28 #3
I looked toward the dark lake beyond the windows.
Somewhere below us, my friends were probably waiting near the players’ corridor.
If Charm were still mine, she would be with them.
She would take the folder from Chris and read every number even though contracts made her eyes glaze over.
She would ask which city felt right before telling me she could design anywhere if I chose one that required her to follow.
I would’ve built the decision around us, but there was no us anymore.
“I’ll relocate as soon as the Frost season ends,” I said.
Chris looked at me. “You don’t have to move the day your contract expires.”
“I want to.”
“Ryan.”
“I’m not running.”
No one argued, which told me they heard the lie.
I kept my gaze on the contract. “I’m starting the next part of my life when the season ends. All of it.”
Waters folded his arms. “Milwaukee isn’t magic. Whatever you’re leaving will still exist.”
“I know.”
The memories wouldn’t follow me into grocery stores, bedrooms, bathrooms, and roads Charm once occupied. That would have to be enough.
“Call them back,” I told Chris. “I’m signing.”
The Milwaukee representatives returned ten minutes later.
Chris reviewed the final changes while Gloria confirmed the date my Frost obligations ended.
Waters sat beside me with one ankle resting over his knee as though this were an ordinary meeting instead of the moment I’d chased since I was old enough to understand hockey could become more than a place to disappear.
The representative slid the contract across the table, and a pen followed.
My name waited beneath the signature line.
Ryan Decker.
I stared at it and thought about every other version of my name that had appeared on paper. Foster placements, school registrations, employment forms, lease agreements, scholarship documents, and team contracts had all carried the same questions.
Where would I go next? How long could I stay? What did I have to do to remain useful enough for somebody to keep me?
This contract was different. No one was placing me anywhere or deciding whether I belonged. I’d earned the right to choose.
Waters leaned closer. “Planning to frame the blank line?”
I exhaled a laugh. “Shut up.”
“Sign it, Decker.”
I picked up the pen, and for one second, I saw everything at once.
I saw the kid kicking a ball against an apartment wall because we couldn’t afford much else.
My mother telling me my brain was too big for one language.
My father dying from an overdose when I was seven.
My mother being taken four years later. Foster homes, warehouses, cheap apartments, morning practices before class, and night practices after shifts followed them.
Then came KFU, the Furnace, and Flint. Every mile between where I started and the chair beneath me lived inside that contract.
Charm entered the memories because she existed inside the last stretch of road.
I saw her sitting in the stands, reading poetry across my kitchen counter, and sleeping in my bed with one hand tucked beneath her face.
I heard her telling me professional hockey would be lucky to have me before any organization knew my name.
The pen nearly stopped.
Three days ago, I would’ve wanted her hand around mine while I signed. Tonight, I had to become the man who could do it without her.
My name moved across the line.
Ryan Decker.
The ink dried almost immediately. Chris exhaled beside me, Gloria smiled, and Waters gripped the back of my neck hard enough to make the moment real.
Across the table, Milwaukee’s representative stood and extended his hand. “Welcome to Milwaukee.”
I rose and took it. “Thank you.”
“We’ll be ready for you when the Frost season ends.”
“I’ll be there.”
The words landed with the force of another final horn. Next season, I would wear professional colors and step onto professional ice. The dream would stop being something scouts discussed in hallways and agents negotiated in conference rooms.
It was mine. I had fucking made it.
Joy rose first, but grief came with it. They collided beneath my ribs with enough force to leave me gripping the representative’s hand longer than necessary. I’d spent my entire life believing this moment would fill every empty place inside me, yet the largest one still carried Charm’s shape.
When the door finally opened, the hallway erupted.
Cade reached me first. One look at Chris’s face told him everything, and he grabbed the front of my suit jacket before pulling me into a hug hard enough to aggravate my ribs.
“Which one?”
“Milwaukee.”
He shouted directly beside my ear. Briggs crashed into us from the side, wrapping both arms around our shoulders.
“Our baby is professional!”
“I’m older than you.”
“That has never mattered emotionally.”
Easton struck my back before Rider caught my hand and pulled me into another embrace. Bliss and Aura stood behind them, both crying openly while Gayle covered her mouth with both hands.
Coach Waters looked toward the ceiling. “Every one of you is too loud.”
“NHL loud!” Briggs yelled.
