27. Brashe
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
brASHE
Isat in my truck with the purple sticky note in my hand, reading it for the fifth time.
The paper was already soft at the edges where my thumb kept rubbing. I’d memorized every loop of her handwriting, the way the E curved, how she’d pressed harder on Lucky like she meant it.
I’m choosing my career. You just happen to be part of the package. Lucky you. —E
My throat kept closing up. I had to keep swallowing around something that felt too big to name.
She’d chosen herself first. The research protocol with Patty. The career she’d built. The life she wanted.
And I got to be part of it.
Not the reason for it. Part of it.
The distinction mattered more than I could put into words.
I pulled out my phone and took a photo, the purple paper bright against my palm. Her handwriting. The little dash before her initial. The way she’d underlined Lucky you twice.
Our team logo had been my lock screen since I’d gotten this phone. Two years of looking at that purple bear every time I checked the time, answered a text, or did anything. It was automatic and part of who I was.
I deleted it and set her note as my wallpaper instead. The bear could go. This was who I wanted to be now.
I replied to her text. Luckiest orc alive. —B
Her response came fast. Get back to work, Kedish.
I grinned at my phone. She was already back to bossing me around. I loved it.
Yes, Dr. Lundrig.
And Brashe?
Yeah?
9:41 tonight. Don’t forget.
I set my alarm. Not that I needed it anymore. My body knew when 9:41 was coming the way it knew when to drop into the butterfly position.
Except this felt better than any save I’d ever made.
I looked at the sticky note one more time before tucking it carefully into my equipment bag, next to the instruction sheets. Evidence that I meant more than the weapon in the net.
Evidence that I was learning to see myself that way too.
Practice started in twenty minutes. I should get inside, change, and start warming up. Do all the things I’d done a thousand times before.
Instead, I sat in my truck, staring at my lock screen, and let myself feel the fear that I’d almost lost this. The relief that she’d stayed. And the hope that maybe I could be someone worth keeping.
My hands were still shaking when I grabbed my gear. That was fine. They shook before big games too. This just felt bigger than hockey ever had. For the first time in my life, I had something to lose that mattered more than my save percentage.
The instruction sheets crinkled in my bag when I lifted it. I’d keep them even after I didn’t need them anymore, when my hip was fully healed, and I could do every stretch without thinking.
Because they weren’t really about the stretches. They were about the woman who’d written in the margins. Who’d seen something in me worth fixing that had nothing to do with hockey.
I still didn’t know if I believed it. But I wanted to.
I was still broken, but broken wasn’t the same as worthless. And I’d bet anything Ellie would give me the time I needed to figure this out.
Tonight at 9:41, I’d text her.
And every night after that too.