16. Lucy #3
“I can ask Freya without her killing me.”
“That seems optimistic.”
“She likes me.”
“Freya tolerates you because professional ethics prohibit violence.”
He looked up from the packet. “She invited me to brunch once.”
“She invited the entire team.”
“I was part of the half that showed.”
Despite myself, my mouth twitched. His did too. But this time neither of us laughed. The warmth remained quieter between us, almost careful.
“What would arriving earlier accomplish?” I asked.
“We could check the ice setup before the families get here. Make sure the sticks and sleds are where they’re supposed to be. Meet the volunteers so nobody has to explain everything while kids are waiting.”
I stared at him.
Ty shifted slightly beneath the attention. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was definitely something.”
“I’m evaluating.”
“Me?”
“The suggestion.”
“You were looking directly at my face.”
“Unfortunately, that is where you keep most of your suggestions.”
His mouth curved again, but he did not reach for the joke waiting between us. Instead, he glanced back at the packet. “Seven forty-five?” he offered. “Would that help?”
I considered the remaining setup schedule. The Mighty Blades coordinator would arrive at seven thirty. Equipment services had access to the rink beginning at seven. The volunteer briefing was not until eight. “Yes,” I admitted. “It would.”
“Then I’ll be here at seven forty-five.”
“You have to confirm the recovery change first.”
“I will.”
“And you cannot arrive at seven fifty-three and argue that it is functionally the same time.”
“It’s eight minutes.”
“It is late.”
“It is aggressively close.”
“It’s still late.”
His eyes lifted toward mine, bright with the familiar impulse to argue simply because I had given him something solid to push against. For a flash in time, he looked exactly like the boy from the library.
Long legs beneath a table too small for him.
Pencil tapping. Smile already forming because irritating me had once been his favorite way to spend an afternoon.
The memory hit with enough softness to hurt.
Then a muted squeak came from beside my chair.
Both of us looked down. Dottie had abandoned her position against my legs and selected a stuffed green frog from her toy basket.
She stood in the narrow space between the desk and Ty’s chair, the frog hanging crookedly from her mouth. Her gaze fixed on him.
Ty looked at me. “Am I being summoned?”
“She is offering a temporary diplomatic agreement.”
“To me?”
“Try not to let it affect your ego.”
He held one hand out. Dottie stepped forward and dropped the frog directly onto his shoe.
Ty’s face changed. It happened so quickly and so honestly that I almost looked away.
His smile softened. His shoulders loosened.
He bent to pick up the toy with both hands as though she had presented him with something breakable instead of a fabric amphibian damp with dog saliva.
“Thank you,” he told her seriously. Dottie leaned against his shin. Ty rubbed one hand slowly over the long velvet fold of her ear. Dottie’s eyes drifted halfway closed, her body settling against him with complete trust.
He had always been like this. That was the part I had spent years trying not to remember.
Not the noise. Not the lateness. Not the endless ability to turn one harmless sentence into a ten-minute argument because he liked watching me fight not to smile.
The quiet version of him that appeared when nobody asked.
The boy who carried extra gloves in his truck because someone was always cold.
The one who stayed after practice to help younger players gather pucks.
The one who could make an entire room look at him and still somehow notice the single person trying to disappear.
Ty scratched gently beneath Dottie’s chin before placing the frog beside his gym bag. Then he looked up at me. “How many of the kids have never been here before?”
I swallowed once. “Seventeen.”
He nodded and pulled the packet back toward him.
For the next several minutes, we worked through the remainder of the schedule without incident.
Ty asked about the family lounge and whether siblings would be allowed onto the ice.
I explained that younger siblings could participate in the off-ice activities but needed to remain with a parent or guardian.
He wanted to know how the rotation groups had been organized, whether Alois would stay at one station or move between them, and what would happen if a child became overwhelmed midway through an activity.
The questions were practical. Specific. Nothing like the half-interested responses I had expected when he first tilted back in that chair with his phone in his hand.
By the time we reached the emergency procedures, he had covered two pages of the packet with handwritten notes. His handwriting had not improved since high school.
I watched him underline the contact number for the Mighty Blades coordinator, the letters slanting across the margin with the same reckless disregard for straight lines he brought to almost everything else.
“Is that supposed to say Hannah Lindstrom?” I asked.
Ty looked down at the page. “Obviously.”
“It appears to say Hamster Limestone.”
“I know what it says.”
I looked down at my own copy. “The emergency contact list is behind the red tab.”
Ty did not respond immediately. When I finally looked up, he was no longer smiling. His eyes moved briefly over my face, then toward the stack of papers I had realigned twice since he sat down. “What happened after the meeting?”
My fingers stopped against the edge of the page. “Nothing that concerns you.”
“Something happened.”
Dottie shifted against his leg before slowly making her way back around the desk.
She rested her head across my knee again, reclaiming her earlier position as though she had decided the diplomatic portion of the afternoon was complete.
I smoothed my hand over the top of her head.
“We have already covered everything you need for tomorrow.”
“Okay.” He looked down at the packet again and turned the page.
The lack of pressure unsettled me more than persistence would have. Old Ty would have kept going. He would have made a joke, asked the question differently, tried to charm the truth out of me because silence had always made him restless.
This version simply accepted that I had drawn a line. And somehow that made me want to step across it. I stared at the printed schedule without reading a single word. “I fired Charlotte.”
Ty’s hand stilled against the page. When he looked up again, the movement was slow. “You did it?”
I swallowed. “Yes. I did it.”
His expression remained carefully neutral. “Was it your first time?”
I nodded once. The admission should not have felt personal. It was a professional fact. An ordinary milestone in a leadership role I had accepted willingly and earned through months of work. Still, saying it aloud made something twist beneath my ribs. “I hated it,” I said.
Ty waited.
“She deserved to be fired,” I continued, before he could misunderstand. “She knowingly withheld information. She undermined Bea, neglected an event involving children and families, and left the organization exposed. There was no alternative outcome.”
“I know.”
“I had documentation. Human Resources agreed. My father agreed. Sarah agreed.”
“Lucy.” The quiet way he said my name stopped me. His elbows rested against his thighs, his hands loose between them. There was no trace of impatience in his face. “You don’t have to convince me.”
My fingers tightened gently in Dottie’s fur. “I’m not trying to convince you.”
“Okay.”
I exhaled sharply. “Stop saying that.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “Saying what?”
“Okay.”
“You want me to argue?”
“No.”
“Good, because I wasn’t planning to.”
I looked away from him and toward the glass wall beside my desk. Two staff members passed through the corridor carrying a box of sponsor materials between them. Neither glanced inside.
The entire building had continued moving after Charlotte left.
Emails were rerouted. Credentials were suspended.
Meetings were reassigned. Her office had already been locked pending an inventory of organizational property.
A person could disappear from a place with alarming efficiency once the correct forms had been submitted.