19. Lucy #2
For the next hour, he was everywhere without making himself the center of anything.
He knelt beside a boy named Eli who informed him that his shot accuracy was “medium good,” which Ty accepted with the seriousness of a contract negotiation.
He helped adjust the grip tape on a short stick after asking the Mighty Blades coordinator first. He let a little girl in a sled score on him three times and reacted to each goal like his professional reputation had been personally damaged.
He made a father laugh quietly when the man looked close to tears watching his daughter take her first lap around the cone course.
Alois was different. Alois did not fill space.
He settled it. He stood near the supported-skating station, broad and silent in a black Frosthawks jacket, listening more than speaking.
Children approached him with the cautious fascination usually reserved for statues that might possibly answer questions.
When they did, he lowered himself immediately, not in a way that looked practiced for cameras, but like his body understood the simple math of not looming over someone smaller.
Bea watched him from near the media tape line, her mouth tight as she spoke into her radio. A sponsor representative had arrived early with a photographer who seemed to believe consent forms were suggestions and access badges were decorative.
I was two steps from intervening when Alois crossed behind Bea and leaned down slightly, his mouth close to her ear.
He said something in French.
I did not understand the words. I understood the result.
Bea’s shoulders lowered. Her hand relaxed around the radio. She glanced up at him, and whatever passed between them was small enough to pass on a breath. Then Bea turned back to the sponsor representative and dismantled him politely enough that he thanked her afterward.
I looked away because watching them made something in me feel exposed.
Emotionally guarded men were supposed to be dangerous.
Alois Müller stood beside the woman he loved and made her steadier without needing anyone else to know he had done it.
That complicated things.
I did not have room for complicated things.
“Lucy?”
“Yes?” I asked, turning toward a woman with dark espresso hair twisted into a messy bun, her cardigan slipping off one shoulder as she balanced a backpack and a water bottle while holding the hand of a little boy in a Frosthawks hoodie three sizes too large.
“I’m Tina Pappas.” Her smile was warm but tired around the edges. “My sister’s son is Niko. He’s in group two. I just wanted to say thank you before everything gets too busy.”
“For what?”
“For making this feel…” She glanced around the rink, eyes moving over the quiet room sign, the volunteer table, the low music, the earmuffs now lined neatly beside the check-in area. “Possible.”
The boy beside her studied me with serious brown eyes.
“Theo,” Tina said gently. “Say hi.”
“Hi,” he whispered, then looked past me toward the equipment table. “Are those sticks sorted by height or by blade curve?”
I blinked.
Tina sighed with affection. “We are working on greetings before engineering assessments.”
“It matters,” Theo demanded.
“Blade curve,” I answered the boy.
His eyes came back to me, a little more interested.
Tina smiled, but there was emotion behind it now. “My sister has wanted to bring Niko to something like this for a long time.”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Tina squeezed Theo’s hand. “So are we.”
By the time group two made it onto the ice, I had almost allowed myself to believe the morning would hold.
Then Niko reached center ice and froze.
It happened quickly and then all at once.
A clap came from the spectator section. Not loud by arena standards.
Barely anything. But another parent joined in, and then someone behind the glass cheered, and the sound bounced off the boards in a way it had not in the lounge.
Niko’s shoulders shot up toward his ears.
His hands released his adaptive stick. The small sled beneath him turned slightly as the volunteer beside him stopped moving immediately.
His face crumpled.
The entire rink seemed to inhale.
His mother started forward from the boards, but Freya was already beside her, voice low, one hand lifted in clear permission-seeking rather than restraint. The volunteer stayed close without touching Niko. Tasha lowered her camera instantly.
I moved toward the gate.
Before I reached it, Alois sat down on the ice.
Not near Niko. Not crowding him. Several feet away, legs bent awkwardly in front of him, stick resting across his knees, enormous body made intentionally still.
He said nothing.
Niko cried harder for three seconds. Then his eyes flicked toward Alois.
Ty saw it too.
He did not rush. That was the first thing I noticed. Every instinct in him was motion, but he held it back. He approached in a slow curve, stopping outside Niko’s reach before lowering himself to one knee on the ice.
“Hey, Niko,” he said. “Bad news.”
Niko hiccupped.
