The Captain's Weakness

Three laps of the concourse, two rounds of dynamic stretching, and a full check of the equipment bag. Twice. That is what a man does at 6:47 in the morning when the only thing he trusts about himself is the routine. Logan McCready has the rink to himself, which is exactly how he wants it. The training facility smells of fresh ice and the faint chemical bite of floor sealant, the particular cleanness that exists only before the first skate of the season, before seventy pounds of gear and two dozen sweating men turn everything to steam and rubber. Fluorescents hum over empty bleachers and throw the kind of flat light that makes every crack in the concrete visible. *Control what you can control, Logan. The ice doesn't care about your excuses.* Seventeen years of his father's voice, and it still arrives on schedule. He pulls on the jersey. Number fourteen. Steps onto the bench, left blade scraping the rubber matting, a sound he knows as well as his own breathing. Then the physio room door clicks open, and a woman steps out with curly red hair twisted into something that is trying to look professional and not entirely succeeding. He makes the rule that morning. He breaks it by the third chapter. What follows: a door he should have kept shut, a weakness he hides in plain sight, the actual truth about what happened that night on the road, a night she stays too long, a trip that changes the arrangement, and a kiss that does not happen at exactly the moment everybody expects it to. *I know you faced your entire team and told them the truth when you could have lied.* *That was before the whole damn world got to watch it.* *It doesn't change what you did.* Two steps across a room. Hands on a jaw he has not bothered to shave. A promise made in the smallest possible voice. *I promise I won't break alone.* A small-town hockey romance about a captain whose entire personality is a control system, and the woman who turns out to be the one variable he cannot schedule around.