Chapter 15 #2
Jake looked at me. "You thinking about post-hockey already?"
"Like to keep options open. My body's wearing out."
"Smart," Evan said. He set down his phone and gave me his full attention. "Most guys wait until they're forced out. Usually broke and broken."
My phone buzzed again. Likely Rhett again. I should answer, but I didn't know what to say. Hey, might be leaving Thunder Bay. Might be ending my career. Might be too much of a disaster to date right now?
"You'd still knit if the team moved?" Jake asked.
"Can't pack Thunder Bay in a U-Haul." The joke landed flat, but it was true.
Margaret's shop, the knitting circle, the community that had wrapped around me since Gram died—that was real in a way hockey contracts weren't. Rhett's workshop, where he'd kissed me against the workbench last week, hands steady on my hips while sawdust caught in my hair.
You couldn't restructure that. Couldn't relocate the way his voice dropped when he said my name.
Jake clapped me on the shoulder. "Good. Somebody's gotta keep us from unraveling."
"Fuck," Evan muttered. "That's terrible, even for you."
"What? It's a knitting pun. I'm being supportive."
I laughed, authentic humor. Maybe that was my real job. Not the fights, penalty minutes, or highlight reel hits. Perhaps it was this—keeping the threads together when everything else frayed.
My phone buzzed a third time. I pulled it out.
Rhett: You okay? Know you've got a lot going on. I'm here if you need to talk. Or not talk. Whatever you need
I typed back:
Hog: Have something tonight. Class at Margaret's. Can I come by after?
Three dots appeared immediately.
Rhett: Of course. I'll be in the workshop, and I'll leave the light on.
***
The yarn shop smelled like wool and chamomile tea, soft lamplight pooling over the tables Margaret had arranged in a neat circle. I stood near the register, checking my notes for the third time like they were a game plan instead of instructions for a basic knit stitch.
"You're going to wear a hole in that paper," Margaret said, setting out tiny scissors and stitch counters with the precision of a nurse prepping an operating room. "It's six people, Connor. Not Madison Square Garden."
"Six people who paid money to learn something." I folded the notes, unfolded them, folded them again. "What if I'm terrible at this?"
"What if you trust yourself for five minutes?"
The bell above the door chimed.
Five people filtered in over the next ten minutes. An older woman with her husband in a cardigan. A teenager—all elbows and attitude—dragged here by someone. A woman in scrubs who looked like she'd just finished a twelve-hour shift at the hospital.
And then Gary Pelletier.
I recognized him from the mill—or what used to be the mill before it closed last fall. He'd been in the paper and quoted in an article about layoffs. He was fifty-three years old, thirty years at the same job, gone overnight when the parent company restructured.
He stood in the doorway like he wasn't sure he belonged, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.
"Gary," Margaret said warmly. "Glad you made it."
He nodded once and sat, not making eye contact with anyone.
The older woman introduced herself as Dorothy, nudging her husband. "I'm Dorothy, and this is Harold. He's only here because I told him it would help with his arthritis."
"Doctor said it might," Harold muttered.
The teenager—Bryce—was staring at me. "Wait. Are you that guy from the Storm? The enforcer?"
Every muscle in my body tensed. Here it was—the moment when both worlds collided and somebody got hurt. When the yarn shop crowd realized I was the knuckle-dragging goon, or when the hockey fan figured out the enforcer spent his free time making tiny animals out of yarn.
"That's me," I said, trying for casual. "Connor. Hog. Whatever works."
"Dude, you've been in some awesome fights," Bryce said, perking up. "Like Kellner—you just—" He mimed an uppercut.
Gary shifted in his seat but didn't look up.
I looked around the circle—six faces staring at me with expressions ranging from curious to star-struck to mildly confused. The nurse looked too tired to care who I was as long as I could teach her something relaxing.
"So," I said. "Who wants to learn how to knit?"
My slipknot demonstration was a disaster.
My hands—which could tape a stick blade in thirty seconds and had never fumbled a puck drop in twelve years—suddenly forgot how to hold yarn.
The loop twisted wrong, and the working end went the wrong direction.
I had to start over twice before I managed something that resembled the picture in Margaret's instruction book.
"Like this," I said, holding up my mangled slipknot. "Except, you know, better."
The nurse raised her hand. "Should it look like a noose?"
"Definitely not."
"Good. Mine looks like a noose."
