Page 97 of Offside

I dressed in the dark. Found my shoes by the door. Came back and sat at the edge of the bed and put my hand lightly on her shoulder.

She stirred. Turned her head, eyes still closed. “Ryan.”

“Go back to sleep. I’m heading out.”

She made a sound that might have been acknowledgment and burrowed slightly deeper into the pillow. I watched her for a moment. The line of her, the easy trust of how she slept, and the clear, steady weight of it settled through me again, the same way it had been settling since last night.

I pressed my lips to her shoulder.

“Call me,” she murmured, still mostly under, “if you have time. You don’t have to⁠—”

“I’ll call you from Calgary.” I smoothed her hair back. “I always have time for you, solsken.”

She was already sliding back under, my name leaving her on a breath so quiet I almost missed it.

I let myself out quietly. The morning hit me full. Still dark, the air carrying the faint dry mineral smell of desert before sunrise, the city not yet awake, everything still and flat and mine.

Jag saknar dig redan.

I miss you already.

I’d said it the day before in the hallway at the arena and heard her reach for her phone before I’d even cleared the room, knew she’d been trying to spell it phonetically ever since and getting absolutely nowhere. The thought of her hunched over Google Translate typing something like yag sak-nar and getting a suggestion for a Swedish meatball recipe was delightful.

I smiled, started the car, and pulled out toward the highway.

She’d figure it out eventually.

CHAPTER 18

MAREN

The building was quieter without them. It wasn’t my turn to travel with them, and because I had a fair amount of work to do in the arena, it wouldn’t be for some time.

I noticed it on the first morning. The absence of forty-plus men moving through the facility at once, the missing noise of skates on ice and sticks on boards and Cole Westbrook’s voice carrying down three hallways. The traveling roster had left at six a.m.—the longest stretch of the season—and by eight the place had the hush of a school during summer break, everything still in use but missing its main purpose.

I didn’t mind it. I had four guys on the IR and a full week of rehab protocols to run, and quiet was easier to work in.

Jordan Holt was first up. Hip labrum, six weeks post-op, starting to test weight-bearing sequences. He was twenty-three and impatient in a way I’d come to expect from twenty-three-year-old athletes, which meant he needed watching or he’d push too hard and undo three weeks of careful progress.

“Range of motion first,” I told him, and he groaned with his whole body. Painfully reminiscent of Cole. “You do the work, you get back on the ice faster. You skip the work, I write a note to Calloway that says you’re not responding to protocol.”

Jordan did the work.

I moved through my morning at full speed, nothing dragging and nothing left sitting. Present, efficient, and satisfied. Patient assessments, progress notes, a call with the team physician about Jordan’s hip timeline. I ate lunch at my desk and answered emails and didn’t check my phone.

I checked my phone.

Nothing from Ryan yet. He’d landed in Calgary at noon local time, which meant he was probably already at the arena for the morning skate. Nine days. Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Seattle, San Jose. I’d checked. I knew his schedule the way I’d absorbed everything about him. Through attention, through accumulation.

I put my phone face-down and went back to work.

The delivery arrived at two-fifteen.

The front desk called up to say there was a package for me, which was unusual. I didn’t usually get personal deliveries at the facility. I went down to collect it with the vague assumption it was the resistance bands I’d ordered from a supplier last week.

It was not resistance bands.

The box was small and white, tied with a thin black ribbon, a card tucked underneath. No return address. My name in his handwriting. Neat, spare, slightly architectural.