Which meant she'd never had to be close enough to feel Elise's body heat, never had to press her fingers along a joint line while Elise watched her face, never had to keep her face neutral with her hands on bare skin and green eyes looking down at her.
Probably for the best.
"Park, you look like you're building an art installation back there." Mara's voice cut through.
Sienna looked down. She'd cut about twenty strips of kinesiology tape and arranged them in a meticulous row across the counter. "Prepping for the second period."
"It's not even the first period yet."
Sienna squared the edges of the tape row with one finger. "I like to be prepared."
Mara raised an eyebrow but let it go. Elise glanced over, and their eyes caught, and there was half a second where everything in the room dropped away except the directness of Elise's gaze. Then Sienna looked down at the tape strips and began peeling them off the counter with more attention than the task required.
"Right. Let's move." Mara clapped her hands once. "Warm-up in five. Lou, round up the defence. Moreno, you're on the first shift with Lex."
Elise stood and stretched her arms overhead, her sports bra shifting with the movement, the planes of her stomach visible as her body extended. Sienna focused on re-rolling a tape strip she'd already re-rolled. "Got it, Coach."
"Don't let Kowalski bait you tonight," Mara added from the doorway. "She's a pest. Ignore her."
"I'm always calm," Elise said, and Lou snorted.
Mara shook her head, half a smile cracking through. "Just don't get yourself ejected in the first five minutes."
They filed out. Mara first, then Lou. Elise paused at the door and looked back.
"Thanks, Doc." Casual. An afterthought. The half-smile that accompanied it was quick and effortless, a reflex Elise probably didn't think about.
"Good luck tonight."
Elise disappeared down the corridor. Her footsteps faded into the rising noise of the arena.
Sienna pressed both palms flat against the counter and exhaled. The room was empty, and the adhesive smell of the tape was joined by a trace of Elise. Whatever she wore. Deodorant, or shampoo, or just the clean heat of a body that ran warm. It would fade in a few minutes. It always did.
She began tidying the counter in earnest. Tape rolls back in the drawer. Scissors in the sterilisation tray. The kinesiology strips she'd over-cut went into a labelled ziplock bag because she couldn't bring herself to waste them. The familiar rhythm of it settled her pulse back down. This was what she was good at. Order. Preparation. Making sure every contingency was covered so nobody got hurt on her watch.
Her own tennis career had ended because someone hadn't done that. A coach who'd pushed her through a stress fracture at nineteen, a tournament doctor who'd cleared her to play when she shouldn't have been standing. She'd torn three ligamentsin her ankle and spent fourteen months in rehab and never competed again. She carried that lesson into every tape job, every assessment, every decision about whether a player was fit to return.
She would never be the reason someone's career ended.
She finished packing her medical bag with efficient hands and slung it over her shoulder. The kit was heavy with ice packs, elastic bandages, and the portable ultrasound unit she carried to every game. Familiar weight. Grounding.
The corridor leading to the arena was already thick with traffic. Coaching staff in Valkyries polos moved with purpose, tablets in hand. Media personnel passed with cameras balanced on shoulders, trailing thick cables that snaked along the baseboards. A group of early-access sponsors with lanyards around their necks were being ushered toward the corporate boxes by a woman in a blazer who looked like she worked for Astoria.
The lighting shifted as Sienna walked, from the harsh brightness of the back halls to the warmer ambient glow near the arena entrance. The noise rose with every step: music thumping through the PA system, the low sustained roar of a crowd still filling twenty thousand seats, the vibration of it travelling up through the concrete floor into the soles of her shoes.
She passed a merch stand where a teenager was already wearing a Valkyries jersey with Camille Laurent-Dubois's number on the back. Two seasons ago, this team had been playing in a rink that smelled permanently of damp and had temperamental heating. Now Astoria Shepry's arena rose around them like a declaration. State-of-the-art ice surface, luxury boxes with tinted glass, a sound system that made the building itself feel alive. Sienna still had moments where the scale of it caught her off guard. What these women had built. What they were still building.
She rounded the corner near the tunnel entrance and nearly walked straight into Helen Ward.
"Careful." Helen steadied her coffee with one hand, the paper cup listing dangerously. Not a drop spilled. She was dressed in her usual game-day uniform: dark trousers, a soft grey cardigan over a navy blouse, a calm expression that suggested she'd never been genuinely startled by anything in fifty-five years of living. Her dark hair, threaded with grey, was cut neatly at her chin. "You're walking like you're late for surgery."
"Just trying to get set up." Sienna fell into step beside her as they navigated toward the team seating area behind the bench. The tunnel opened ahead of them, and the arena unfolded in stages: first the wall of sound, then the cold air carrying the mineral bite of fresh ice, then the sheer visual scale of twenty thousand seats stacked upward into the rafters. Banners hung from the ceiling and the Jumbotron cycled through player headshots and sponsor logos in bright, pulsing rotations.
"How's the pre-game mood?"
"Focused. Confident." Helen settled into her seat and crossed her legs, wrapping both hands around her paper cup. Steam drifted from the lid. "A little chippy. Mara's been snapping at people since lunch, which is her version of optimism."
Sienna sat down beside her and set her medical bag between her feet. The seats were padded, but the cold from the ice reached them even here, a constant low chill that crept through her trousers. She pulled the zipper of her jacket up another inch.