Chapter Two: Captain Charm Offensive

Rory Somebody was already on the ice when I got there, and he was about to blow my entire operation before I'd even tied my skates. I'd shown up at 5:40, twenty minutes early, because early was the whole strategy — get dressed in the trainer's private room before anyone arrived, tape everything down, tuck everything in, walk out already looking like I belonged there. Instead I pushed through the rink doors and found a guy carving lazy figure eights under the one bank of lights that was on, stick tapping the ice like he was thinking with it instead of his skull. He heard the door and looked up. I had approximately one second to decide whether to bolt back to my car and reconsider my entire life. He was tall in the specific way hockey players are tall — built for collisions, unfairly symmetrical, the kind of face that made sense on an i********: grid and no sense whatsoever at 5:40 in the morning. He skated over without being asked, easy, unhurried, like the rink was his living room and I was a guest who'd shown up before the party started. "You're either really early or really lost," he said. "Tryout's not for twenty minutes, Rookie." *Rookie.* Already. I hadn't said a single word yet and he'd already assigned me a nickname, which, frankly, was a level of confidence I both hated and deeply respected. "Early," I said, thanking every hour I'd spent practicing in front of a mirror like a maniac, because the word came out at exactly the pitch I needed. "Figured I'd case the ice before it fills up with guys trying to end my life." That got a real laugh out of him, surprised out of his chest, and something about it made my stomach do a small, extremely unhelpful flip that I filed immediately under *absolutely not, we are not doing this, put it back.* "Smart," he said, skating a slow circle around me like he was appraising a used car. "Most guys show up hungover and call it nerves." He tilted his head. "You got a name, or do I just keep calling you Rookie for the next four years?" "Rory." "Rory." He tried it on like a jacket. "Captain Jarvis Sterling. Try not to embarrass yourself out there — I've got a reputation to protect." And there it was. The name I'd chased across three months of screenshots and spreadsheets, standing four feet away from me on skates, grinning like he'd never had a hard day in his entire charmed life, completely unaware that I already knew things about his family that could end his season, his reputation, and possibly his ability to make eye contact with strangers ever again. I hated how normal he seemed. I'd built him up into a villain in my head — arrogant, careless, the kind of guy who'd shrug off wrecking someone's life like a bad grade — and instead I got a man who skated like it was the only place he felt fully like himself, and who made jokes at 5:40 in the morning to a total stranger who looked, in retrospect, absolutely terrified. I reminded myself, sternly, that villains don't always look like villains. That's usually the entire point. "Careful, Captain," I said, testing my voice against the nickname, against the whole disguise, seeing if any of it cracked. "I hear rookies have a habit of embarrassing the guys who talk too much." Something shifted in his face — surprise, then something warmer, like he hadn't expected to get talked back to and liked it more than a reasonable person should. "Oh, I like you," he said. "Don't get cut." He skated off toward the bench right as the doors opened behind me and a wave of half-asleep guys shuffled in with gear bags, and I finally exhaled the breath I'd apparently been holding since the moment he looked up. *One conversation in, and he already likes me,* I thought, lacing my skates with hands that were not, strictly speaking, steady. *This was supposed to be the easy part. This was supposed to be the part where nothing happened.* Tryouts blurred into sprints, passing drills, and a scrimmage where I checked a guy twice my size into the boards on pure instinct and heard someone on the bench whistle low in approval, which — I will admit — felt incredible, in a deeply unsustainable way. Coach Reyes, broad-shouldered, gray-haired, and radiating the energy of a man who has personally witnessed and forgiven a thousand crimes, pulled me aside afterward, clipboard against his chest like a shield. "Monroe." He said it like he was testing the weight of it. "Transfer, right? Where'd you play before?" "Club league back home. Wanted a real program." He studied me a beat too long — the kind of look that made my pulse spike like a fire alarm — and I braced for the question I'd been dreading. *Any injuries. Physicals scheduled. Anything I should know about.* Instead he just nodded, slow, like I'd passed a test I hadn't realized I was taking. "You've got instincts," he said. "Roster's up by five. Don't be late for first practice." I made the team. I actually, impossibly, embarrassingly made the team, and I should have felt like celebrating. Instead, walking out of the rink into a gray morning that had the audacity to look pretty about it, I felt Jarvis Sterling's eyes on my back the entire way to the door. I glanced over my shoulder and he was still watching, arms crossed, head tilted, like a man working out a math problem he couldn't quite solve and refused to leave alone. Like he already knew something didn't add up. I told myself it was nothing. Captains probably watch every rookie like that. It's practically in the job description. I did not yet know there was a second Sterling twin. I did not know that in exactly eleven days, *he'd* be the one to figure out I was lying — not because I skated wrong, or talked wrong, or moved wrong. He'd figure it out because of the one variable I hadn't accounted for at all: the way I looked at his brother when I thought nobody was paying attention.