Breaking the Ice

What Marcus Said

Liam's POV

I should be thinking about the game.

That's what I keep telling myself as I stand at my locker, shoulder pads on, stick resting against the bench beside me. I should be running through the lineup in my head, checking off the shifts, thinking about Adrian's tendencies on the left side and how Cole needs to cheat forward if we're going to —

"Her dad's Richard Sinclair."

Marcus's voice. Low, like he's telling someone a secret, but not low enough. He never goes low enough. It's the one thing I'd change about him if I could.

"The tech guy?" Cole asks.

"The tech guy. Three companies, two of them publicly traded. You know the Sinclair Foundation? That scholarship wing in the business building? That's her family."

I don't turn around. I keep my eyes on the laces I'm retying for the second time, pulling them tighter than they need to be.

"So she bought her way on," Cole says. It isn't even a question.

"I mean — Brooks doesn't take walk-ons, man. Never. Not once in the time I've been here." Marcus pauses. "And then this girl shows up with no history on any Northbridge recruitment list, nothing in the athletic program database, and suddenly there's a spot open on Team Two that nobody knew existed three days ago?"

The lace snaps.

I look down at it. The frayed end. The clean break.

"She probably made one phone call," Cole says. "One call, and the rest of us spent all summer bleeding for our spots."

Everything Marcus says has the particular ring of something I've thought myself without letting myself say it. That's what makes it worse. I don't like being caught thinking the same things as locker room gossip. But the logic is right there, sitting in the middle of it, and I can't look away from it. Brooks doesn't take walk-ons. I have known this man for three years. He doesn't bend rules for talent alone. He's turned away players who went on to play professionally because they couldn't fit his program.

And this girl — Sinclair, the heiress — walks in on day one with a spot on the roster?

The quiet anger that's been sitting low in my chest since she walked through that door pulls itself upright.

I've been careful with it all afternoon. Careful because I know what I look like when I'm not, and because this team needs a captain right now, not a reaction. But there are some things I can't just file away and ignore, and one of them is someone using money to shortcut a process that other people sacrificed for.

My people. The ones in this room. The ones who don't have a net.

I pick up my helmet.

I tell myself I'm going to walk down to the ice.

I end up in the side corridor.

The door to her locker room opens without resistance, and I step inside before I've fully thought through what I'm going to say. That's not like me. I'm not impulsive — I've spent years training that out of myself because impulsive captains lose games. But she's already standing, already looking at me, and the distance between us closes before I register I'm moving.

I stop close. Too close, maybe. I'm aware of it but I don't step back.

"You can't walk in here without knocking," she says.

Calm. Like I don't make her nervous at all.

Some part of me, the part that's been watching her since she walked into the locker room beside Brooks, notes that she said the same thing the first time. In my head. The version I've been rehearsing. And she said it exactly like I imagined she would — level, unbothered, like she's already decided the shape of this conversation and she's just waiting for me to catch up.

"Sinclair," I say.

"Carter." A beat. "So you know my name."

"I know your family name. Everyone does." I hold her gaze. "Your father's Richard Sinclair."

Something moves in her expression. Controlled fast, but it moves.

"That's not a question," she says.

"No." I keep my voice low. Steady. "I want to be straightforward with you. This team is full of guys who gave up a lot to be here. Guys who don't have the option of a phone call fixing things when things get hard. Guys who earned every single thing they have on this roster, inch by inch." I pause. "Brooks doesn't take walk-ons."

Her chin lifts. "Maybe he made an exception."

"Brooks doesn't make exceptions."

"Then maybe," she says, quiet and precise, "you don't know everything about Brooks."

I look at her. Really look — the steadiness in her eyes, the set of her jaw, the complete absence of apology in any part of her. I came here expecting to find guilt, or defensiveness, or the kind of careful deflection that people use when they know they've gotten something they didn't earn.

I'm not finding any of that.

And I don't know what to do with that.

I take a step back. Then another.

"Don't get comfortable," I say.

"Don't make assumptions," she says back, without missing a beat.

I turn and I walk out and I close the door behind me, and I stand in the corridor for a moment in the particular quiet of having said everything I meant to say and still feeling like I lost.

She didn't flinch.

Not once.

I've faced down players twice her size on the ice and never felt as off-balance as I do right now, in this empty hallway, with nothing but the distant roar of the crowd starting to build through the walls.

I roll my shoulders. Pull my focus back to where it belongs.

I have a game to captain.

Scarlett Sinclair is a complication. And I handle complications the same way I handle everything.

Head-on, until one of us gives.

I already know it won't be me.

I just don't know yet if it'll be her.