Chapter 1 The Letter #3
His voice drops lower, and the humor is gone. Replaced by the raw, unfiltered love of a father who knows his daughter is in pain and would dismantle the entire world to fix it if she asked.
"I cannot stand by and let you not fulfil a shot at what you dream of. Not when the chance is sitting right here in your hands."
He nods toward the letter still folded in my grip.
We share a look. The kind that does not need words because the history between us contains more vocabulary than any spoken language.
Fifteen years of ice time and training schedules and arguments about technique and celebrations after goals and the quiet, steady presence of a man who never once told me that my gender or my designation or my biology made me less than anyone else on the rink.
I swallow hard.
Nod.
Try to express gratitude through the tightness in my chest and manage only a jerky, awkward motion of my head that he seems to understand perfectly.
"Now." He claps my shoulder once and pushes himself off the couch with a groan that belongs to a man whose knees have absorbed thirty years of ice-level coaching.
"Go get ready. Your mother wants us to entertain some random family at a fancy restaurant tonight.
Something about networking with the Beaumonts or the Castellanos or whichever dynasty she has decided holds the key to our social relevance this quarter. "
I groan with more dramatic force than the situation requires.
"Are you serious?"
"As serious as a penalty kill in overtime."
"I just spent two hours getting rejected on the ice and now I have to sit through a three-course meal pretending to care about people whose greatest athletic achievement is a vigorous round of golf?
" I throw my head back against the couch.
"I am not wearing a dress. I refuse. I will die before I put on a dress for the Beaumonts. "
He laughs, and the sound is so warm that it temporarily dissolves the cold knot of anxiety that has been lodged beneath my sternum since the parking lot.
"Alright, Miss Suit and Tie. Wear whatever you want. But I will say this." He holds up a finger, his expression shifting into mock seriousness. "If you ever get married, it is going to have to be a wedding dress. There are some traditions even I cannot override."
"Married." I snort, pushing myself off the couch with the heavy reluctance of someone being asked to leave the only comfortable place in a very uncomfortable house.
"Dad. I cannot even find a man. Let alone a pack.
Let alone a group of Alphas unhinged enough to bond with an Omega who would rather bodychecked them into the boards than bake them a casserole.
" I shake my head, running both hands through my tangled, still-sweaty hair.
"Marriage is on the back burner. Way back.
Behind the burner. Behind the stove. In a different kitchen entirely. "
He laughs again, harder this time, the sound filling his cluttered office and bouncing off trophies and coaching manuals and the faded photograph of a nineteen-year-old kid on a frozen pond who had no idea that his greatest achievement would not be listed on any plaque.
"You never know, Sage." He settles back behind his desk, pulling his reading glasses down from his forehead to their proper position on his nose.
"I found your mother when I was coaching the game that changed my life.
Was not looking for her. Was not expecting her.
She walked into that arena like she owned it, and I spent the next six months trying to figure out how a woman who hated hockey married a hockey coach. "
He shrugs, his lips twitching.
"You may find a man when you least expect it. And if you are very lucky, he might actually have the balls to handle you. Him and his entire pack."
"Good luck to them," I say, and the laugh that escapes me is genuine. Bright. The first real laugh I have produced in weeks, and it catches me off guard with its own existence. "They will need therapy. And protective equipment. And a very good insurance policy."
Dad grins.
"That is my girl."
I head toward the door, my hand finding the brass knob that has been polished smooth by decades of turnings.
The hallway beyond is quiet, the evening light filtering through tall windows and casting amber rectangles across the hardwood floor.
Somewhere deeper in the house, I can hear the muffled sound of my mother on a phone call, her voice carrying that clipped, authoritative cadence she reserves for subordinates and household staff and anyone else she considers beneath the threshold of genuine engagement.
I pause at the threshold.
Turn back.
My father is already bent over his desk, scribbling notes on what looks like a practice schedule.
His glasses have slid to the end of his nose again.
