Chapter 1 The Shark Tank

~Ava’s POV~

"Say that again."

My voice came out flatter than I meant it to, but I needed to hear him say it twice before I believed it.

Athletic Director Whitmore didn't even have the decency to look up from his desk. "The women's ice hockey program has been defunded, effective immediately. Facility reallocation, budget cuts, the usual. I'm sorry, Ava."

"You're sorry." I set my bag down slowly, like if I moved too fast something in me would snap. "Fifteen years. I've been skating since I was five years old, and you're telling me it's over because of a spreadsheet."

"It's not my decision."

"Then whose is it? Because somebody signed off on ending my Olympic scouting window with a memo."

He finally looked at me, and there was something almost pitying in his face, which made me want to throw the memo back at him. "The scouting camp isn't cancelled, Ava. Just Fairview's program. If you want to keep your name on that shortlist, you'll need a full competitive season somewhere. And I don't see how that's possible on this timeline."

"It's possible." I reached into my bag and pulled out the folder I'd printed at six that morning, before the sun was even up, before I'd let myself think too hard about whether this was insane. I slapped it down on his desk. "I already found the loophole."

He looked at it for a few seconds, and then he opened it, and I watched his eyebrows climb. "An open walk-on petition. For the men's team."

"Fairview's bylaws don't specify gender for D1 walk-on tryouts. I checked with the compliance office myself before I came in here. There's nothing illegal about it, nothing against NCAA rules, nothing that says a woman can't try out for a men's program if there's no equivalent women's team to compete on."

"Ava, that's…" He stopped himself, rubbed his temple like I'd given him a headache. "That's the men's Division 1 roster. Those are grown men who hit each other for a living."

"I'm aware of what hockey is, sir. I've been playing it since before some of them even learned to skate."

"The new head coach hasn't even had his first practice yet. Dominic Carter runs a tight ship. He's not going to hand you a spot out of pity."

"Good," I said. "Because I'm not asking for pity. I'm asking for a tryout. Same drills, same cuts, same rules as everyone else. If I'm not good enough, cut me. But you don't get to decide I'm done before I've even stepped on the ice."

Whitmore stared at the petition for a long moment, and then sighed like a man who'd already lost an argument he hadn't wanted to have in the first place. "I'll forward this to Coach Carter's office today. That's all I can promise you."

"That's all I need."

I walked out of that office with my chin up, but the second the door closed behind me, my hands were shaking. Fifteen years of six a.m. practices and my mother working double shifts at the diner so I could afford ice time, and it had all come down to a folder and a bureaucrat with tired eyes. I wasn't going to let it end like this. I refused.

………………

The house was dead silent when I got home that night, and it was still silent at five the next morning when I came downstairs in the dark, hoping to slip out before anyone woke up.

Mom and Robert had left for their honeymoon three days earlier, some four-month tour through Europe that felt more like an escape than a vacation, and the house had felt different ever since. Bigger, colder. Like it hadn't decided yet whether it belonged to a family or two strangers who happened to share a roof.

I hadn't expected anyone else to be up.

But there he was, standing at the kitchen counter in dark sweatpants and nothing else, his back to me, both hands wrapped around a mug of black coffee like it was the only warm thing in the room.

Dominic.

My new stepbrother. Twenty-five years old, built like he still belonged on an NHL roster instead of behind a bench, and so still I almost didn't breathe for fear of breaking whatever silence he was sitting in.

He hadn't heard me yet. Or if he had, he didn't turn around.

I stood frozen at the door for exactly three seconds too long, taking in the shadow of his shoulders in the dim light, the tension sitting in them like he was carrying something heavier than a coffee mug. It wasn't the first time I'd caught him like this since the wedding, quiet, distant, somewhere else entirely,  but it was the first time it had made my stomach do something strange.

I didn't know what to say to him. We'd barely spoken since our parents' wedding two months ago beyond the necessary logistics of two adults sharing a kitchen. Hey, we're out of milk. Your laundry's in the dryer. Nothing real. Nothing that acknowledged we were now, on paper at least, family.

So instead, I didn't say anything at all.

I grabbed my bag from where I'd left it by the door the night before, slipped my feet into my boots without bothering to lace them properly, and let myself out into the freezing dark before he ever turned around.

The cold rushed into me immediately, and I welcomed it. It was easier to think about frostbite than about why my chest felt tight walking away from a man I barely knew standing alone in a kitchen at five in the morning.

I didn't know yet that the next time I saw him, he'd be standing on the other side of a whistle. 

………

The Fairview Wolves' locker room doors were heavier than I remembered, thick steel-reinforced things built to survive thirty overgrown athletes slamming through them twice a day. I pushed them open with both hands and stepped inside before I could think twice about it.

The room went quiet.

Not slowly, not gradually. All at once, like someone had hit a mute button on thirty conversations at the exact same second. Skates stopped lacing. Sticks stopped tapping against stalls. Every single head in that room turned toward the door, and every single one of them landed on me.

I counted, without meaning to, how many of them were staring. All of them. Thirty sets of eyes, most of them well over six feet tall, half of them still shirtless from whatever they'd been doing before I walked in, and every single face wearing some version of the same expression: what is she doing here?

I made myself keep walking. My bag felt heavier with every step, my skates knocking against my hip, and I fixed my eyes on the bench at the far end of the room like it was the only thing that existed.

That's when he stepped into my path.

I didn't need anyone to tell me who he was. I'd seen his face on the athletic department's website a dozen times over the past week, memorized his stats out of pure self-defense,  leading scorer, team captain, a kid built like a linebacker with a wrist shot scouts called lethal. 

Liam Reed. 

Six-foot-two of golden-blond arrogance, standing directly between me and the rest of the locker room with his arms crossed and a grin already curling at the corner of his mouth like he already knew how this was going to go.

"You're in the wrong rink, sweetheart." His voice carried, loud enough that I knew he wanted every guy behind him to hear it. "Figure skating was two hours ago."

A few of the guys behind him laughed. Somebody whistled low, mocking. I felt the heat climb up my neck, felt every instinct in me screaming to turn around and walk right back out those doors before this got worse.

I didn't move.

Instead, I looked him dead in the eyes, close enough now to see the exact second his grin started to falter, like he hadn't actually expected me to hold his stare.

"Funny," I said, voice steady even though my heart was beating. "Because I read your scouting report on the bus ride over, Reed. Says here you led the conference in penalty minutes and dead last in first-pass completion. So which one of us actually needs to be worried about looking stupid on that ice?"

The laughter behind him died instantly.

Liam's jaw went tight, his eyes narrowing like he was recalculating something, and for one long, dangerous second, the entire room went so quiet I could hear the ice machine humming through the wall.

Then his smirk came back, slower this time, sharper. "We'll see about that at tryouts, won't we?"

I smiled right back at him, even though every muscle in my body was screaming.

"Yeah, Liam.” I said, still smiling. “You are right about that. We'll see at tryouts. Can't wait."