Chapter 8 #2
“I love you.” He said into the crown of my head, and there were a year’s worth of apologies buried in it neither of us had language for. He let go before I could lean too hard.
“Go up.” He said, gentler. “Please.”
I nodded and my body obeyed because, for all my noise, I am still made of this house. On the stairs I pause and turn. He was where I left him, looking older and more himself than he had all night. He caught my eye and nodded once, a coach’s signal to a player before she took the ice.
At the landing my phone buzzed.
Don’t run. Front door. Morning.
No good girl. No claim. Coordinates and a command. The combination makes heat and ice bloom together in my chest.
I slept like a door on a loose hinge. Every sound moves me.
When the sky diluted into gray, I was already in jeans and a hoodie, hair braided quickly with cold fingers.
At the bottom of the stairs, Dad sat at the table with a mug he must have reheated twice.
He looked up, took in shoes, keys, and resolve.
“Text me when you get there.” He said.
“I will.”
“And when you’re on your way back.”
“I will.” I said again.
I opened the door, and October came in like a truth. The porch boards crack under my weight, old, honest, familiar. The yard still holds our shadows from last night if you knew where to look.
On the walk, breath smoking, keys biting my palm, I turned once.
Dad was in the doorway, hoodie half-zipped, bare feet on cold wood like he’d come up fast and forgotten himself.
He raised a hand. I raised one back. It felt like waving to the person I used to be and promising her I wouldn’t drop her on the way to whoever was waiting at the end of the street.
I slide into the driver’s seat and grip the wheel until my knuckles go white. Dawn laying a thin blade of light across the hood. And I exhale, feeling a second of relief.
I start my car and shift into drive. As I round the corner my phone buzzes with a text.
East side door.
Of course. Not the lobby. Not the place with banners and donors and the public face of things. The service entrance where the paint is peeled and the lock sticks unless you know the trick. The way in for people who work and people who don’t need to be seen.
Daylight. I say out loud to the empty car, a reminder and a dare.
I take the turn anyway.
The rink rose out of the morning like a ship. The east door gives under my hand without a fight. The corridor smells like clean metal and old ice and the faint ghost of a thousand games. My sneakers squeaked on rubber matting. The cold bites sweet and familiar.
At the end of the hall, the rink opens, vast, white, a held breath. He stands on the concrete by the boards, hands in his pockets, eyes on the ice. He looks like a man considering a horizon.
When he turns, the line in his face softens in a way that hits me low and hard. “You came.” He said. Two words and they felt like a palm outstretched so I wouldn’t have to jump the last few inches alone.
“Front door.” I said, because I needed to say it somewhere so it wouldn’t slip. “When I go back.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, the barest show of approval. “Good.”
“And not here.” I added, surprising both of us. “Not like last night. Not in corners, not in places that belong to him.”
A pause, brief and honest. “All right.”
We stand in the cold that makes me more awake than coffee. The boards hold up a row of reflected banners like ghosts of seasons. I put my palm to the glass and felt the rink thrum through the pane, the way the whole building seems to breathe in and out when it’s empty.
“What did he say to you?” I asked finally.
“Enough.” Triston said. Not evasive. Protective, in a way that included my father even if he didn’t wear the word. “And I said enough back.”
“Did you fight?”
He thinks about that. “We drew lines.” He said. “We told the truth of what we could stand to say between the two of us. The rest can wait.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been hoarding. “He told me daylight.” I said, and the word hung in the cold, crystallized. “He said if I’m going to do this, I can't do it in the shadows of his house.”
“He’s right.” Triston said, and my head whipped up because I didn’t expect agreement. “He and I don’t agree on much right now, but we do agree on that.”
Something in my chest unknotted a fraction. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He echoed, and in the repetition there was a shape I recognized: agreement that didn’t mean surrender.
Silence spread wide as the rink. It wasn’t empty. It was full of every possible next move.
“I’m not asking you to choose.” I said into it, because the fear was a stone in my mouth and I needed it out. “Not today.”
“I already did.” He said, and the steadiness of it steadied me instead of scaring me. “I chose not to let go.” He tipped his chin toward the ice. “I chose to stand where you can see me in the morning.”
The relief of that nearly buckled my knees. The weight of it nearly did too.
“I don’t know how to be both.” I admitted. “Daughter. And—” I couldn’t find a word I trusted. “This.”
“Alive.” He said. “Be that.”
The compressor kicked on, a low growling hum. The glass fogged where my breath touched it and cleared again. In it, I could see us standing close enough to hear each other’s truth and far enough not to mistake it for a guarantee.
“I can try.” I said.
“Good girl.” He said, soft enough that it warmed more than it was branded.
I smiled despite the ache behind my eyes. The morning had found us. We were not hiding. It didn’t make any of this simple. It made it real.
“Walk me to the front.” I say.
He nods. We move together along the glass, past our doubled selves, past the door where players step onto ice and become wolves. The lobby looks soft and ordinary, vending machine humming, the trophy case full of names that still hurt to read and always will. At the door, we stop.
“Text me when you get home.” He said.
“I will.”
“And tonight—” He paused, the only sign of calculation I’d seen on him all morning. “I don’t step in your house unless your father looks me in the eye and leaves the door open behind him.”
My throat clenches. “That might take time.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He ensures me.
He pushes the door open and the cold morning freezes in. I step into it like I am learning to stand up in a new gravity. I don’t look back until I’m across the lot. When I do, he is still there, one hand braced high on the frame, watching in a way that didn’t make me a target, just a fact.
I raised two fingers in a wave. He dips his chin in a nod.
The drive home feels longer than usual, even though the streets are nearly empty. The steering wheel is cold against my hands, and the silence in the car makes every thought louder. Triston’s words still burned in my head: “I’m not going anywhere.” They steady me even as they make me ache.
When I pull into the driveway, Dad is already on the porch. He has a mug in his hand, steam curling into the air, but his shoulders are too straight for it to be about coffee. He’s been waiting.
I step out, gravel crunching under my shoes, and I brace myself. He didn’t speak until I was halfway up the steps.
“You went.”
I nod. There was no point in lying. “I told you I would.”
His jaw tightened, but his voice stayed even. “And?”
“And I told him daylight.” I made myself meet his eyes. “I told him not in your house, not in your rink. I told him not in the shadows.”
Dad studied me for a long moment, like he was searching for the crack in my armor. “And he listened?”
“Yes.” I say softly. “He listened.”
The silence that follows is heavy, but it isn’t the kind that demands more words. It was the kind that admitted nothing about the future but accepted the present.
Finally, he set the mug down on the railing. “I can’t pretend I’m okay with this.” He sighs. “But I can respect that you didn’t sneak. That you told me. That you looked me in the eye.”
“I don’t want to disappear.” I spit. “Not from you.”
He exhales through his nose, then reaches up to rest his hand briefly on my cheek, rough and careful. “Then don’t. That’s all I ask.”
Later, in my room, I sit cross-legged on the bed with my phone in my lap. The morning light is brighter now, cutting across my blankets. A message lit the screen:
We’re not done. Tonight. Your choice how.
My pulse jumps, but the fear that usually follows doesn’t come. Instead, there is a steady kind of clarity. This isn’t the shadows anymore. This was a step into the open, messy daylight.
And even though my hands shake, I whisper to myself, I can handle the light.