His flannel is still untucked. A cold cup of peppermint tea sits at his elbow, forgotten in favor of whatever play he is diagramming on a napkin because napkins are apparently an acceptable substitute for professional coaching software.
He is the most disorganized, brilliant, stubbornly optimistic person I have ever met.
And he is the only reason I have not given up.
"Thank you, Dad."
The whisper barely carries across the room, but he hears it. Lifts his head. Meets my eyes with that quiet, private smile.
"Love you, Sage."
"Love you always."
He holds my gaze for one more beat, and then the smile sharpens into determination.
"Get that application submitted tonight. Give them one more shot to see your skills in a place that will not find it easy to say no."
I nod.
Step through the door.
Pull it closed behind me with a soft click that sounds like the period at the end of a very long sentence.
The hallway stretches before me, long and polished and lined with family portraits that chronicle the Holloway-Ashford dynasty in oil paint and gilded frames.
My mother at thirty, resplendent in a gown that cost more than most people's annual rent.
My parents on their wedding day, her smile radiant and his slightly bewildered, like he still cannot believe the woman next to him agreed to legally bind herself to a man who organizes his trophies by vibes instead of chronological order.
And me.
Age seven. Sitting on the bench at my first competitive game, gap-toothed smile, oversized helmet, jersey hanging past my knees because they did not make them small enough for Omega children.
I stop in front of that portrait.
Study the girl in it.
She is so small. So absurdly, impossibly small beneath all that equipment, like a turtle whose shell is three sizes too large.
Her green eyes are enormous, burning with a ferocity that does not belong on a seven-year-old's face.
Her knuckles are already scraped, even then.
Even at seven, she was fighting for ice time with boys who outweighed her by thirty pounds and had parents who complained to the league about an Omega contaminating their sons' sacred sport.
That girl did not know what the world would try to take from her.
She just knew she loved the ice.
And she never stopped loving it. No matter how many times they told her she was wrong to.
I pull the folded letter from the pocket of my joggers, where I tucked it before leaving Dad's office. The paper is warm from my body heat, slightly crumpled at the edges from being handled with too much intensity.
Valenridge University.
Inaugural Omega Integration Program.
Five coaches who rejected me to my face and then wrote letters saying I deserved more than they could offer.
A team. A real team. With a pathway to the leagues and a chance to compete at a level that has never been open to someone like me.
I press the letter against my chest, feeling the heavy stock paper flatten against my sternum. My heartbeat pulses through it, steady and strong, the rhythm of a body that has survived two hours of drills and a decade of rejection and still has enough left in the tank to keep going.
This could be real.
Or it could be another gilded cage dressed up as an opportunity. Another institution that parades its progressiveness in press releases while quietly maintaining the same barriers that have kept me out of every locker room and roster and league pipeline since I was old enough to want in.
But.
There is that word again. That conjunction. That pivot point between reality and possibility.
But what if it is not?
What if this letter is exactly what it claims to be? A door that no one has opened before, held ajar by five coaches who could not let it close without trying one more time?
What if Valenridge is the rink where the scouts actually write my name on their clipboards?
I start walking.
Past the portraits. Past my mother's closed office door and the muffled sound of her voice delegating someone's existence into a spreadsheet.
Past the grand staircase with its wrought iron railings and the crystal chandelier that throws fractured rainbows across the marble floor every afternoon at four seventeen when the sun hits it at precisely the right angle.
Up to my room.
Which is not really a room so much as a compromise between my aesthetic preferences and my mother's interior designer, resulting in a space that looks like a luxury hotel suite fought a sporting goods store and both sides sustained heavy casualties.
The bed is pristine white because my mother insisted.
The walls are covered in hockey posters and team pennants because I insisted harder.
A custom-built gear rack occupies the entire west wall, holding sticks and skates and padding and rolls of tape in a system of organization that makes perfect sense to me and drives every other person who enters this room to the brink of madness.