1. Lucy #3
The laughter came easier that time.
Dad pressed a hand dramatically against his chest. “Finally. The hire I’ve been waiting for.”
“Oh, absolutely not.” Lo lifted her chin. “I would last two days before telling a reporter his question was tacky and asking one of your defensemen if his mama knew he left the house dressed like that.”
Bea nearly inhaled water.
“I’d promote you,” Dad informed her.
“You’d have to. I’d be beloved.”
I laughed with them because Lo was impossible not to love. Because Bea’s shoulders were shaking beside me and my father looked happier than he had in weeks. Because laughter was easier than acknowledging the fact that one name had just quietly destabilized my entire nervous system.
Inside, something had shifted. Like ice groaning beneath weight.
When the laughter settled again, I pushed a piece of chicken around my plate and tried for reasonable. “Would I actually have to deal with players?”
Dad’s expression softened immediately, and that softness was its own kind of pressure. “Not in the way you’re worried about.”
“You don’t know what way I’m worried about.”
“I know you.” A tiny smile touched his lips. “And I know,” he continued carefully, “that you don’t want to get thrown into locker room chaos.”
“I would be working in an office,” I clarified. “With normal office things.”
“Mostly.”
“Dad.”
He held up one hand immediately. “You’d be working with staff first. Internal systems. Operations support. Process improvement. Helping us clean up structural issues. You would not be responsible for babysitting players.”
Bea muttered into her wine, “Shame. Several require active supervision.”
I ignored her completely. “And I would not have to deal with him directly.”
Dad’s expression shifted. A father remembering an old bruise and assuming time had probably healed it because the skin looked normal now. “No,” he answered carefully. “You would not have to deal with Buzz directly.”
My lungs expanded again. “Okay,” I said quietly.
Dad didn’t pounce on the opening. To his credit, he didn’t smile like he’d won something either. He just nodded once, calm and patient, like this had all been hypothetical and he wasn’t already mentally reorganizing half the Frosthawks front office to make room for me. “Think about it.”
I looked toward Bea automatically. Her expression softened in a way that landed differently than my father’s certainty had. “You’d be good there, Luce.”
“I hate that all of you sound reasonable,” I muttered.
Lo smiled knowingly. “That’s how we get you, sugar.”
The rest of lunch drifted onward after that.
Dad asked Bea about some PR issue without naming names, though Alois Müller’s giant emotionally constipated shadow sat heavily behind the entire conversation anyway.
Lo told a story about a woman at the grocery store recognizing Dad beside the produce section and asking if he could please make the Frosthawks stop “fighting like raccoons in a church basement.”
Bea laughed so hard she had to dab at the corner of one eye.
Dad looked deeply offended for exactly three seconds before I watched him mentally save the phrase for future use.
I participated. I smiled in the right places. Made jokes. Helped clear plates afterward while Lo shooed everyone away from the kitchen like she was protecting national security instead of dirty dishes.
At the sink, Bea rinsed wine glasses while I dried them beside her. “You know I’m going to ask you Buzz,” she said casually. “Would you prefer emotional interrogation now or later?”
“Never is my current preference.”
“Unlikely outcome.”
Water slid over her fingers as she handed me another glass. “For the record, you looked like someone stepped on your grave.”
“Poetic.” I dried the glass carefully. “It was high school.”
“High school can absolutely qualify as emotional warfare.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly. I kept my hands steady anyway. “It wasn’t that dramatic.”
Bea looked at me. Then she nodded once, accepting the lie without remotely believing it. “Okay.”
By the time I left my father’s house, the sun had dropped lower across the neighborhood, turning everything amber and shadowed.
The air smelled like damp leaves and distant woodsmoke, the kind of Minnesota cold that hadn’t fully committed yet but wanted everyone to know violence was under consideration.
I stood beside my car for a second with my coat wrapped tightly around me and looked back toward the house.
Through the kitchen windows, I could still see all of them moving around inside.
Dad was loading the dishwasher incorrectly.
Lo was correcting him with one hand planted firmly on her hip.
Bea appeared between them, stole something from a serving plate, and disappeared again before either of them caught her.
Warmth spread through my chest so suddenly it almost hurt.
Then the ache followed right behind it.
That was the problem with hockey.
It took up too much space.
And somehow all the people I loved still existed inside it.
I slid into my car and sat there without starting the engine. The leather seats were cold beneath me.
My phone buzzed inside my purse with a notification I already knew, without checking, would be from my boss asking for something he should’ve requested six business hours ago.
The windshield reflected my face faintly back at me in the dim light. Tired eyes. Tight mouth. A woman who had somehow built an entire personality around being fine.
I could quit. The thought arrived quietly.
I could leave the startup office with its exposed ductwork and fake collaborative culture. Leave a boss who called me indispensable because it was cheaper than calling me underpaid. Leave endless meetings about problems everybody would’ve avoided if they’d listened to me the first time.
I could take a real job. With benefits. And stability. And people who already knew I was capable.
I could help my father. I could work with Bea.
It didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t have to be permanent. And it absolutely, under no circumstances, could be about Ty Burns.
My grip tightened against the steering wheel.
I had spent years turning him into a blank space in my mind. A door I didn’t open. A song I skipped before the first lyric finished. A memory I stepped around so carefully I’d almost convinced myself avoidance counted as healing.
Now my father wanted me inside the same organization. The same building. The same orbit.
I started the car. Warm air pushed through the vents carrying the faint vanilla scent of the air freshener Bea once claimed made my car smell “like a cupcake with anxiety.”
A small laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Then faded just as quickly.
It was a job. That was all.
A temporary job inside a chaotic organization that needed better systems.
A bridge out of a bad situation.
A favor for my father.
A practical decision made by a practical woman who absolutely knew better than to attach meaning to things that were already over.
Ty Burns was one player on a roster full of men I had no intention of caring about.
I backed out of my father’s driveway telling myself I believed every word.