22. Jax
Chapter twenty-two
Jax
Idon’t have a speech.
Never have.
I’ve got six flights of stairs in socks.
One thing that’s true. If she hears it and walks away, that’s her choice. But I’m not letting the elevator doors close on it.
She’s still in the lobby when I get there.
Stopped just past the doors. Like she got outside and her feet had a different opinion about what came next.
I stop.
She turns around.
We look at each other.
“I didn’t tell you,” I say, “because if I said it out loud it became a real thing I had to decide.”
She waits.
“And?”
“I don’t want to go back.”
Quiet.
Florida afternoon doing its thing outside. The lobby empty around us. Her with her bag on her shoulder and her camera and everything she carries everywhere she goes.
“That’s about the team,” she says.
I look at her.
“It’s not only about the team.”
I say it once. She heard it.
I can see she heard it — the thing that moves across her face before she gets it under control. She knows what I mean. I can see she knows.
She’s not ready to say it back yet.
That’s fine.
I’m not in a hurry.
“Okay,” I say.
I run back upstairs.
Six flights.
I’m not winded. I tape my blocker the rest of the way — thirteen wraps, left to right — and I sit on the equipment room bench and I don’t think about whether she’s going to come back because I already know.
She’ll either come back or she won’t.
Either way I said what needed to be said.
That’s all I had.
My phone is on the bench next to me.
The Enforcers message still face down.
I pick it up.
Read it again.
I don’t want to go back.
I just said that out loud in a lobby to a woman who got under my skin and stayed there. Didn’t plan it. Didn’t think it through. Just — said it.
Turns out that’s also the answer to the message. I put the phone down. Don’t call them back. Thirty minutes later there’s a knock at the door. I open it before she finishes knocking.
She looks at me.
“How did you—”
“I knew,” I say.
She almost says something, but doesn’t. Comes in.
Brick walks out of the living room, moves between us into the hallway, and sits down.
Just — sits there.
Looking at both of us.
“He does this.”
“I know.” She looks at him. “He does it at my place too.”
We both look at Brick.
Brick looks back.
Message delivered.
She looks at me.
“So,” she says.
“So,” I say.
“You took six flights of stairs in your socks.”
“Yeah.”
“To say four words.”
“Five.”
She counts on her fingers. Looks up. “You’re right. Five. Was that — are you always like this or is this a you thing specifically.”
“Which part.”
“The stairs. The one sentence. The — “ she gestures vaguely at me — “the whole thing.”
“The whole thing,” I say.
“Yeah.”
I look at her. “Is it working.”
She tries not to smile. Doesn’t entirely succeed. “Don’t push it.”
I don’t push it.
She drops her bag on the couch.
Looks around the house the way she always does — reading every room like she’s building a map she might need later. Her eyes go to Aurora’s old room. To the kitchen counter. To the drying rack.
She doesn’t say anything.
“You knew I was coming back,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“That’s annoying.”
“Probably.”
She looks at me. “You’re not going to apologize for it.”
“No.”
“Of course not.” She sits on the couch. Brick immediately relocates to her lap like he’d planned it. “Did you at least make coffee while you were waiting.”
“No.”
“Jax.”
“I was taping my blocker.”
“You finished taping your blocker twenty minutes ago.”
“I re-taped it.”
She stares at me. “You re-taped a blocker you already taped.”
“It needed it.”
“It did not need it.”
I make coffee.
She sits on my couch with my cat and argues with someone on her phone about Conference Final predictions — something about the power play that she is completely right about and I am not going to tell her — and I stand in my kitchen listening to her and thinking about the lobby and what I said down there.
I put her cup on the counter at the right temperature.
She reaches for it without looking up.
Neither of us says anything about any of it.
An hour later she’s still there.
Legs up on my couch. Brick across her lap. Her personal notebook open — not the press one.
I’m on my tablet. Game film. Conference Final opponent.
She looks up. “You’re watching film on game day.”
“Conference Final.”
“You watched film this morning.”
“Different film.”
She looks at me over her notebook. “Do you ever just — not watch film.”
“Offseason.”
“And?”
“Different film.”
She shakes her head. Goes back to her notebook.
Two minutes later: “Their left winger telegraphs the backhand.”
I look up.
She’s still looking at her notebook. Writing something. