Chapter 2 The Whistle at Center Ice

~Ava's POV~

"Careful, Reed. Keep smiling like that and one of these guys might actually believe you're not scared."

That shut a few of them up fast.

Liam's grin flattened out for half a second before he caught himself, forced it back into place like a mask he'd practiced wearing. "Scared? Of what, exactly?"

"Of me making you look slow in front of your whole team." I shrugged, like it was nothing, like my pulse wasn't hammering in my ears. "I mean, it's already happening. Guess you're just getting a head start on the embarrassment."

Somebody near the equipment rack made a sound like he was trying not to laugh and failing. I didn't look to see who. I kept my eyes on Liam, because looking away first felt like losing, and I hadn't come this far to lose in the first thirty seconds.

"You've got a mouth on you," Liam said.

"And you've got edge-work like a guy who learned to skate last Tuesday. So I guess we're both surprising each other today."

That one landed harder than I expected.

A tall, lanky kid by the goalie stalls, floppy brown hair, goalie pads half strapped on, actually choked on the water he was drinking, coughing so hard to the extent he had to smack his own chest. A couple of the defensemen behind him burst out laughing outright now, no longer bothering to hide it.

"Bones, you good?" someone called out, still laughing.

The goalie, Bones, apparently wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. "Yeah, I'm good, I'm good. Just…" He looked at me like he was seeing something rare. "Edge-work like he learned last Tuesday. That's brutal. That's actually brutal."

"Shut up, Bones," Liam snapped, but his ears were turning red now, and I felt something in my chest loosen just slightly. Not victory, not yet. But something close to it.

I didn't wait for his comeback. I walked past him, dropped my bag on the open bench at the end of the row like I'd been doing it my whole life, because I had, just never in this locker room, never surrounded by this many people who wanted me gone.

I sat down and started lacing my skates.

My hands were steady, and that surprised even me. Every eye in that room was still on me, I could feel it crawling across my shoulders, but my fingers moved through the motion they'd done ten thousand times before, pulling the laces tight, crossing them, tucking them in clean, slow, deliberate. Like I had nowhere else to be and nothing left to prove, even though I had everything left to prove.

Liam hadn't moved. I could still feel him still standing there, watching me lace up like he was waiting for my hands to shake, waiting for some crack in the armor he could point at and laugh.

They didn't shake.

"You're really doing this," he said, quieter now, like the audience mattered less than the question.

"I'm really doing this."

"This isn't figure eights and pretty spins, Ava." My name came out of his mouth like he hadn't meant to use it, like sweetheart had been easier because it kept distance between us. "Guys out there will run you into the boards and not think twice."

I looked up at him, and for a second, just a second, I let him see how serious I was. 

"Let them try."

…………….

The tunnel out to the ice felt longer than it probably was, thirty guys shoulder to shoulder, skate blades scraping concrete, and me somewhere in the middle of it trying not to think about how many of them wanted to see me fail before I even got a stick in my hands.

The second we hit the ice, the cold hit my lungs like it always did, sharp and clean and familiar in a way nothing else that morning had been. This part, at least, made sense to me. Ice made sense.

The guys didn't waste time being subtle.

Three of them came at me almost immediately during warmups, cutting close on purpose, blades biting hard into the ice right beside me so a spray of shaved ice kicked up and hit my shins through my socks. One of them, a huge defenseman with a buzzcut, didn't even bother pretending it was an accident.

"Oops," he said, not looking sorry at all.

I didn't flinch. I'd grown up on outdoor ponds where the ice cracked under you if you didn't know how to read it, where boys twice my size had been doing exactly this to me since I was seven years old. Ice chips were nothing. Ice chips were a warm welcome, honestly, compared to some of what I'd survived.

I pushed off, and let my body do what it had always known how to do.

I didn't think about the stares anymore. I let my edges carry me, deep crossovers eating up the blue line, a tight transition turn that spun me backward and then forward again so fast a couple of the guys actually slowed down to watch instead of trying to buzz past me. I picked up a stray puck near the boards, walked it through a gap between two guys who clearly hadn't expected me to have that kind of vision, and snapped a clean pass on the ice to nobody in particular, just to prove I could put it exactly where I wanted it.

The rink got quieter.

Not silent. Just quieter, in that exact way that happens when people who came in already knowing what they thought of you start being forced to reconsider it in real time.

I caught Bones watching me from his crease, mask pushed up on his head, an expression on his face that looked a lot like the one Whitmore had worn back in his office, except this one didn't feel like pity. This one felt like a guy doing math he hadn't expected to have to do.

Liam wasn't laughing anymore either. He was skating a slow loop near center ice, stick resting on his gloves, watching me glide past him with an expression I couldn't read. Not respect, not yet. But not the smirk from the locker room either.

I let myself feel it for exactly three seconds, that small, quiet victory of thirty guys going from what is she doing here to actually watching me. Three seconds, because that was all I was going to allow myself before I had to focus again.

Then the whistle blew.

It wasn't just loud. It cracked through the whole arena. And every single guy on the ice snapped to attention immediately, gloves dropping to their sides, sticks going still, thirty grown men going quiet like someone had flipped a switch inside every one of them at once.

I turned toward the sound.

The tunnel gate at the far end of the rink had opened, and a man stepped through it in a dark tracksuit, whistle still hanging from his fingers like he hadn't decided yet whether he needed it again. He moved across the ice like he owned every square inch of it, unhurried, certain, giving the kind of walk that told you exactly who was in charge before he ever opened his mouth.

I couldn't see his face yet, not clearly, not from this distance.

And then he got closer.

And the entire world tilted sideways underneath my skates.

Because I knew that walk. I knew those shoulders, that jaw, that exact shade of dark grey eyes that had been staring into a coffee mug in our kitchen barely three hours earlier.

It was Dominic.

My stepbrother was the new head coach of the Fairview Wolves.