Chapter 20 #2
I felt him close to the edge, breathing ragged and his thigh shaking against my shoulder. He was loud when he came, not trying to be quiet about it. I stayed through it, swallowing, easing him down, pressing my forehead against his hip.
He pulled me up by my arms. Kissed me hard, without hesitation, already working on my belt and my zipper. He wrapped his fingers around me and stroked, perfect pressure and rhythm, muscle memory that had survived three weeks of distance and the damage between us without degrading.
"Like this?"
I couldn't answer in words. The moan I made was sufficient.
He adjusted before I could ask, reading my breathing the way he read a goalie's weight transfer. His thumb brushed the spot that unraveled me.
I came hard, gripping his shoulder.
We lay in the aftermath, side by side, his leg hooked over mine. Wendell's filter clicked through its cycle. The tank light moved across the ceiling in slow, shifting bands.
"We're not fixed," he said.
"No."
"But we're doing this."
"Yeah. We're doing this."
He closed his eyes and reached out for my hand, lacing our fingers together.
Sleep came faster than I expected. First time in weeks.
Two days later, practice ran clean.
First drill: controlled breakout, three-on-three, puck support through neutral. I lined up on the right half-wall. Heath on the left. Cross at center.
Cross won the draw back to the point. Rook surveyed, found the lane through the slot clogged, and cycled low. I carried wide, scanning for Heath's route.
He drove the net. Same line, same commitment, elbows out, stick flat, refusing to leave the space. Garrett leaned into him with a shoulder through the ribs.
Heath absorbed it. Kept his blade on the ice.
I released the puck.
The pass arrived at his tape a half-second before the second check landed. He redirected without looking. The puck hit the back of the net with the muted snap of mesh catching rubber.
Holloway kicked it out. We reset.
The chemistry differed from January, when the passes had felt telepathic and the broadcast booth reached for words like inevitable. We were rebuilding a language from its roots. The early sentences required care. The basic structure was there.
On the bench between reps, I sat and sucked down water. Heath sat three spots down, the same distance as always.
He tapped his stick against the boards. A quiet double-knock against the dasher that I hadn't heard directed at me in weeks. No eye contact. Just the stick.
I tapped back.
Rook skated past during the line change without speaking. He gave us three extra feet of space, a veteran's instinct for knowing when a pairing needed room to recalibrate without another body in the gap.
Practice ended. Markel collected pucks. The Zamboni emerged from its tunnel.
I undressed at my stall. Jersey folded once. Shoulder pads unbuckled left, then right.
Varga was talking. He was always talking.
This time it was something about a restaurant in Fulton Market that served a burger topped with truffle aioli and gold leaf, which he considered either a crime against American cuisine or its logical apotheosis, and he wanted a consensus before committing to a Yelp review.
"Gold leaf," Rook said from two stalls over. "On a burger."
"It's decorative! It's edible gold, and it adds nothing to the flavor, which is entirely the point. The point is spectacle."
"The point is, you paid forty-two dollars for a hamburger."
"I paid forty-two dollars for an experience. There's a difference."
"The experience of having forty-two fewer dollars."
"You eat the same grilled chicken every day for nine months. You are not equipped to evaluate culinary ambition."
"I'm equipped to evaluate a man who got scammed by a garnish."
I pulled on a clean shirt. Checked my phone. One missed call from a 312 number I recognized, my father's Chicago line, the one he used when he wanted the call to feel local.
I didn't call back immediately. Finished dressing. Packed my bag. Waited until the locker room thinned to Rook and Pratt, who both operated at the same unhurried tempo.
The parking garage was cold; late April in Chicago. Third level. My car was in its usual spot.
I sat behind the wheel, started the engine for heat, and let it idle.
Then I called my father.
He picked up on the second ring. "Kieran."
"Dad."
"Good practice?"
"Standard. Breakout reps."
"Your mother wanted me to mention dinner. She's thinking next week."
"Sure."
A pause before Dad got to the business part of the call.
"I've been thinking about our last conversation."
"Which part?"
"All of it. I want to be clear that my advice comes from experience. I've navigated this league at the highest level, and what I'm offering you is the benefit of—"
"Dad."
He stopped. My father rarely stopped mid-sentence.
"I appreciate the experience. I always have. But I'm done letting you decide what's professional for me."
Thirty seconds of silence.
"I'm not deciding anything for you, Kieran. I'm advising."
"I know what you're doing. You've been doing it since I was eight years old, and I understand why. You built something, and you wanted me to fit inside it. I did. For a long time, I fit perfectly."
"You still fit. That's what I'm—"
"I don't want to fit. I want to choose." The words came out clean, without the heat of anger, and the steadiness surprised me. "The choices I make about my career and my life are mine. Not yours. Not Thompson's. Not the franchise's."
Silence. A genuine pause.
"This is about the extension."
I could have told him the truth, that it was about Heath Donnelly. I said something simpler.
"This is about me."
More silence.
"Whatever I decide about the contract, my future, anything, I need you to hear me when I say that the person making those decisions is me. Not a continuation of you. Me."
My father took one breath. The measured inhale I'd heard a thousand times at dinner tables and in arena hallways, the one that preceded recalibration.
"Okay," he said.
One word. It wasn't acceptance. It was the acknowledgment that the terms had changed.
"I love you, Dad."
"I love you too."
"Tell Mom I'll be there for dinner."
"I will."
The call ended. I set the phone on the passenger seat.
My hands were steady. I checked, palms flat against my thighs. No tremor.
I backed out and pulled toward the facility exit. At the security gate, I slowed down .
Through the glass, I saw the hallway that connected the locker rooms to the garage. Heath was walking toward the doors. Gear bag over one shoulder. Hair still damp. He moved with his shoulders level and his head up.
He pushed through the door into the garage. Saw my car idling at the gate and stopped.
We looked at each other through the windshield. Five seconds. The gate arm between us.
He nodded once. I nodded back.
He turned toward his car on the lower level, and I pulled through the gate. Separate cars. Both headed home. The gate arm dropped behind me in the mirror.