“Milwaukee,” Chris corrected. “And technically next season.”
“NEXT-SEASON NHL LOUD!”
“That isn’t better.”
Hollis and several Frost players appeared from the locker-room corridor, still dressed in suits and carrying enough energy to restart the game. Gray had somehow acquired a red towel, which he’d tied around his neck like a cape.
“Professional Knife!”
“That translates like shit,” I told him.
“Nobody cares!”
He raised both fists and started chanting my name. The hallway caught it immediately.
“Decker! Decker! Decker!”
I stood at the center of my people while they celebrated the future I’d fought my entire life to earn.
Cade gripped the back of my neck, and Easton told anyone close enough to hear that he’d always known I would make it.
Briggs was already researching the nightlife in Milwaukee.
Rider watched me with a quieter pride that cut through every joke, while Gayle pressed both hands against my face and told me I’d earned every second.
Bliss hugged me while crying into my suit, and Aura demanded to see the contract before anyone allowed the organization to announce anything.
For a few minutes, I let their joy carry mine.
Then Chris’s phone began ringing again. Hollis announced that Ember’s had already heard and Frost fans were heading there. Gray claimed he’d ordered Milwaukee-colored decorations, though no one understood how he accomplished that in the fifteen minutes since I signed.
“Party,” Briggs declared. “Immediately.”
“I need to go back to the lodge.”
The celebration around me faltered, and Cade searched my face.
“You’re not coming?”
“Not tonight.”
“Ry,” Briggs said.
“Go party.”
“You just signed a professional contract.”
“I know.”
“That is traditionally celebrated with reckless decisions and public nudity.”
“Put Gray in charge of both.”
Gray raised his hand. “Already planned.”
Briggs didn’t laugh, and neither did Cade.
“I’ll come with you,” Cade said.
“No.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I know.”
Briggs stepped closer. “Then I will.”
“The answer is still no.”
“Ryan.”
“I need this.”
The words stopped both of them. I lowered my voice, keeping the moment between the three of us despite everyone gathered nearby.
“I need to sit in it and feel it.”
Cade’s expression tightened, and I forced myself to keep explaining before they decided they were taking the choice away from me.
“The last three days have been a fucking mind fuck. I lost the woman I thought I would build my life with, played the best game of my career, and signed the contract I’ve wanted since I was eight.”
Briggs looked down.
“I don’t know how to celebrate one without grieving the other yet.” Neither of them tried to tell me I shouldn’t have to, and the honesty I’d fought all night finally tightened my throat. “I’m overwhelmed. I need a few hours where no one is watching me decide whether I’m happy or destroyed.”
Cade gripped my shoulder. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I need to be.”
“What if it gets bad?”
“It already is.”
His hand tightened, and I held his stare.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m going to sit in the lodge, look at the contract, and let it become real.”
Briggs watched me with the same steady expression he’d worn on the ice when my knees hit beneath me.
“You’ll answer the phone?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“If you don’t, I’m coming back.”
“I know.”
“Your location stays on.”
“I never turned it off.”
Cade nodded reluctantly. “Call me.”
“I will.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes.”
He pulled me into another hard embrace. Briggs joined because boundaries had never stopped him before. Rider added his hand to the back of my neck, and Easton struck my shoulder. My boys held me inside the happiest moment of my life while understanding it was also one of the worst.
When they released me, I looked toward the people waiting to celebrate.
“Go party,” I told them. “Make Gray put on pants before somebody photographs him.”
“No promises,” Hollis said.
Gray opened his jacket. “The professional body is art.”
“Your body isn’t professional,” Waters told him.
Laughter returned, and I let it follow me through the corridor, past the darkened rink, and toward the exit.
The Milwaukee contract sat inside the folder beneath my arm.
A new city waited at the end of the Frost season, offering a clean apartment without roads I’d driven with Charm beside me, a bookstore where she’d never touched a first edition, and a kitchen where she’d never danced barefoot.
There would be no bedroom where I’d learned what it felt like to wake beside someone and believe she would remain.
Milwaukee was close enough to my boys and far enough from her. I’d signed with every intention of moving there the second the Frost season released me.
Tonight, I would return alone to the lodge I’d built as a surprise for a woman who never got to see what I made for her. One dream had finally come true while the other died before I could tell her about it.