Chapter 20
SAUCER PASS: A PASS LIFTED SLIGHTLY OFF THE ICE TO CLEAR STICKS
Dr. Halvorsen never rushes. Never fills the silence. He lets it stretch until whatever I’m avoiding starts to itch.
“Let’s talk about the moment you left Amy,” he says calmly. “Not what happened. Why.”
I exhale through my nose. “I’ve answered this before.”
“You’ve explained it,” he corrects. “You haven’t examined it.”
That lands. I lean back in the chair, eyes drifting to the window. “Hockey made sense,” I say finally.
“How so?”
“It had clear rules. Clear expectations. If I dominated the ice, I was accepted.”
“What if you didn’t perform?”
I shrug. “Then you lost ice time. You trained harder. You fixed it.”
He nods. “So acceptance was conditional.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “But predictable.”
The word hangs there.
“With Amy,” I continue slowly, “there wasn’t a scoreboard. There wasn’t a coach telling me what to do next. She expected trust. Communication. Emotional follow-through.”
“How did that feel?”
“Risky,” I admit. “Terrifying in some ways.”
He leans forward slightly. “Talk with me about why you prioritized hockey.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Didn’t you?” He lets that resonate for a moment. “What was it about hockey that earned that devotion?”
I let out a humorless breath. “You’re taught your team is everything. Loyalty above all else. You sacrifice for the group. You don’t make waves. You protect your teammates.”
“What about Amy?”
I close my eyes. “Amy wasn’t part of the system. She wasn’t protected by it. When everything happened—when the photo surfaced—she became a liability in a world where I was rewarded for cutting weight.”
The words taste bitter.
“So when you believed she’d done something wrong—”
“I reacted the way I was trained to,” I cut in. “Eliminate the threat. Preserve the team. Preserve the future.”
The therapist doesn’t flinch. “You didn’t ask questions.”
“No,” I say quietly. “I didn’t want answers. Answers would’ve complicated things.”
“Because complications threaten control,” he says.
“Yes.”
I run a hand through my hair, shame crawling up my spine. “Hockey gave me the illusion that if I did everything right, nothing bad would happen. That loyalty was earned through performance. That love—” My voice catches. “—was something you could lose if you disappointed people.”
“And when you thought Amy disappointed you?”
I swallow hard. “I withdrew it.”
Dr. Halvorsen lets that sit before he asks, “You’ve described hockey as giving you control. But control over what?”
I think for a long moment. “My fear,” I say. “My fear of being powerless. Of choosing wrong and losing everything.”
“Amy represented…?”
“Unconditional presence,” I say, the realization sharp. “She loved me when I wasn’t impressive. When I was exhausted. When I was just… Brennan.”
My throat tightens. “And that terrified me,” I add. “Because I didn’t know how to protect something I couldn’t control.”
“So when doubt appeared,” he says gently, “you chose the environment that felt safer.”
“Yes.”
“So, safer meant familiar,” he continues. “Even if it was harsher.”
I nod.
“Hockey never asked me to sit with uncertainty,” I say. “It asked me to act. To decide quickly. To commit.”
“But relationships,” he says, “ask you to pause.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “And I mistook pausing for weakness.”
Dr. Halvorsen watches me closely. “Do you believe that now?”
“No,” I say immediately. “I believe it was cowardice.”
The word hangs heavy.
“Leaving her felt like strength at the time,” I continue. “Decisive. Necessary. Final.”
“What do you think now?”
“It feels like the worst decision of my life,” I admit. “Because I didn’t leave her due to the truth. I left her to protect a version of myself that couldn’t survive being wrong.”
Silence fills the room again. “What would it have cost you to stay?”
Part of me wants to answer everything. But he’s asking me to dig deeper. I finally respond, “It would’ve cost me my illusion of control. It would’ve forced me to confront the system I trusted didn’t actually care about me—only my output.”
“Staying with Amy would’ve required…?”
“Believing her,” I say. “Even when it was inconvenient. Even when it threatened my standing.”
“What stopped you?”
I close my eyes. “I didn’t know who I was without a team jersey on. I didn’t think I would matter.”
Dr. Halvorsen exhales slowly. “That’s an important sentence.”
I laugh weakly. “It’s a brutal one.”
“Growth often is,” he says. “So let’s reframe this. You didn’t leave because you loved hockey more than Amy. You left because hockey taught you that love is conditional, trust is transactional, and safety is earned through performance.”
My chest tightens.
“Amy asked you to believe in something far more vulnerable.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “She asked me to be human.”
He says gently, “That felt like a bigger risk?”
I nod, tears burning behind my eyes.
“What do you do with this now?” he asks.
“I stay,” I say. “Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when I don’t get immediate reassurance. Even when I’m afraid.”
“What should your response be if this kind of fear shows up again?”
“Don’t run away. Talk. Ask questions. Listen.”
He smiles faintly. “That’s a different skill set than hockey.”
I return the smile, sad but steady. “One I wish I’d learned sooner.”
“You’re learning it now,” he says. “That matters.”
As the session winds down, I feel wrung out—but clearer. Like I finally understand the rules of a game I didn’t know how to play.
For the first time, I know what has to happen.
I need to sit still and take my time in the penalty box.
Regardless of how ready I think I am to fix what I broke.