Ty rested his forearms on his raised knee. “I was told this was a skating event, but apparently Müller has decided it’s sitting practice.”
Alois looked at him. “It is sitting practice.”
Ty nodded gravely. “That’s what I heard.”
Niko’s crying changed shape, finally loosening at the seams.
Ty reached slowly into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the blue earmuffs. “These are brand new,” he said. “So new they still have a dangly tag.”
A tiny sound came from somewhere behind me. Bea, probably fighting for her life against blubbering. I was impressed with her constant triumphs over pregnancy hormones.
Niko looked at him.
Ty pointed at Alois. “He hasn’t moved in four minutes. Honestly, I’m getting concerned.”
“I am not not comfortable,” Alois said.
Niko laughed.
It was small and wet and startled, but it was there.
Ty did not look toward the cameras. He did not look toward the spectator section. He did not even look toward me at first. He kept his attention on Niko and waited while the boy reached for the earmuffs.
Niko put them on crookedly.
Ty’s smile softened into something almost unendurable. “There you go,” he said. “Müller’s jealous.”
Niko sniffed. “Can I sit too?”
Ty nodded. “Absolutely.”
The rink exhaled.
Niko’s mother pressed both hands to her mouth behind the boards. Tina stood beside her, one arm around Theo’s shoulders. Theo watched Ty like he was recalculating something.
I watched Ty Burns kneeling on the ice with his phone nowhere in sight, his attention steady, his humor gentle instead of loud. I watched him make room for a child’s fear without trying to defeat it. I watched him become exactly what the moment needed and nothing more.
The wall inside me did not collapse.
It did something worse.
It opened.
Only enough for light to get through.
When Niko finally chose to move again, Ty did not touch the sled.
He let the volunteer and Niko’s mother handle what needed handling.
He skated backward slowly, giving Niko space, talking just enough to keep him oriented.
Alois rose with the controlled effort of a man who had chosen dignity and lost to basic physics, then moved beside them in silence.
From behind me, Ruth whispered, “That boy.”
I did not know if she meant Niko or Ty. I did not ask. I couldn’t.
The rest of the event kept moving, but something in me had shifted off its axis.
I still answered radio calls. Still redirected the sponsor photographer twice.
Still checked the rotation times, adjusted the meet-and-greet order, and made sure the quiet room stayed quiet.
Ezra came down midway through the second rotation and stood beside me near the gate, his suit jacket open, his expression softer than he probably realized.
“You built this out of a mess,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the ice. “A lot of people helped.”
“I know.” His shoulder brushed mine. “But you led it.”
My throat tightened.
He looked out at the children moving across the ice, at Bea managing media, at Freya laughing with a volunteer, at Ty circling wide around Niko while Alois stood guard without making it look like guarding.
“I’m proud of you, sweetheart.” His hand touched my shoulder briefly, then he left me to it.
The event neared its final rotation with cheeks flushed, parents smiling too hard, and the spectator section full of quiet conversations, coffee, folded blankets, and Burns family gravity.
I found Ty near the far boards after he helped Eli return a stick to the equipment table. “You did well,” I said.
He turned toward me, and the smile that started on his mouth was all trouble before he pulled it back into something almost respectful. Almost. “That sounded dangerously close to praise.”
“It was professional feedback.”
“Even hotter.”
“Ty.”
His grin widened for half a second, and there he was. The boy who used to make irritation feel like oxygen. Then his gaze moved over my face, and the grin softened. “You okay, Shortcake?”
The nickname slipped between us. Old. Familiar. Devastating.
I should have corrected him.
Across the rink, Bea looked up from her clipboard.
“I’m fine,” I responded, finally.
Ty’s expression told me exactly how little he believed that. But he only nodded.
“You helped,” I said quietly. “With Niko. With all of it.”
“I told you I would.”
I looked at him, and for one dangerous second, I forgot the years between us. I forgot every reason I had trained myself to stand outside the reach of him. All I saw was the man in front of me. Patient. Present. Still impossible. Still Ty.
His hand lifted slightly, instinctive and careful, like he meant to reach for mine and remembered halfway there that he had not been given permission.
His fingers hovered close enough that I felt the warmth of him before contact.
Then Ruth appeared beside us with a plastic container in both hands. “Fudge?”