Axle

Coach's Son, Everyone's Obsession

Your father's hockey team is forty-eight hours from the season opener, locked inside Ironclad Arena for a final training camp — and you walked in this morning to hand out gear schedules, not to become the single point of conflict threatening to detonate three careers and one championship roster. Every man on the ice knows who you are. Every man on the ice has decided, separately and dangerously, that the coach's son is exactly what he wants. Your father is twenty feet away at all times. That has not stopped a single one of them.

Ice Doesn't Lie

Callum Reeves has not spoken more than twelve words to you all semester — but every single one was calculated, and tonight, with the rink locked and the ice between you glowing under maintenance lights, he is done calculating. You came back for a laptop. He came back for you. The clock above the penalty box reads 11:04 PM, and the only way out requires him to make a call he has been rehearsing since September.