Page 16 of Wild Card 13

I had spent years turning him into a blank space in my mind. A door I didn’t open. A song I skipped before the first lyric finished. A memory I stepped around so carefully I’d almost convinced myself avoidance counted as healing.

Now my father wanted me inside the same organization. The same building. The same orbit.

I started the car. Warm air pushed through the vents carrying thefaint vanilla scent of the air freshener Bea once claimed made my car smell “like a cupcake with anxiety.”

A small laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

Then faded just as quickly.

It was a job. That was all.

A temporary job inside a chaotic organization that needed better systems.

A bridge out of a bad situation.

A favor for my father.

A practical decision made by a practical woman who absolutely knew better than to attach meaning to things that were already over.

Ty Burns was one player on a roster full of men I had no intention of caring about.

I backed out of my father’s driveway telling myself I believed every word.

CHAPTER 2

BUZZ

NOW

The locker room smelled like sweat, damp gear, stale coffee, and the sharp metal bite of freshly sharpened steel.

A couple of stalls down, somebody had hijacked the speaker again. Heavy bass rattled through the room loud enough to vibrate the metal nameplates above the lockers while trainers moved between bodies with tape rolls and ice packs like overworked battlefield medics.

Milo sat half-dressed at his stall working through the sports section of the paper with the concentration of a seventy-year-old retiree.

Across from him, Boris was arguing with Cam about defensive zone coverage in three different languages and somehow losing in all of them.

“Because your gap was shit,” Cam snapped.

“My gap was fine.”

“It absolutely was not.”

“You got walked by a rookie.”

Cam pointed at him. “You were on the ice too.”

“Unfortunately.”

That earned a few tired laughs.

Not because it was funny.

Because everybody in the room was exhausted and pissed off and trying not to say it out loud.

Rebuild teams felt like this halfway through the season.

Too talented to be terrible.