Chapter 39
Oakley Kate
Afew weeks ago, the thought of walking into a training room would've made my stomach drop. Not because of the work—I've always loved the work—but because stepping back into a world I left felt like tempting the universe to take it again.
Today, my hands don't shake when I sign in at the front desk. The student aide hands me a lanyard with a temporary badge—AT DEPT / VISITOR in block letters—and grins like we're already teammates.
"Coach Alvarez said you'd be in," she says. "Taping table three is open. The soccer guys are rotating through ankles."
"Perfect," I answer, and the word fits.
The training room hums with the sounds I've been missing.
Ice bags hiss as they seal, a massage gun whirs in the corner, and athletic tape pulls from rolls with that familiar snap.
Vibration plates chatter near the wall. A whiteboard lists the day's protocols in neat columns.
It's a language my body remembers even if the letters got dusty.
I slide onto a stool at table three and pull a fresh roll of tape.
My hands know the routine before my brain finishes reminding them.
Pre-wrap anchored clean, heel-and-lace pads placed, figure-eight snug without cutting off blood, heel locks anchored to the stirrup.
The student athlete in front of me—COLLEGE SOCCER blazoned across his hoodie—watches with the slightly skeptical look people wear when they're about to trust a stranger with something fragile.
"Too tight?" I ask.
He flexes. "Supportive tight, not Hulk tight."
"Good. You going to pretend to do your glute bridges today or actually do them?"
He blinks, then laughs. "Uh…actually?"
"That's the right answer."
He hops off the table and jogs a few steps like he can test the wrap in ten feet. "Feels good. Thanks." He glances at my lanyard. "You new?"
"Old," I say, smiling. "Back to new."
By the time the baseball guys cycle through, the clench under my ribs has unknotted. Coach Alvarez sweeps in with a clipboard and a presence that fills the room without raising her voice.
"Glad you made it, Oakley," she says, as if we've been doing this for years. "Heard you're thinking about finishing your athletic training degree."
"I am," I admit, and it feels like telling a secret I've already decided to keep. "I took a break when life…detoured."
"Then let's get you back on the road." She taps the edge of the board. "Spring term's still open. If you're ready, I'll vouch."
Ready. Am I ready? I turn the word over in my mind, checking for cracks. It feels solid.
"I'm ready," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected.
She nods once, satisfied, and moves on to scold a linebacker about ignoring his hamstring. I rotate to the next athlete and the next. The rhythm comes back fast—anchor, wrap, lock. Like I never left.
Between waves, I clean the table and log notes at the laptop. Names, injuries, tape counts. It's easier than I thought it would be.
Around noon, the rush thins. I scrub my hands at the sink, the eucalyptus soap sharp and clean. My ankle starts to ache—nothing terrible, just a reminder it's still healing. I lean against the counter and stretch it out. Heel down, knee bent. Slow and careful, the way I tell everyone else to do it.
"First day back and you're already showing off," Coach Alvarez teases lightly from the whirlpool corner.
"I'm demonstrating compliance," I say, and we both laugh.
On my way out, the student aide taps the counter. "There's an info session for the athletic training program tomorrow at two," she says. "You should go."
"I will."
I don't have to convince myself. I'm already rearranging tomorrow's grid in my head.
Aubrey's pickup, Silas's practice time, Hannah's always-yes if I need someone for a car line.
The old me would have counted locks and cameras before I counted minutes.
The new me still checks the door, but the list that follows is a life.
Outside, afternoon light skims over the steel panels on the arena next door, the logo catching the sun: a stylized bolt, clean and sure.
Steele Valley doesn't pretend to be glossy like big-city teams. It's practical, proud, a town that knows you by your first name before it knows your stats.
I pull my coat tight and head down the walkway toward the rink, because there's another reason I'm here beyond taping ankles and filling out forms.
Open skate has turned the lobby into the exact right kind of chaos.
Kids shrieking, blades clacking, a hot chocolate line that snakes past the pro shop.
Thorn stands near the gate with his hands in his jacket pockets, pretending he's not keeping a headcount.
Hannah's beside him with a stack of waivers and a peppermint mocha, pretending she's not using her clipboard to herd.
"She's on the ice," Hannah says as soon as she sees me, head tipping toward the glass.
I follow her chin and find them. Aubrey working through drills with the focus only a nine-year-old who's been skating since she could walk possesses.
Silas is beside her in warmups—practice jersey, gloves, no helmet because it's family skate and he knows every kid out there by name.
He's not coaching her basics because she's got those down.
He's showing her how to sell a fake, how to read a defender's hips.
"Weight on your inside edge," he calls, demonstrating. "Make them think you're going wide."
She mimics him but nearly loses her balance before tightening her core. "Like that?"
"Less drama, more control all the way through. You're not trying out for theater."
"You said sell it!"
"I said sell it, not perform a one-woman show."
I catch his profile reflected in the glass—mouth easy, eyes soft.
Not scanning exits. Not counting doors. Not pretending to watch his sister while tracking threats.
Just existing on ice like that's what he was built for and this is what it's for today: teaching a girl he loves the finer points of the game they both live for.
I step through the gate and onto the rubber matting. My ankle doesn't argue, and I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. Silas spots me at the boards and his mouth tips in that way he keeps just for me, the one that says there you are without making a big deal of it.
"Katibug," he says when they skate over, grinning. "Permission to tire this athlete out before homework."
"Permission granted," I say, leaning over the rail. "Terms: hot chocolate with extra marshmallows after."
Aubrey lights up like I offered her a golden ticket. "And whipped cream?"
"Obviously."
She looks at Silas, smug. "See? Kate is nicer than you."
"Kate's a softie," he stage-whispers. "But she also makes you finish your water bottle before dessert."
