20. Maddox #2
“Laurent, I guess. Unless she took a married name. I don't know if she's married. I know she's Paul's older sister. I know she lived in Frosthaven when Theo was small. I know she works in education, I think. Theo said library, once. Not a librarian. Something adjacent.”
“That's enough to find her. I'll find her.”
My eyes burn. I press the heel of my hand into them.
“Phoenix?”
“Yeah.”
The word I need to send is small. The word I need to send is everything.
“Don't make a circus. Just... if you find her, tell her Maddox says he's okay. Tell her to tell him I'm okay. Tell her I said wait for me. That's it. She'll understand or she won't.”
“Wait for me?”
“Yeah.”
He's writing. I can hear the pen on something.
“Copy.”
He waits. I wait. He's trying to let me say the thing. I can't say the thing yet. I can barely hold the phone.
“You need somewhere to sleep past Tuesday?” he says finally.
“Yeah.”
“You got my couch. Indefinite. Don't argue.”
I swallow.
“I won't argue.”
A car passes on the street below. Headlights cut the ceiling.
“Good.”
“Phoenix?”
“Mm.”
I rest my forehead on the cold glass.
“The kid. He was good tonight. First face-off. Pass through his legs. He was good.”
“He was good, Maddox.”
My throat works.
“Tell him I said so. If you get the line open. Tell him he was good.”
“I'll tell her to tell him.”
My breath fogs the glass. Clears.
“Okay.”
“Sleep. I'll call in the morning.”
He hangs up.
I don't sleep.
I sit on the edge of the bed and I scroll my phone and I don't open anything, and my agent calls.
Harlan. Forty-nine, Boston accent he never shook, represents maybe fifteen guys in the league and three of them are on Cup rosters.
Harlan has never called me at eleven on a Saturday.
Harlan texts. Harlan emails. Harlan calls in business hours.
Harlan is calling me at eleven on a Saturday.
I pick up.
“Maddox.”
“Harlan.”
I sit back down on the bed.
“I just got off the phone with Callahan's counsel.”
“Yeah.”
My knee bounces once.
“They're gonna frame it as mutual. They'll pay out this year's deal in full. They want the last three voided. Standard language. Personal conduct clause.”
“Okay.”
He exhales through the line.
“I'm going to fight the last three. That's my job. That's not your job tonight. Your job tonight is tell me you're sitting down.”
“I'm sitting down.”
“Blackridge Reapers want you.”
My apartment goes very still around me.
“Say it again.”
“Blackridge Reapers. Their GM's name is Matt Orrick.
We played college together. I called him from the parking lot at the arena when I heard, which was about twenty minutes after it happened, because the league is the league.
They were looking for a veteran D. They had a number penciled in for someone else.
The someone else just became you. Two-year deal.
First year at four point two, second year at four point four, with a team option for a third at five.
Modified no-trade. Signing bonus of one point five up front.
It's a better deal than Frosthaven was going to give you at your next extension and we both know it.”
I can't feel my hands.
“Blackridge is...”
“Four hundred miles. I know. I looked. Plane's an hour twelve. There's a direct twice a day.”
“Four hundred miles.”
Harlan's voice drops a notch.
“Maddox. Listen to me. I know what's in your head right now.
I don't know everything that happened in that arena tonight, and I don't want to, because I'm your agent and not your priest. I know enough.
I know there is a person in Frosthaven you do not want to be four hundred miles from.
I hear you. I'm still telling you this offer is real and the offer has a window, and the window is forty-eight hours, because Orrick has another guy and the other guy's agent is on a plane.”
“Forty-eight hours?”
“Yes.”
My jaw sets.
“Harlan.”
“Yeah.”
My hand goes flat on my thigh. Stays there.
“I need to think.”
“Think. Tomorrow noon, I call you. If you say yes, I fly you to Blackridge Monday morning for a physical and a press conference Monday night. If you say no, I call Orrick at twelve-oh-one and you tell me what else you want to play for because I am not going to let you sit out a season on a personal conduct shelf, Maddox; I am not going to watch that happen to your career.”
I nod at nothing.
“Twelve tomorrow.”
“Twelve tomorrow.”
