Power Play

Chapter Ten: Ice Bath

Monday's practice was brutal in the specific way Whitfield engineered practices to be brutal when he was working through something he couldn't say out loud — extra conditioning, extra reps, extra everything, the entire team dragging themselves off the ice afterward with the particular exhaustion that came from a coach processing stress through his roster.

Rae's knee didn't survive it well.

She hid it as long as she could, the same practiced nonchalance she'd perfected over two years, but by the time she made it to the trainer's room the pain had sharpened into something she couldn't quite mask, a grinding heat that radiated up through the joint every time she put weight on it wrong.

"Ice bath," the trainer said, not unkindly, nodding toward the tub in the corner of the room. "Fifteen minutes. Standard post-practice protocol, don't make it weird."

The ice bath room was small, tiled, a single low tub built for one occupant at a time, and Rae was midway through steeling herself for the specific misery of submerging an already-aching joint in near-freezing water when the door opened and Beckett walked in, towel around his neck, clearly there for the same standard protocol.

"Oh," he said, stopping short. "Sorry, I didn't realize—"

"It's fine. Trainer said fifteen minutes, there's only one tub." Rae glanced at the small space, calculating with the specific pragmatism that had gotten her through two years of navigating a facility built for men. "We can rotate. Or share, I guess, if you don't mind cold water and questionable boundaries."

Something flickered across his face — amusement, maybe, at the specific absurdity of the situation, given everything else currently sitting unresolved between them. "I think we're past questionable boundaries, Callahan."

"Fair point."

They ended up sharing the narrow tub, knees drawn up, shoulders pressed together in the small space, the cold enough to steal her breath the moment she lowered herself in beside him. For a long minute neither of them spoke, both riding out the initial shock of the water, and then Beckett's hand found hers under the surface, cold fingers lacing through cold fingers, and something in the gesture felt more intimate than anything that had happened between them in bed two nights ago.

"How's the knee," he said quietly, eyes forward, giving her the specific privacy of not having to answer while being watched.

"Manageable. Today was rough."

"Whitfield's stressed about something. He ran us like we'd lost by ten." Beckett's jaw tightened. "I sent him Tanner's video this morning. He hasn't said anything back yet."

"Maybe he's investigating quietly."

"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe he's got bigger things on his plate than a bad ice patch. My father's been calling him. A lot, this week."

Rae turned to look at him properly, catching the specific tightness in his expression that she'd learned, over three weeks of living together, meant something about Marcus Vance. "What's he calling about?"

"I don't know exactly. Whitfield's careful about what he tells me directly." Beckett was quiet for a moment, the cold water lapping gently around them. "But I know my father's been talking to boosters about the program's direction. About whether Whitfield's the right coach to take us into the tournament. About whether—" He stopped.

"Whether what?"

"Whether certain roster decisions are helping or hurting our tournament odds." He said it flatly, the words costing him something visible. "He hasn't said your name to me directly. He doesn't have to."

The cold water suddenly felt colder. "He wants me gone."

"He wants anything that isn't guaranteed gone. That's how he's built his whole life — eliminate variables, control outcomes, don't leave anything to chance." Beckett's grip on her hand tightened. "You're the biggest variable on this roster, by his math. Not because you're not good enough. Because you're unpredictable to him. Untested by his standards. He doesn't trust what he can't script."

"And you?" Rae asked quietly. "Do you trust it?"

He turned to look at her fully then, cold water and colder truths between them, and something in his expression went soft in a way that made her chest ache. "I trust you more than I've trusted anything in years," he said. "Which terrifies me, because everything my father's ever taught me says that's exactly the kind of trust that gets you burned."

"Do you believe him?"

"I used to." He brought their joined hands up out of the water, pressed a kiss to her knuckles with a tenderness that undid something careful in her chest. "I'm starting to think he's wrong about a lot of things."

They sat in the cold water a while longer, hands joined, the fifteen minutes stretching into something that felt less like recovery protocol and more like the two of them simply needing to be close to each other in a day that had handed them nothing but reasons to be afraid.