Aubrey groans like I've sentenced her to a decade of hydration prison and pushes off again, this time practicing the move he just showed her. Silas skates backward in front of her, hands ready but not hovering.
"You okay?" he asks me under his breath, eyes still on Aubrey because he's learned he can watch both of us at once without making it feel like monitoring.
"I taped three ankles that will survive practice today because of me," I say, letting the pride stand naked instead of dressing it in apology. "And Coach Alvarez told me to register for spring semester."
His eyes flick to me, sharp and bright. "Did you?"
"I will. Tomorrow." A little shiver runs through me that has nothing to do with the cold. "I've been tossing the idea around, and I think I'm ready to go for it."
He doesn't grab me and he doesn't make a show. He just leans in and bumps his shoulder into mine, small and sure. "That's my girl."
The words curl under my ribs and settle. "I know."
Aubrey nails the fake this time, cuts hard to the inside, and grins so wide I can see it from here. She pumps her fist like she just scored in overtime.
"Did you see?"
He pretends to squint. "Eh, I saw…decent edge work and questionable celebration form."
She squeals, indignant, and chases him toward center ice, where Rooks is running a small pack of kids through passing drills. Thorn pretends not to watch me watch them and fails, his mouth quirking when he catches me catching him.
"Alvarez is a good one," he says as I come back to the boards. "And it's what you always said you wanted to do."
"I think in people," I answer, and he nods like that was the right answer on a test he didn't tell me we were taking.
Hannah hip-checks Thorn's wallet hand when he tries to pay for ice time for a kid whose parent forgot their checkbook. "Your money's no good here," she tells him, which is hilarious because it's actually her money and he knows it.
On the ice, Silas runs Aubrey through the drill one more time, faster now, making her think. She executes it with the fierce concentration of someone who hates losing more than she loves winning.
"Better," he coaches, and I feel the word land in my own body—ankle, ribs, lungs—like an instruction I didn't know I still needed.
We stay until our fingers go numb inside our gloves and Aubrey's cheeks are bright as fresh apples.
The hot chocolate line is blessedly shorter by the time we step off the rubber and onto tile.
I pass our order through the window—two with cinnamon, one with an irresponsible amount of whipped cream—and we huddle near the lobby while sugar restores everyone's faith in humanity.
"Did you tell him?" Aubrey demands as if educational plans are the kind of gossip she lives for.
"I did," I say. "He did not faint."
"Wow," she deadpans. "Growth."
Silas steals a sip of my cocoa, and I let him because he's been very brave about whipped cream rationing. "We celebrate tonight?" he asks.
"How?" I tease. "Don't say extra drills."
"Pizza. Couch fort. One blanket each," he says, saintly.
"Two," Aubrey counters automatically.
"One and a half," I broker, because negotiation is a muscle, too.
We leave before the Zamboni comes out, because there is no universe in which Aubrey watches a Zamboni seal the ice and then agrees to go home.
Outside, the wind lifts my hair and then lets it fall, playful instead of punishing.
The sky is the pale gray that promises either snow or nothing and refuses to clarify.
Driving out of the lot, I feel that old urge to check the mirror three times.
I check it once. The road behind us is just a road.
At a light, my phone buzzes. A calendar notification slides across the screen—Athletic Training Info Session, two p.m., Steele Valley College. It sits there like a dare, then like an invitation, then like a plan.
"Tomorrow?" Silas asks, reading my face.
"Tomorrow," I say.
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel like he's keeping time with something only he can hear. "I'm free at two thirty. I can swing by after if you want to debrief."
"I want to buy a notebook and eight highlighters and label tabs I won't need," I admit.
"Hot," he says, completely straight-faced, and I laugh so hard Aubrey tells us we're embarrassing.
Dinner is easy. Homework is mercifully short.
The couch fort meets OSHA standards. We pile under blankets—one and a half each, as negotiated—and watch a movie none of us are really paying attention to.
Aubrey falls asleep halfway through, her head on my shoulder, cocoa-sticky fingers curled against my arm.
After we get her to bed, I find Silas at the kitchen table with his phone open to the calendar, scrolling through the next few weeks with a furrow between his brows.
"What are you doing?" I ask, leaning against the doorframe.
"Trying to figure out how to make the next month look like a thing I can carry instead of a thing I have to chase," he says. "Your class schedule, my road trip, Aubrey's tournament, the custody hearing. It's a lot of good mixed with a lot of hard. I don't want to drop any of it."
"Then we calendar what we can and handle the rest as it comes," I say, moving to sit beside him. "One thing at a time."
He taps a square on next Tuesday. "Info session."
"I'll go," I say, and the certainty in my voice surprises both of us. "I'll submit the application right after."
He looks up slowly, something like gratitude and awe mixing in his eyes. "You sure?"
"I'm sure," I say, and it doesn't feel like I'm tempting fate. It feels like claiming something that's mine.
We sit there for a breath, the ordinary kind, and let the decision settle where it wants to live. Not in fear. Not in the past. In the column labeled next.
Before bed, I check the door once—eyes only, muscle memory. The lock is engaged. Outside, a dry crack of far-off thunder makes me glance up, instinct older than logic. No storm follows. Just winter clearing its throat and moving on.
In the bedroom, Silas is already under the covers, but he's propped up on one elbow, watching me with that soft look he gets when he thinks I'm not paying attention.
"Hey, Katibug?" he murmurs as I slide in beside him.
"Mm?"
"Proud of you."
I settle against his chest, his arm coming around me like it's always belonged there. "I know," I whisper, smiling into the dark. "Proud of both of us."
His hand finds mine under the blanket, fingers threading together, and he presses a kiss to my temple—steady, sure, unhurried.
For the first time in months, I'm not measuring what I lost.
I'm counting what's next.