23. Timothy
Chapter twenty-three
Timothy
Iplant my feet wide in the corner and take the hit clean, no flinching, just the solid thud of another guy's shoulder finding my ribs. My stick beats his to the puck by half a second, and I chip it up the boards to Jonah without looking. Muscle memory takes over.
Coach Nolan's head turns my way. He nods once.
I skate to the bench. My ribs throb where the check landed.
Jonah scores two shifts later, and the bench detonates. Sticks banging the boards in a clatter loud enough to swallow the whole rink, guys hollering his name like a chant.
I bang my stick against the boards with everyone else, and I mean it.
We won the shift. The score is what matters.
The gear feels heavier on the ride to the bench, wet and settling into my shoulders. Or maybe that's just my mood, suited up now, wearing pads.
In the locker room Coach stops at my stall. "You did good out there. Dependable."
Jonah's toweling off two stalls down. "He's human duct tape," he announces to the room. “Nothing falls apart when Brenton’s around.”
The room laughs. I laugh too, but the humor is short.
I peel a strip of tape off my own wrist and think about how duct tape gets replaced. Jonah means it as praise. I hear an expiration date, stamped somewhere on the back of my jersey.
I shove my skates into my bag.
In Shane's truck back to Hockey House, three guys argue with genuine passion over whether the rec room smells like feet or "just guy."
I stare out the window at the mountain road blurring past.
Twelve, starving for a coach’s approval. Sixteen, no better. Twenty-seven, apparently still working on it.
The pattern is old enough to qualify as a personality trait.
Somebody's gear bag digs into my knee. I shift it without really noticing.
Bethany’s kiss surfaces without warning. The warmth of it. Her hand curling into my jacket.
The memory refuses to be filed away. It sits open in the back of my mind, bright and impossible to ignore.
Jonah leans across the seat. "Brenton. Feet or guy. Settle it."
"Same thing," I say and the truck groans in response.
Underneath the noise, plain and unwelcome, the thing I don't want to look at directly: I need her to want me for something more than showing up and fixing things.
The Hockey House swings into view through the windshield, lit up yellow against the dark treeline.
By the time we get inside, I am tired enough to drop my gear in the boot room and leave the argument about the smell to everyone else.
I still put my gloves in Bethany’s labeled bin.
Somewhere along the way, her systems stopped feeling like rules and started feeling like part of home.
***
The next morning, I come downstairs expecting coffee and an empty kitchen. Jenna should be stopping by with breakfast for me as an 'post-game offering'.
Instead, Bethany’s voice carries from the kitchen.
Low and quick. The clipped cadence she gets when she is concentrating hard on something.
My feet stop at the hallway doorway.
Grant's voice answers hers.
Through the doorway I can see the kitchen island, her folder open across it. Grant is standing opposite her with a mug in one hand.
Grant says something about overseeing maintenance across the team’s other properties.
Then I catch “steady income” and “property operations coordinator,” and I go still.
Bethany's pen taps twice against the folder. A tell I've learned without meaning to learn it.
Some small ugly part of me wants Grant to shut up.
Then she looks up and catches me mid-lurk.
"How was the game?" she asks.
"Fine."
My emotional range in that moment could fit on a Post-it. Not a large one.
She smiles, easy, completely unaware of the small riot her smile touches off in me, and I shift my weight.
Grant closes the folder with a soft, final sound. "Think it over," he tells her. "We'll talk numbers later."
Bethany nods. Professional. Calm. Competent. Every reasonable reaction lining up exactly where it should.
I run the checklist. Money. Respect. Her own choices finally, actually hers. Confirm, top to bottom, that I should feel nothing but glad for her.
The checklist doesn't budge the real feeling one inch. Which tells me something inconvenient about how feelings work.
She doesn't glance my way as Grant gathers his coat.
I retreat to the boot room and start rolling stray tape into the labeled bin, because tidying is easier than asking one honest question.
"You don't have to do that," Bethany says, arriving behind me.
"No big deal." Lie number two of the day. Filed neatly beside the first.
I want, badly, to confess everything and also fake my own death. Roughly equal measure.
The front door opens before I can answer, and Jenna comes in carrying a paper bag of breakfast sandwiches.
Her eyes flick from Bethany's folder to Grant's retreating back to my face, assembling a theory in real time. Bethany shoots her a look I can only describe as a warning. Wordless. Perfectly legible.
Undeterred, Jenna sets the bag on the bench. "Just here with breakfast," she says. "Nothing to see."
Bethany steps out to walk Grant to the door, and the room shrinks with just Jenna in it.
"Did he take her off the Lodge contract?" Jenna asks.
I swallow. "I don't think so. He offered her other properties to manage."
She studies me.
"She deserves options," Jenna says finally.