Chapter Sixteen
FINN
The first recording session takes place in the empty arena at midnight.
Mara says the room sounds different after everyone leaves.
She is right.
Harbor Ice at game time is impact: blades, boards, music, crowd. Empty, it holds echoes like memory. Every small sound travels—the click of my skate guards, Tessa adjusting a microphone, Mara’s pen against her notebook.
I sit in the first row behind the bench wearing jeans and a Wolves sweatshirt. No gear. No mask.
This feels more exposed than standing in the crease.
Tessa checks levels. “State your name and role.”
“Finn Callahan. Goaltender.”
Mara sits two seats away, not conducting because of the conflict plan. Tessa asks the questions we approved.
What do you see before a faceoff?
How do you read a shooter’s hands?
What happens after a goal?
“Nothing,” I say.
Tessa lifts a brow. “Nothing?”
“You cannot change it. The useful part is over.”
“What do you do with the useless part?”
The question was not on the list.
My attention moves to Mara.
She does not rescue Tessa or me.
I look at the empty ice.
“Put it somewhere,” I say.
“Where?”
“Depends. Sometimes breath. Sometimes movement. Tap the posts. Drink water. Fix the mask.”
“Does it go away?”
“No.”
The answer echoes.
Tessa waits.
I continue. “You choose the next thing while the last thing still exists.”
Mara’s eyes hold mine.
The interview ends after forty minutes.
Tessa packs equipment and leaves us to turn off the lights. Mara walks beside me onto the ice in boots, not skates. She has chosen black leather with silver buckles. Pair twenty-five, apparently.
“You were good,” she says.
“I answered questions.”
“That is the definition of most interviews.”
“I did not say anything useful.”
“You said the next thing can exist beside the last thing.”
“That is hockey.”
“That is everything.”
We stop at center ice.
The logo beneath us is scuffed from the season. Mara looks up into the dark seats.
“Why here?” I ask.
“For the recording?”
“Yes.”
“Because silence has texture.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is a radio answer.”
I take her hand.
There is something I have not told her. The hidden condition inside the donation. The real reason I protected the evening block instead of giving money to the general station fund.
Trust is not a feeling. It is an action taken before certainty.
“The night after North Ridge,” I say, “I did not sleep.”
Mara turns toward me.
“I tried. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the corridor. The cart. The bag falling. Everyone looking.”
Her grip tightens.
“I turned on the radio because the room was too quiet.”
She does not speak.
“You were interviewing someone about stage fright.”
“I remember.”
“You said courage might be staying in the room long enough to hear the next sentence.”
Her eyes shine beneath the arena light.
“I stayed,” I say.
“Finn.”
“Your show ended at midnight. I listened to reruns until four. You argued about cereal. Read weather alerts. Played a song my mother likes.”
Mara’s breath trembles.
“That is why you donated.”
“Yes.”
“To keep your external voice.”
“To keep the station available.”
“Finn.”
“It was not supposed to become a debt.”
She steps closer. “It isn’t.”
“I did not want you to know because then every broadcast might feel like responsibility.”
Her hand rises to my face.
“It does not,” she says. “You listened. The show helped. That belongs to you.”
“I wanted to make sure it stayed.”
“That belongs to both of us.”
I close my eyes against her palm.
The confession has not made me smaller.
Nothing has collapsed.
Mara kisses me at center ice, slow and certain.
When she pulls back, she says, “For the record, cereal is still not soup.”
“Objectively false.”
Her smile breaks through tears.
I brush one away with my thumb.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because you trusted me with something beautiful.”
“It was a bad night.”
“Both can be true.”
I hear Owen in the phrase. Lena. Maeve. Dr. Patel. My mother.
Everyone who has been trying to teach me that one feeling does not cancel another.
I look around the empty arena.
“Play the song,” I say.
“What?”
“The one from that night.”
Mara takes out her phone and finds it.
Music rises quietly into the seats.
She holds out her hand.
“I cannot dance,” I warn.
“I have evidence.”
We move slowly across center ice, her boots slipping slightly, my arms around her waist.
There is no crowd. No score. No mask.
Only the next sentence.