Chapter 1: The Rink at Midnight
The ice was empty, and it breathed.
The blue overhead lights hummed, casting a sterile, surgical glow over the unmarked sheet. It was still, save for the faint, almost imagined whisper of the refrigeration system and the distant, rhythmic thump of waves against the marina pilings just beyond the concrete walls. Alison stood at the edge, gear bag a heavy weight on her shoulder, and drank in the quiet. After the chaos of the first official practice—the shouted drills, the screech of forty skates, the primal thwack of pucks against boards—the silence felt louder.
Everyone else had fled to the warmth of South Florida evening, to beers and complaining muscles. But her angles had felt off all day. A hair slow. A centimeter out of position. It itched under her skin.
She dropped her bag with a thud, the sound echoing in the cavernous space. She was lacing her skates when a different sound cut the silence: the clean, precise scrape of a single blade carving a deep arc.
Alison looked up.
Someone was already out there.
It was Bailey Arentz, gliding through the neutral zone with a ease that looked less like skating and more like thought made motion. Her 6’0" frame, all long legs and lean muscle, moved with a deceptive, floating speed. No pads, just gray sweatpants and a damp practice jersey, her dark hair escaping from behind her ears. She weaved through invisible defenders, her shoulders dipping, a phantom puck glued to her stick. She wasn’t practicing. She was playing a game only she could see.
Alison finished lacing, pushed through the gate, and the cold bit through her sweat-damp clothes. The ice felt different now—personal.
Bailey didn’t startle. She completed a tight turn, spraying a fine mist of ice, and came to a stop at the center circle. She regarded Alison, her brown eyes sharp even from sixty feet away. A slow grin spread across her face, the first truly unguarded expression Alison had seen from her all day.
“Couldn’t stay away either, Kohler?”
“My crease felt about two miles wide today,” Alison said, her voice bouncing oddly in the empty arena. “Figured I’d negotiate with it in private.”
Bailey nodded, understanding. Without a word, she bent and fished a puck from a bucket near the bench. She flipped it in her hand once, caught it, then drew her arm back and sent it sailing. It wasn’t a gentle pass. It was a hard, flat laser that hissed across the ice, dying perfectly at the toe of Alison’s skate.
“Negotiate with this,” Bailey said. Her tone was dry, challenging, but the grin remained. “First to five. No pressure. No coaches.”
Alison looked down at the black disk. She toed it, feeling its solid weight. This wasn’t in the schedule. This was something else entirely. A secret.
“You’re not even geared up,” Alison pointed out.
“I’m fast. You’re focused. Seems even.” Bailey was already skating backward, setting up near the blue line, her stick tapping the ice. “Or are Philly goalies only good with a crowd?”
A laugh burst out of Alison, short and surprised. She settled her mask over her face, the world narrowing to the cage’s grid. She sank into her stance, the familiar tension coiling in her thighs. “You Minnesota kids are all talk. Let’s see the speed.”
Bailey’s first move was simple. She gathered the puck Alison passed back to her and drove wide right, pushing hard. Alison tracked her, cutting down the angle, post snug against the pipe. But Bailey wasn’t going for the shot. At the hash marks, she cut inward with a vicious inside edge, transferring all that lateral speed into a direct line. It was a power-skater’s move, brutal and efficient. Alison shifted, knees bending deeper, but Bailey was already releasing a quick snap-shot, low blocker side.
It zipped past, kissing the inside of the post before rattling the net.
Alison flinched. It was a perfect shot.
Bailey retrieved the puck, not celebrating. “One-nothing.”
The next few shots were a dialogue. Bailey tested her: a deceptive wrister aimed five-hole that Alison smothered, a high glove-side attempt she snagged with a satisfying thwap in the leather. Alison’s breaths grew loud inside her mask, the only sound besides their blades and the puck.
Bailey’s fifth approach was different. She came in with lazy, looping strides, almost casual, lulling the pace. Alison held her ground, suspicious. At the top of the circle, Bailey feinted a slap shot, the stick winding up high. Alison reacted, rising slightly. It was a mistake.
Bailey pulled the puck around the ghost slapper, toe-dragged it through her own feet in a shockingly tight space, and was suddenly alone in front, the net yawning. She went backhand, lifting it calmly over Alison’s desperate, sliding pad.
“Two-one,” Bailey said, a little breathless now.
“That was filthy,” Alison said, pushing herself up. She wasn’t even annoyed. She was impressed.
“You left the top shelf open. Northern Minnesota 101.”
They reset. The game within the game shifted. Alison began reading the smaller tells: the set of Bailey’s shoulders before a cut, the flicker of her eyes before a deke. She stopped a breakaway with a flash of her right pad, the impact shivering up her leg.
Three-two. Four-three. The score climbed.
Sweat dripped down Alison’s spine. Bailey’s dark hair was plastered to her temples. They didn’t speak, just stole breaths between rushes, the shared exhaustion becoming its own language. The ice was a mess of their cuts and stops, a private map of their contest.
Four-four. Game point.
Bailey took the puck from her own end this time, building speed through the neutral zone. This wasn’t a casual loop. This was full flight. Alison felt a jolt of adrenaline, clean and sharp. This was the speed that had made Bailey the first pick. The long, powerful strides ate up the ice, a whisper of noise becoming a roar.
Alison challenged, coming out to the top of her crease to cut the angle down to nothing. Bailey powered in, stick handling wide. Going for the wrap-around? A juke to the forehand? Alison shuffled, ready for anything.
Bailey didn’t deke.
At full tilt, a stride from the crease, she simply… stopped. She dug both edges in, hips dropping, spraying a cloud of ice snow that fogged Alison’s sightline. In the heart of the white cloud, Alison saw the puck slide silently, slowly, against the grain of all that momentum, across the front of the net. Bailey, still balanced, reached with her long reach and, from an impossible angle behind the goal line, tucked the puck just inside the far post.
