The Winger's Penalty

Three seconds after the buzzer, Cormac Sloane throws the right hand. Halifax's left winger goes down, a kid named Dubeau, nineteen years old, baby face and all, and his helmet skids toward the blue line spinning on its crown. *"The camera caught it. The ref caught it."* By the following morning the clip has two hundred thousand views and the Ice Wolves have a public relations problem with a name attached to it. Coach Kowalski's terms are not negotiable: see the new team psychologist, and the suspension runs four games instead of six. The card in Cormac's truck reads *Dr. Sasha Belanger*. Her brother Garnet is a rookie defenseman just called up from the ECHL, a thin kid with dark circles under his eyes, which makes her the last person in the building Cormac wants inside his head. She already knows the worst of it. In the notes at the bottom of his file: *Father, Declan Sloane, retired NHL enforcer. Died 2022. Cause of death: complications from chronic traumatic encephalopathy.* Sasha wrote her master's thesis on him. Management wants a fixed player. What Sasha is actually able to offer is confidential clinical care, which is not the same product and satisfies nobody upstairs. Then someone cuts Cormac's skate lace before a game. Clean, with a blade. Sasha works out who did it before he does, and the evidence sits in her coat pocket like a confession she hasn't made. Tyson Rourke has photographs from the cafe and footage from a hotel lobby, and a price: drop the gloves one more time, put on a show, prove you're still the guy who takes care of business. If he refuses, the pictures go to the Chronicle-Journal, to the coach, to the league office, and fraternization costs her the licence along with the job. *"I'm telling you I'm not fighting tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever."* This is a contemporary hockey romance about an enforcer trying to become something other than a pair of fists on skates, a clinician who cannot ethically treat the man she is falling for, and a brother whose descent nobody in either family wants to say out loud.