I close my eyes.
“Okay.”
“Sleep if you can.”
He hangs up.
I put the phone on the bed beside me. I put my hands on my knees. I breathe.
Four hundred miles.
An hour twelve in the air.
Two direct flights a day.
Four point two.
Four point four.
Option at five.
Numbers that mean I could buy a house, a car, a dog, a ring if I wanted a ring.
Numbers that mean I could put a down payment on a kid's freedom if the kid needed it.
Numbers that also mean a city I've never lived in and an arena I've never skated in and a team that is not the team that trained me and a practice rink that does not have the stall I have sat in for eight years.
Frosthaven is over.
I say it in my own head. I try it on. Frosthaven is over, Maddox. My chest doesn't cave. That's the part I note, the way I noted my knuckles not splitting. Frosthaven was over the second Callahan walked into that office. I just hadn't caught up.
Blackridge is on the table.
Theo is in a locked bedroom forty minutes away with a security guy on his lawn and a father who is going to take his phone in the morning.
I lie down.
I don't pull the duvet up. I lie on top of it, sweats and bare chest, the cut over my eye starting to seal. I stare at my ceiling. The ceiling of a bedroom I have seventy-two hours to leave.
I try to picture a room in Blackridge. I can't.
I try to picture Theo in a room in Blackridge.
That I can picture. That comes in like it was already there.
Theo on a couch I haven't bought yet, laptop on his thighs, team hoodie that isn't the Huskies', a dog I haven't met on the floor.
Theo's feet under my leg. Theo with the lamp behind him making his hair yellow at the edges.
Theo in a bed in a house I haven't rented, turned toward me, breathing like he breathed on my chest three nights ago.
I picture it and I can't unpicture it.
Oh.
I say it out loud to the ceiling I'm about to lose.
“Oh.”
My chest does a small, strange thing. Not the adrenaline thing.
A different thing. The quiet thing under the adrenaline thing, which had been running underneath the whole season and which I had been calling other names.
I called it protective and possessive and territorial and competitive.
Fine, whatever, I like the kid. The quiet thing has a name.
I have known its name for a week and I have been calling it other names to keep my mouth shut in case I said it to him before he was ready.
I say it to the ceiling.
“I'm in love with him.”
The ceiling doesn't fall.
“I'm in love with Theo Laurent.”
It sits in the room like a small animal. It doesn't bite me. It doesn't leave.
My hand goes to my chest. I press. I breathe.
I've been in love with him since that first night here in my bed.
Maybe I've been in love with him since the locker room when I said he had a pretty mouth to watch him flinch and he flinched and then he looked at me, actually looked at me, and I knew I was sunk.
I have definitely been in love with him since the bench by the reservoir, with his face in my shoulder and my arm holding most of his weight because his legs weren't doing it for him.
The boy I…
The boy I love. Dear Paul, the boy I love is your son. I almost said it in your arena, in your office, with your fist in my face. I didn't say it because he hadn't heard it yet and the first person to hear it should be him.
He will hear it. I decide it against the ceiling. He will hear it from my mouth, and he will hear it in time, and Blackridge or Frosthaven or the moon is not going to stop me from getting it to him.
I pick the phone up. I open the thread. I type.
I'm okay. I love you. Wait for me.
I don't send it. Paul has the phone. Paul reading I love you in my handwriting would be a gift to Paul's story about me, the grooming predator, the man using the son as a weapon.
I will not hand Paul that line. Theo will hear it first or he will read it first, but nobody else gets it before he does.
I save the draft. I put the phone face-down on the pillow beside me.
I lie in the dark in an apartment that isn't mine anymore, in a city I'm being pushed out of, in a contract that's about to be voided, with four hundred miles in one direction and one boy in the other, and I breathe, and I let the sentence live in the room with me.
I'm in love with Theo Laurent.
I am going to get him back.
I don't know how yet. I have twelve hours to figure out the Blackridge piece.
I have Phoenix working a line to Diane. I have seventy-two hours on this apartment and forty-eight on the offer, and I have a boy in a locked bedroom who said I'll wait for you with his hand on my back while security was turning me.
I close my eyes.
Wait for me, kid.
I'm coming.