Chapter Four

If there was a limit to the number of times Natalie could hear no in a day, she hadn’t reached it yet. She called every single person she could think of who might have a job for her only to hear “Wow, I wish I had something for you, but good luck” over and over.

All that rejection was exhausting, but not like the exhaustion she was used to from training. This didn’t leave her muscles sore and her skin bruised. It left her angry, depressed, and nursing a battered ego.

After one final “We’ll keep you in mind if anything opens up,” she needed to get out. Out of her house and out of her head. She put her sneakers on and headed out for a run.

The fact was, she hated running. It was a means to an end when it came to training. She didn’t enjoy the sprints, the beep test, or any of the dry land training she had to do for the team. But she loved how it felt to be strong and powerful on the ice. She loved being good .

Today, she ran to clear her head of all the noise in there. Every no was like another shot at her already bruised sense of self-worth. Not good enough for the team, not good enough for a job. Not good enough. Not good enough. The words echoed in her head as her feet punished the sidewalk.

Running this hard hurt but if it hurt she couldn’t think about what might happen a week from now, or tomorrow, or even ten seconds in the future. The pain of her lungs, the burning, metallic taste in her mouth, and her legs screaming at her to stop drowned all of that out.

By the time she got home, everything hurt except for her mind. That was finally as clear as the late afternoon sky. She filled a water bottle and took it into her living room to stretch. She flicked on the TV and caught the end of the show before SportsCenter . The hosts were arguing about who was going to take home gold this year in hockey.

There’s no way Canada wins this one. Not as long as I have something to do about it.

It hit her all over again. She had nothing to do about it. She had nothing to do with the team or the Olympics. She was on her own.

She turned the TV off and chucked the remote onto her couch, disgusted with everything in her life. She stalked into her kitchen and yanked the refrigerator door open. While she contemplated whether eating cereal for dinner was too pathetic even for her, her phone rang. She grabbed it and answered without taking her eyes off the twelve bottles of condiments populating the fridge door.

“Mom, I’m not moving home.”

“Natalie?”

Oh shit. Not her mom. Her agent. “Keena? Sorry. My mom’s been calling...never mind. What’s up?”

“How do you feel about television?”

Natalie closed the refrigerator door and moved to forage in the pantry. “Love it. It’s how I spend most of my days now that I’m a has-been,” Natalie said, hoping she sounded less bitter than she felt.

“You’re not a has-been, Natalie. You accomplished more in your playing career than most people will in their lifetime. It just happens that you picked a job where getting older isn’t a benefit.” She paused. “I’m sorry. This sucks. Nothing I can say is going to change the fact that this is completely shitty. But I might have an opportunity for your next career.”

Natalie hopped onto her counter and let her legs dangle above the floor. “Keena, I should tell you right now that I can’t act.”

A throaty laugh blasted through the phone, forcing Nat to put the phone away from her ear. “Nat, don’t worry, this doesn’t require anything but acting like yourself and not swearing on live TV.”

Nat leaned forward in anticipation. “I can work on the swearing, I promise.”

“I got a call from a friend who works for Wake Up, USA .”

“The morning show?”

“Yes. They’re thinking of changing things up a little bit for their Olympic coverage and wondered if you’d be interested in giving it a shot.”

Natalie’s heart leaped. After all the disappointments, this felt like a lifeline. But as her head caught up with her heart, she realized Keena wasn’t giving her a lot of specifics.

“What do they want me to do? Do they know I don’t have any experience on TV?”

Keena laughed. “They remember you from the last Olympics when they interviewed the whole team. You made a bit of an impression on the producer who called me. She liked your energy.”

Nat winced. She had been sleep-deprived and hungover when they were interviewed. She hadn’t dropped an f-bomb but she had been way freer with her comments than she would have been normally. In her defense, they had just won the gold medal. Who could blame her or her teammates for having a hell of a lot of fun the night before? If they hadn’t exactly made it to bed before the interview, no one needed to know.

“You still haven’t said what they want me to do,” Nat said, dread creeping into her chest. What if this wasn’t the lifeline she thought it was?

Keena was silent for a second.

“Keena, come on, what’s the catch?” Panic tinged with annoyance crept into Natalie’s voice.

Keena took a deep breath. “It’s nothing bad. They want you to come in to see how your chemistry is with one of their people who they have in mind for the segment.”

“Who is it?”

“Darcy LaCroix.”

Natalie’s mind served up a montage of her greatest battles with Darcy. Most of them included shoving, trash-talking, and, though she would never admit it, the nightmare of Darcy raising her arms over her head in triumph each time Canada beat the U.S. Natalie closed her eyes and shoved aside the memories before they could slip back any further to when she and Darcy first met. She didn’t need to think about college, or how they left things when Darcy graduated and moved on to the national team. Nope.

“I know you two have a history on the ice.”

And off.

Keena paused before speaking. “My contact tells me Darcy’s trying to get out from behind a desk and in front of the camera. Sounds like she thinks the Winter Olympics are her best shot.”

“Makes sense,” Natalie mumbled to herself. “If they already have a hockey player, why do they want me?”

“They think having the two of you do the segment will be more entertaining.” She said the last word carefully, like she was trying to weigh how Natalie would react and soften the impact even as she said it.

Natalie heard the words Keena wasn’t saying. “Entertaining? Like they’re going to put us in a boxing ring? That kind of entertaining?”

“Not exactly. Boxing is a Summer Olympics sport.”

Natalie was willing to give anything a chance if it kept her from having to move back home, but that didn’t erase her skepticism about teaming up with Darcy again.

“Just get on the plane. I’ll see you there,” Keena said before hanging up.

Natalie stood in her kitchen stunned by the combination of her agent hanging up on her and the idea of working with Darcy.

Natalie opened the refrigerator again. The contents hadn’t miraculously changed but she hardly saw them. She was too busy thinking about Darcy. She hadn’t seen her in a couple years but the memory of her sea-glass green eyes still made Natalie’s stomach flip over. Shit. No. She would not allow those memories in. She reminded herself of the last time they saw each other. It was the last Olympics and Natalie scored the winning goal to put Team USA on the gold medal podium. Yes, that was better. It was so much easier to think of them that way. Rivals. Bitter, screaming, trash-talking rivals. Not the stuff that came before. No. Not the way a nineteen-year-old Natalie had fallen hard for her captain. That girl was gone.

Add to that having to listen to Darcy tell the world that she’d been the last person cut from the team. I bet she fucking loved that , Natalie thought.

She slammed the refrigerator door, disgusted with the way her heart still fluttered at the thought of Darcy. She cast her eyes over her apartment. No way she was moving back home. And nothing, not even Darcy fucking LaCroix, would get in her way of landing this job if it meant keeping her apartment.