"Mine too," Dorothy chirped.
Gary's hands shook when he tried to form the loop. Not like Bryce's teenage fumbling—this was different. Frustrated. He tried three times, failed three times, then set the needles down hard enough that they clattered against the table.
"Can't get my damn fingers to work," he muttered.
"It takes time," I said.
"Time's what I've got now." His voice was flat. "Not much else."
I sat down next to Gary. "What'd you do? Before?"
"Machine operator. Thirty years. Same line, same shift." He picked up the needles again, stared at them like they were written in a foreign language. "Sounds stupid, but I knew every sound that line made. Could tell when something was about to go wrong by listening."
"That's not stupid."
"It's useless now." He tried the slipknot again. The yarn twisted wrong. "Thirty years of knowing one thing, and now—" He stopped. Set the needles down more carefully this time. "Sorry. Didn't come here to complain."
"You came here to learn something new", I said quietly.
He looked at me then, and I saw what I'd been trying not to see all day. The fear that when the thing you'd built your life around disappeared, you would go with it.
I reached over and adjusted his grip on the needles. "Here. Hold them like this. Not too tight—you're strangling the yarn."
"Story of my life," he said, but there was almost a smile.
I moved around the circle, helping Dorothy untangle a mess and showing Harold how to hold the needles despite his stiff fingers. Bryce caught on fast once he stopped trying to muscle the yarn.
"How long have you been playing hockey?" Bryce asked while I corrected his tension.
"Forever. But this—" I gestured at the yarn, needles, and circle of people watching me. "This keeps my head from exploding between games."
Bryce's eyebrows rose. "Seriously?"
"Yeah. Have you ever tried to sit still for five minutes after getting hit?
" I cast on a few stitches, muscle memory taking over.
"Your brain wants to replay every hit, every missed pass, and everything you should've done differently.
When you're knitting—" The rhythm settled into my hands.
"Hard to spiral when you're counting stitches. "
"Knitting therapy," Dorothy said.
"Pretty much."
I waited for jokes and chirps about the big, scary enforcer who needed his emotional support projects.
Instead, the nurse nodded. "Makes sense. I do sudoku between shifts for the same reason."
Gary was working slowly, methodically. His hands still shook, but he had two stitches now. Then three. Each one uneven and loose, but holding together.
By the end of the hour, he had six wobbly stitches. They weren't pretty, but they held.
When people started gathering their things, Gary sat for a moment longer, staring at his work.
"It's not much," he said.
"It's six more stitches than you had an hour ago."
He looked up at me. "Yeah. I guess it is."
When he left, he paused at the door. "Thanks, Hog."
"For what?"
"For not making me feel like an idiot." He zipped up his jacket. "See you next week."
The door closed behind him. Bryce's mom honked impatiently from the parking lot. Dorothy waved as she and Harold headed out into the snow.
Margaret started stacking chairs.
"Gary's been coming to the shop every day since October," she said, not looking at me. "Stands by the window, looks at yarn, never buys anything. Tonight's the first time he's come inside for real."
"What changed?"
"You did. He heard about how Thunder Bay's enforcer liked to knit."
I helped her with the chairs, thinking about Gary's shaking hands and six wobbly stitches. About choosing to show up and try something terrifying because staying still was worse.
Margaret locked the register with deliberate care. The cash drawer slid shut with a soft click. Outside, snow pressed against the windows in fat, lazy flakes that caught the streetlights.
"Connor." She didn't look up from counting bills. "That offer I made. Teaching, co-ownership. It still stands. When you're ready."
"The team might be gone by spring." I hadn't meant to blurt that out, but it was too late. "Sold. Moved. Scattered."
"And?"
I thought about Jake's shaking hands and Pickle's panic. I pictured my jersey hanging in the locker room with my name stitched across the shoulders—the name that meant something here in Thunder Bay.
"I don't know who I am without it."
Margaret stepped close, and I continued, "Teaching six people to knit feels small."
"Does it?" Margaret gestured at the empty chairs.
"Bryce is going to teach his little sister now.
Dorothy and Harold will sit together in the evenings doing something his hands can still manage.
" She paused. "Gary walked through that door for the first time in four months. That's not small, Connor."
I sighed. "Gram would've liked tonight."
"She would've loved it." Margaret grabbed her coat. "Think about what you want, not what you're supposed to want. There's a difference."