Madison had a gift for making complicated things feel simple.
She arrived at practice carrying two coffees and a smile that seemed impervious to the cold arena air, finding me in the stands where I'd been pretending to review player files while actually trying not to watch Jay run drills.
"You look like you could use caffeine and conversation," she said, settling beside me and pressing a warm cup into my hands. "Tell me if I'm interrupting actual work or just strategic avoidance of eye contact with a certain someone on the ice."
"Work," I lied. "Definitely work."
She laughed, the sound bright and uncomplicated, and launched into an explanation of her latest research project. Something about whale migration patterns and the unexpected ways ocean temperatures were shifting traditional routes.
Her enthusiasm was infectious—the way her hands moved when she described data sets, the light in her eyes when she talked about breakthroughs her team had made.
I found myself actually listening, actually engaged, my thoughts briefly pulled away from the chaos that had become my daily existence. Madison had that effect on people. She made you feel like whatever she was passionate about was worth caring about too.
"—and the really fascinating part is how the calves are adapting faster than the adults, like they're genetically predisposed to…" She stopped mid-sentence, her gaze sharpening. "Summer. Don't react, but someone's watching you."
I didn't turn, didn't need to. The weight of scrutiny had settled onto my shoulders the moment Madison sat down—a familiar pressure that made my skin prickle with instinctive warning.
Mariana Voss stood near the team bench, clipboard in hand, her attention ostensibly on the practice in front of her. But I could feel her gaze sliding toward us between drills, that calculating assessment I remembered from high school hallways.
The furrow between her perfectly shaped brows said she was trying to solve a puzzle she couldn't quite see.
She still didn't recognize me, but something about my presence unsettled her, triggered instincts she couldn't name. The predator in her sensed a threat even if she couldn't identify its source.
Before I could react, Mariana began walking toward us. Her stride was unhurried, her smile perfectly calibrated—the approach of someone who wanted to appear casual while being anything but.
"Summer, isn't it?" She stopped at the edge of our row, her presence somehow managing to loom despite her position below us. "I hope you're settling in well. The transition to sports medicine can be challenging for hospital staff."
"I'm managing," I said evenly. "The work isn't that different once you adjust to the environment."
"I'm sure." Her eyes slid toward the ice, where Jay had just completed a particularly aggressive check against the boards. "I couldn't help noticing that our star player has been getting injured quite a lot lately. Minor things, mostly, but they do seem to add up. And he always seems to end up at the medical office during your shifts specifically."
The implication coiled beneath her words like a snake preparing to strike. Madison stiffened beside me, but I kept my expression neutral, my voice professionally detached.
"Players get injured. That's why we're here. Mr. Callahan requests my attention because I treated him at St. Caroline's before joining the team—he's familiar with my work."
"Of course." Mariana's smile sharpened, the honey giving way to arsenic. "I just think it's worth remembering that it's not very polite to rub shoulders with other people's fiancés. Professional boundaries exist for a reason, and some of us take those boundaries quite seriously."
The words landed like a slap. My pulse spiked, heat flooding my chest, but before I could respond, before I could say something I'd regret, Madison was on her feet.
"Summer, we should get going." Her hand found my elbow with perfectly timed precision. "Remember we're meeting Priya at the café? We'll be late if we don't leave now."
The rescue was so smooth that Mariana had no graceful way to object. I stood, gathering my bag with movements that felt mechanical, and offered her a pleasant smile that didn't come close to reaching my eyes.
"Lovely chatting with you, Mariana. I'm sure we'll see each other around."
I let Madison guide me toward the exit, feeling Mariana's gaze bore into my back with every step. The Queen Bee had issued her warning, the territorial lines had been drawn.
And somewhere on the ice behind us, Jay Callahan continued running drills, completely unaware that two women were already fighting a silent war over ground he hadn't offered either of them.
The café was warm and crowded, the particular chaos of late afternoon when students and professionals collided in their mutual pursuit of caffeine. Priya had claimed our usual corner booth, three drinks already waiting on the table.
"You look like death," she announced as Madison and I slid into our seats. "Both of you. What happened?"
"Mariana Voss happened," Madison said grimly. "She cornered Summer at practice with some very pointed comments about professional boundaries and other people's fiancés."
Priya's expression darkened. "That woman is a walking red flag wrapped in designer clothes, I see. What did she actually say?"
I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup, the warmth grounding me. "She noticed Jay's been coming to the medical office a lot during my shifts. Made it very clear she considers him her property and I should stay in my lane."
"Her property." Priya's voice dripped with disgust. "Like he's a handbag she picked up at Bergdorf's. That's healthy."
I stirred my coffee without drinking it, watching the cream spiral into patterns I couldn't predict. The conversation continued around me—Priya's outrage, Madison's quieter concern, but I'd drifted somewhere else entirely.
"Summer." Priya's voice cut through my spiral. "Where'd you go just now?"
I looked up, found both my friends watching me with identical expressions of worried attention. The question I'd been avoiding pressed against my teeth, and suddenly I was too tired to keep holding it back.
"What does it say about me," I said quietly, "that I'm drawn to two people at once? That I can't seem to choose, can't seem to let either of them go? Does that make me selfish? Broken?"
I set down my cup, the ceramic clicking against the table. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm fundamentally incapable of the kind of love other people seem to find so easily."
I didn't name them—didn't need to. Priya knew about Xavier, had known from the beginning. And Madison had seen enough in the past few weeks to understand that something complicated was happening with Jay.
And they both knew superficially about the two of them.
"You're not broken," Madison said firmly. "And you're not selfish. You're human, Summer. Humans are messy. We don't get to choose who we're drawn to, and sometimes the timing is terrible and the circumstances are impossible and we still feel what we feel anyway."
"But you and Nathan…" I started.
"Me and Nathan took two years to figure out what we were doing." Her laugh was rueful, affectionate. "What you see now is the result of a lot of work, not some magical uncomplicated connection."
I watched her talk about my brother with easy affection, saw the warmth in her eyes when she mentioned his name. They'd built something real, something lasting. The kind of partnership I'd been trying to find with Xavier, the kind of spark I felt whenever Jay was near.
"The difference," Priya said, leaning forward with characteristic bluntness, "is that Nathan never lied to Madison about being married to someone else. And he never pretended not to see her for four years before suddenly deciding she was worth noticing."
The words stung, but they were accurate. Both paths in front of me were littered with wreckage—one a trap disguised as safety, the other a fantasy built on wounds that had never fully healed.
"I don't know what to do," I admitted. "I don't know who I'm supposed to choose, or if I'm supposed to choose anyone at all. Maybe I should just focus on work and forget both of them entirely."
"Maybe," Priya agreed. "Or maybe you should stop trying to figure everything out in one day and let yourself breathe for five minutes."
She reached across the table, squeezed my hand with surprising gentleness. "You don't have to solve your entire love life tonight, Summer. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just... exist."
Madison nodded, her own hand covering mine from the other side. "Girls' night. No men, no drama, no impossible decisions. Just us, terrible wine, and whatever reality TV is currently ruining our generation's attention spans."
Something loosened in my chest. The problems weren't solved—couldn't be solved by an evening of friendship and escapism. But the weight of carrying them alone shifted slightly, distributed across shoulders stronger than mine.
"Girls' night," I agreed. "But I'm picking the wine. Your taste is objectively terrible."
Priya gasped in mock offense, and Madison laughed, and for a few hours at least, I let myself forget about Xavier's broken promises and Jay's dangerous devotion and Mariana's poisoned warnings.
The reprieve was temporary. I knew that.
But sometimes temporary was enough.
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