyes when they met his—a silent challenge that hit him like a body check.
"The eternal battle between numbers and narratives continues," he muttered.
Mateo Suarez, fresh from the shower and already checking his own social media, laughed. "My money's on Ellis. She's got that fire."
"I don't know," Kane said thoughtfully. "Spreadsheets doesn't back down easily." The captain turned to Marcus. "You two have been at this since last season. Ever thought about just asking her out instead of arguing all the time?"
The locker room erupted in another round of laughter. Marcus kept his expression neutral despite the heat crawling up his neck. His teammates had picked up on something he'd been trying to ignore for months.
"Our professional disagreements aren't sublimated attraction," he said, pulling his post-game suit from his locker. But even as he said it, he knew the data suggested otherwise.
"Big words, Spreadsheets," Jax teased. "But the tape don't lie. You watch her more than you watch game film."
Marcus gathered his belongings, eager to escape before his face betrayed him further. "I have video to review."
As he headed to the showers, he tried to focus on the defensive adjustments he wanted to implement for their next game. But his mind kept returning to Stephanie—the flash of gold in her eyes when she was frustrated, the precise angle of her jawline, and the way her voice pitched slightly lower when she was arguing with him specifically. He'd cataloged these details involuntarily, stored them away like game footage he couldn't stop rewatching.
Some patterns were harder to ignore than others. And Stephanie Ellis was becoming a pattern he couldn't break.
***
S TEPHANIE
Stephanie Ellis was having a good night until Marcus Adeyemi ruined it. Again.
She navigated the post-game chaos with the practiced confidence of someone who'd made a career out of walking through minefields in four-inch heels. Media vultures circled, players celebrated, and she was in her element—the conductor of this beautiful chaos. Every gesture was a deliberate note in her symphony—a smile here, a subtle redirection there. No one needed to know she'd memorized three potential responses for every possible question thrown at her team tonight.
Her dark hair swung as she pivoted between conversations, the expensive cut worth every penny of the maintenance it required every three weeks. In the hockey world, men might get away with looking like they'd just rolled out of bed, but women like her had to be flawless just to get a seat at the table. The charcoal pencil dress with subtle accents in team colors was her game-day armor—powerful enough to command respect, neutral enough to fade into the background when needed.
The post-game press conference had been textbook perfect. Coach Vicky had stuck to the talking points Stephanie had drilled into her head. Kane had turned on the charm like the media darling he was. Even rookie Ethan had managed not to say anything that would trend on Twitter for the wrong reasons. Her chess pieces were all moving exactly as planned.
Then a reporter from The Athletic had to ask about the game-winning play.
"Was that set piece something you'd practiced specifically for Boston's defense?"
And there he was—Marcus freaking Adeyemi—materializing at the back of the room like a perfectly dressed ghost, his charcoal suit without a single wrinkle despite the fact he'd just spent three periods getting slammed into boards. One look exchanged with Coach Vicky, and suddenly the entire narrative Stephanie had crafted went up in smoke.
"One of our players identified a pattern in Boston's defensive coverage," Coach had said. "We had the numbers to back up what we were seeing on the ice."
Numbers. Analytics. Math . There went tomorrow's feel-good story about team chemistry and hard work.
Now, as Stephanie packed her tablet and organized press materials into her leather portfolio, she mentally drafted damage control. The last thing this team needed was another round of "the robots are taking over hockey" coverage. Half the players already bristled at the suggestion that their instincts—honed through thousands of hours on ice—were being replaced by spreadsheets.
Perception mattered more than reality. That was the first lesson hockey had taught her when she'd joined the Chill three years ago after escaping a toxic crisis management firm in New York. Nobody in this organization needed to know about the anxiety medication tucked in her purse's inner pocket, or how she rehearsed critical conversations in her apartment mirror, or that she'd been passed over for PR director at two other teams before landing here.
Image was everything. Truth was malleable. And control? Non-negotiable.
"Ellis."
God, that voice. Deep, precise, and irritatingly confident. She'd know it anywhere. She turned to find Marcus standing in the doorway of the small media room, his leather messenger bag slung over one shoulder. Even after taking that bone-crushing hit in the third period—the one that had made her stomach clench despite herself—he looked frustratingly put-together. His reading glasses perched on his nose as he scrolled through something on his phone, probably calculating the statistical probability of her wanting to strangle him right now. (Answer: high. Very high.)
"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice hitting that sweet spot between professional and don't-push-me that had taken years to perfect.
"Coach Vicky mentioned you have an issue with the analytics being mentioned in press conferences."
