Power Play and Penalties

The stick snaps against the bench before Deacon Hartley can stop himself. Third period, two minutes left, tie game, and he fanned on a one-timer from the slot like a rookie. His shoulder screams. He has told nobody. Not the trainers, not the team doctor who has already asked twice this month about the lingering discomfort. He is twenty-eight, and he calls it old man mileage. The voicemail is already waiting. A sports psychologist starts with the team tomorrow, one session a week for eight weeks, and it is not a request. If Deacon skips it, Cade gets scratched for the road trip. Cade is his brother. Twenty-two years old, third line, two goals in his last ten games. Deacon has spent seven years building a wall between Cade and the worst parts of this league, and now his own body is about to tear it down. *Dr. Brynn Holloway. But you can call me Dr. Holloway.* She has read the training records. A maintenance day in November, upper body fatigue, then nothing at all, and a shot percentage down 12% since. She knows what he is doing because she grew up watching it. Her father wore number 33 for this franchise. He collapsed on this ice, and the paramedics worked on him for eleven minutes before the ambulance came, and she did not choose Port Sterling by accident. What stands between them is not nerves. It is Hadley's Law, the league's formal policy on psychologist-player relationships: zero tolerance, immediate termination, permanent revocation of clinical license. It is named after the psychologist and not the player, which tells you whose career the league values. Then Tom Castellan asks her, as a licensed professional and an employee of the organization, whether she has any knowledge that Deacon Hartley is physically unfit to play. She looks him in the eye and lies. And Lombardi's Mercedes is parked in the employee lot two days running. Lombardi is an agent. He represents players who think they are being held back, he has three teams interested in a young forward with Cade's numbers, and Cade is finished being protected. *I'm your teammate. Treat me like one.* Nobody here gets to keep everything. Deacon has to choose between the season and the shoulder. Brynn has to choose between the man and the licence she spent years earning. Cade has to choose between his brother's shadow and top-six minutes somewhere else. This is hockey romance built on a professional line that cannot be crossed without consequences, a concealed injury with a ticking clock on it, and two brothers who love each other badly, and it is closed-door.