Chapter 20
KEEGAN
THE NEXT SEASON...
Jake wears the C for the home opener tonight. The run died in the conference final three weeks after Evie came home, and I discovered I could lose a series without losing anything that mattered. I want to tear the next opponent apart, not take the letter back.
He catches me looking during warm-up and taps the patch with two fingers. “Eyes up, former management.”
“It’s crooked.”
“Equipment says that’s because you damaged their last one during your public nervous breakdown.”
I push off the boards and circle him. The arena is filling behind the glass, light rolling across fresh ice. “Mine had character.”
“Yours had blood on it.” Jake sends a puck into my path. “Try not to resign from anything tonight.”
“No promises.”
Section 114 is occupied. Evie sits in row four with Sienna beside her, both of them arguing over something on Sienna’s phone. My wife wears dark green, not team colors. Her diamond catches when she lifts one hand, a distant flash I would know from the opposite end of any room.
She looks up and finds me.
The smile she gives me is private despite the crowd. My whole body answers, but the empty seat taught me something the occupied one does not undo: I can play without using her presence as fuel, proof, or forgiveness. Tonight she is here because she wants to watch. I get to be glad.
Jake knocks his shoulder into mine. “If you skate into the boards while staring at your wife, I’m benching you.”
“You can try.” I hook my stick beneath his and flip the puck away before he can collect it.
“See this?” He hooks a thumb toward the C. “Authority.”
“Decorative stitching.” I skate backward in front of him, close enough to make the challenge physical without touching the patch.
“Jealousy is ugly on you.”
I grin and drive him toward the line as the warm-up horn sounds. “So is leadership.”
The game starts mean and stays there. Their center cross-checks me after the first whistle. I smile into his face, tell him he hits like a man asking permission, and score on the next shift.
The second period turns into board work and bad blood. Jake calls a defensive adjustment from the bench. Six months ago I might have overwritten him before he finished the sentence. Tonight I listen, take the low route he gives me, and intercept the pass exactly where he said it would come.
He meets me at the bench after the goal. “Almost like I know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t get emotional.” I drink water and spray the remainder through the gap in his visor.
Jake wipes his face with one glove. “I can trade you.”
“No one can afford me.”
“Your wife says that about herself.”
“My wife is correct.” I look toward 114. Evie is on her feet with the crowd, laughing while Sienna tries to pull her back before someone’s drink dies beneath an elbow.
We win by two. I finish with a goal, an assist, and enough bruises to make the shower hurt. In the locker room, music punches against tile while someone dumps two tubs of bottles onto the center logo. Beer in one. Water, soda, and ginger ale in the other.
I take a ginger ale without thinking about which tub it came from.
That is the change nobody could have photographed months ago. Not a heroic refusal. Not Jake’s hand on a champagne bottle. My body reaches for what will not destroy tomorrow, and the celebration keeps moving.
I throw my arm around our winger, shout over a replay of his goal, and take a spray of beer across the back when somebody shakes a bottle badly. The smell reaches me. My stomach remembers before my mouth does, a quick old pull that disappears when I crack the ginger ale and drink.
Jake watches from across the room. I raise the can.
He lifts his water in answer, then goes back to arguing about a missed call. No rescue required.
My phone vibrates in the stall. The calendar alert reads: Leave. Evie’s Belleroque reception. Food in training-room refrigerator. Beneath it sits tomorrow’s support meeting and next week’s physician appointment. I built the reminders myself. Evie has never asked whether they exist.
Over the summer, counsel closed the last of it: retraction printed, terms signed, her attorney instructed to route everything through them. The evidence never went public. The threat of it did the work.
I finish the drink, shove Jake from behind while he is giving a terrible victory speech, and head for the showers.
“Where are you going?” he calls.
“I have somewhere important to be.” I pull my sweat-soaked base layer over my head and throw it toward the laundry cart.
“We’re important.”
“You’re wearing half your dinner on your shirt.” I point toward the red streak beneath his new letter, proof that authority has improved nothing about his coordination.
Jake looks down at the sauce stain. “This is a captain’s shirt.”
“Then lead it toward laundry.”
I shower, dress, and leave before the room empties. Nobody interprets it as rejection. I stayed for the game, the win, the jokes, and the terrible speech. I am leaving because joy is not a room I have to drain before I’m allowed to go home.
The training-room refrigerator holds the meal I asked staff to save before warm-up: grilled chicken, rice, and the lemon dressing Evie steals from my plate every time she claims she is not hungry.
She has spent the day overseeing the final installation at the Belleroque and will have survived on coffee and whatever decorative food fits on a silver tray.
I take the container and drive myself downtown.
The Belleroque entrance is crowded with cameras, but none are waiting for scandal.
Tonight they are photographing the completed collection and the designers behind it.
Through the glass doors, warm light strikes the display recesses Evie rebuilt after the hotel changed the dimensions.
Her blue stone sits at the center, held by a frame so clean the metal seems to disappear.
My wife stands beside it in a black dress with her hair pinned high. A small card bears her name alone: EVIE MATTIX — JEWELRY ARTIST.
People turn when I enter. A few lift phones.
I keep my coat on and move to the edge of the reception rather than crossing in front of the photographer aimed at Evie.
The old instinct wants her attention immediately.
The new one is not quiet; it grips the food container hard and counts the seconds until she is free.
She answers questions about the center setting.
I know why the hinge is invisible, how the altered recess forced her to rebuild the outer frame, and why the inherited-stone consultation became a separate commission for next season.
I know because she told me, because I asked again when I did not understand, and because listening to her work has become one of the most selfish pleasures in my life.
Sienna appears beside me and looks at the container. “Romance.”
“She hasn’t eaten.” I move the container out of my sister-in-law’s reach when her interest in the fork becomes operational.
“She had an olive.”
"One olive." My attention remains across the room, where Evie turns one wrist beneath the display light to demonstrate how the setting moves. "I married someone who forgets she's human when she's working."
"That's almost sweet." Sienna steals the fork resting on the lid. "For you."
“You’re single.”
“By choice. And now armed.”
Across the room, Evie sees me.
Her professional smile changes. Heat enters it first, then pleasure, then the particular challenge she reserves for a husband who has already been warned about behaving in public. She finishes the answer she is giving, thanks the photographer, and turns toward me.
I hold my ground for three steps.
Four costs me.
On the fifth, Evie opens her arms.
I cross the room fast enough to make Sienna swear. My hands close around Evie’s waist, and I lift her just clear of the floor while she laughs against my mouth. The kiss is brief only because cameras still exist and my wife has a professional reputation she enjoys pretending I can damage.
“You’re late,” she says when her shoes touch down.
I check the clock over her shoulder. “By a few minutes”
“Unacceptable.”
“Fine me.” I hold up the meal. “Did the center clasp behave?”
Her eyes sharpen with pleasure because I asked the right question before telling her what I noticed. “Perfectly.”
“And the revised lighting?” I angle my body between Evie and a guest drifting close enough to interrupt without ever taking my eyes from her.
“Made the blue read too cold until I changed the backing.”
“To the brushed gold you hated last month.” I remember the sample cards spread across our breakfast table and the exact face she made at the third.
“I was wrong.”
I lean close enough that my mouth brushes her ear. “Say it again. Slowly.”
Her ringed hand closes around my tie. “Don’t abuse miracles, Mattix.”
The room is still watching. Evie does not care. She pulls me down into another kiss, and for once I have permission to stop holding still.