Of course he'd come straight at her. No small talk, no congratulations on the win, just zero to confrontation in three seconds flat.
"I don't have an issue with analytics," she replied, willing her eye not to twitch. "I have an issue with undermining team confidence by suggesting their success comes from following mathematical predictions rather than their own skill and chemistry."
"But that's not factually—"
"Marcus," she interrupted, using his first name deliberately, a small satisfaction flickering when she caught that micro-reaction—the slight widening of his eyes that told her she'd broken through his professional wall. "I know you live in a world where everything is black and white, true or false. But my job is managing perceptions, and perception requires nuance."
He frowned, adjusting his glasses in that way he did when processing information that didn't fit into one of his neat little boxes. She'd spent far too much time cataloging all of Marcus's tells—the slight tilt of his head when analyzing a statement, the barely perceptible narrowing of his eyes when he disagreed but was considering an alternate perspective. She read people the way he read numbers, and damn if that wasn't something they had in common.
"We executed based on observable patterns," he said. "That's simply what happened."
"And a year ago, when you weren't calculating everything on the bench, the team executed based on experience and instinct. Both are true." She closed her laptop with a decisive click. "I'm not asking you to lie. I'm asking you to understand that how we talk about the team affects how they see themselves."
The sharpness in her voice slipped—a rare crack in her professional veneer. She'd spent the entire day putting out fires: Chenny's controversial social media post that needed containment, a potentially damaging story about Jax's previous team that a reporter was fishing for, and Rookie Ethan's nervous stumble in a pre-game interview that required damage control.
And now here was Marcus, with his perfect posture and even more perfect jawline, undermining her carefully constructed narratives like he was pointing out a simple calculation error.
"So we should prioritize feelings over facts?" he asked, and the infuriating thing was that he sounded genuinely curious rather than condescending.
Stephanie let her professional mask slip just enough to show she was a human, not a PR robot. "We should recognize that feelings are facts in human psychology." She shouldered her bag and moved toward the door.
He didn't step aside. Of course he didn't. Which forced her to stop close enough to catch the faint scent of his aftershave—something clean and subtle with notes of cedar that definitely wasn't helping her irritation.
For a moment, neither spoke. The arena had gone quiet around them, most of the staff and media having departed. It was just them in the empty room, and the sudden awareness of that fact made her pulse pick up in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with his broad shoulders or the intensity in his dark eyes behind those glasses.
In these unguarded moments, she sometimes caught glimpses of something beneath Marcus's analytical exterior—something that made her wonder what he was like away from the rink, away from the numbers and systems. What made him laugh? Did he ever just watch a movie without analyzing the plot structure? These thoughts were dangerous, unprofessional, and thoroughly unwelcome.
And yet.
"You don't need to protect the players from reality," Marcus finally said, his voice quieter than before.
"Maybe not," she conceded. "But have you considered that your reality isn't the only one that matters?"
Something flickered in his eyes—a brief vulnerability that vanished so quickly she might have imagined it. For a second, she wondered if she'd hit a nerve she hadn't meant to find.
He stepped aside, finally allowing her to pass.
"Good night, Ellis."
"Night, Spreadsheets," she replied, the team nickname slipping out before she could stop it.
As she walked toward the parking garage, her heels clicking a defiant rhythm on the concrete, Stephanie tried to shake off the lingering tension from their encounter. She'd definitely need a glass of wine tonight—the expensive Cabernet she saved for days when someone tested her last nerve.
Marcus was infuriating, rigid, and completely blind to the human elements that made sports more than just statistics on a spreadsheet.
He was also brilliant, principled, and unexpectedly graceful on the ice—a quality that made him not just a solid defenseman but an increasingly important voice in the team's strategy. When he'd blocked that shot in the final minutes, diving across the ice with perfect timing, she'd held her breath until he got back up.
Not that she'd ever admit that to anyone, least of all herself.
As she reached her sleek silver Audi—the one indulgence she'd allowed herself when she finally secured the PR director position after years of being told she was "too ambitious" or "not quite ready"—Stephanie reminded herself of the cardinal rule she lived by: never lose control of the narrative. Not the team's, and certainly not her own.
Tomorrow was a new day. Another chance to craft the right story for a team on the rise.
As long as the team's mathematically-minded defenseman didn't interfere with her carefully plotted strategy.
And if he did? Well, Stephanie Ellis never backed down from a challenge. Especially one with dark eyes, broad shoulders, and an analytical mind that somehow managed to drive her crazy and impress her all at once.