It trickled over the line.
The cloud settled.
Alison stared at the puck in her net. She’d been beaten by a complete absence of motion. By a magician’s trick.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing.
Bailey skated around the net, collecting the puck. She stopped at the crease’s edge. “Five-four,” she said quietly. Not a gloat. A fact.
Alison pushed her mask up. The cold air hit her hot face. “What the hell was that? You were a speed skater, not a damn illusionist.”
“Old habit.” Bailey shrugged, but her eyes were bright. “Sometimes you go fast to hide the fact you’ve already decided to stop.”
They looked at each other across the painted blue ice. The camaraderie of the shared secret hung between them, solid as a passed puck. The sterile lights, the echoing arena, the distant sea—it all fell away.
Bailey extended a hand, not to shake, but to help Alison up from her crouch. “Your crease feel smaller yet?”
Alison took the hand, the grip firm and certain. “It’s getting there.” She held on a second longer than necessary. “Tomorrow. Same time. I want a rematch.”
Bailey’s grin returned, sharper this time. “Figured you might.”
She skated away, a lone figure in the vast, quiet blue, leaving Alison standing in her crease, the echo of the game still ringing in her muscles, the taste of a real challenge, finally, like cold, clean air in her lungs.
She skated away, a lone figure in the vast, quiet blue, leaving Alison standing in her crease, the echo of the game still ringing in her muscles, the taste of a real challenge, finally, like cold, clean air in her lungs.
Alison watched her go, the spell of the empty rink beginning to dissipate. The reality of aching quads and a damp back settled in. She took one last look at the scarred ice, their private battle etched into its surface, then pushed toward the gate.
The sharp smell of the arena—ice melt, rubber, old popcorn—sharpened as she entered the corridor. Light spilled from the half-open door of the women’s locker room, accompanied by the clatter of a gear bag. Alison hovered for a second at the threshold. Then she walked in.
Bailey was at her locker, peeling off her sweat-soaked practice jersey. The room was warm, thick with the smell of damp concrete and cheap body wash. “Couldn’t let you have the last word,” Alison said, her voice loud in the tiled space.
“Didn’t expect you to.” Bailey didn’t turn, just tossed the jersey into a bin. “You strike me as the persistent type.”
“Goalie has to be. One bad goal can’t ruin the next sixty minutes.” Alison unbuckled her chest protector, the heavy padding hitting the bench with a thump. The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable, just filled with the familiar, tired rituals of removal. Shoulder pads, elbow pads, the tap of skate blades being wiped.
“You know,” Bailey said, sitting to work on her skates, “when they called my name first overall, I just felt…relieved. Is that weird?”
Alison considered it, pulling a clean t-shirt over her head. “Not weird. Expected, maybe. For you.”
A short, dry laugh. “Right. The hype. ‘The prototype.’ ‘The next evolution.’” Bailey’s voice was flat, reciting old headlines. “It would’ve been a story if I hadn’t gone first. A disappointment.” She finally looked over, her face open. “That sounds arrogant.”
“It’s just true.” Alison shrugged. “You were bigger. Faster. You scored, what, forty-two goals your senior year? There wasn’t a highlight reel you weren’t on. You were the obvious pick.”
“And you?” Bailey asked. “Second round to Florida. Happy?”
Alison paused, her fingers on the laces of her street shoes. The question was genuine. “Surprised, honestly. First round felt like a long shot, even leading the conference in saves. It’s a quieter stat, you know? You don’t see a save percentage splashed across SportsCenter.” She pulled the lace tight. “But if my name hadn’t been called at all? After all that? Yeah. I’d have been pissed.”
Bailey nodded, as if that was the only acceptable answer. She stood in just shorts and a tank, rolling a water bottle between her palms. “So we both land here. Building a team from scratch in a place where your gear mildews in your bag if you leave it for a day.”
A real smile broke across Alison’s face. “It’s absurd. I walked out of the airport and got hit with a wall of wet heat. My first thought was, ‘Where’s the ice supposed to live in this?’”
“Between the beaches and the golf courses,” Bailey deadpanned. “Priority real estate.”
They laughed then, a short, easy sound that bounced off the lockers. It broke the last of the formal tension. They were just two people in a room, stuck with the same bizarre job in the same bizarre place.
“I knew who you were,” Alison said after a moment, gathering her damp gear into her bag. “In college. Everyone did. That speed…it was like you were playing a different sport.”
Bailey zipped her bag, slinging it over one shoulder. “I watched some of your film, too.”
That stopped Alison. “Mine?”
“Sure. Scouting the competition, but also…just appreciating it. You’d go post-to-post like you were on a wire. Some of those reaction saves.” Bailey shook her head slightly, a gesture of respect. “It wasn’t just flexible. It was smart.”
The compliment landed differently than ones from coaches or commentators. It came from someone who saw the game in the same granular detail. Alison felt a flush of warmth that had nothing to do with the humid air seeping in from outside.
“We never played each other,” Alison said.
“Different conferences. Different paths.” Bailey hoisted her bag. “Same destination, though.”
They walked out of the locker room together, their footsteps echoing in the concrete corridor. The rink was dark now, a silent cavern behind them. Ahead, the exit door promised the shocking embrace of a Miami night.
“Same destination,” Alison agreed. “And a long way to go.”
As they pushed through the heavy door into the thick, salty air, Alison knew this was more than just a shared practice. It was the start of a collaboration, a partnership forged in quiet, blue-lit competition. Over the course of their contracts, through wins and losses and the grind of a season, they were going to become close friends. She could already feel the shape of it, solid and certain as a perfect pass on the tape.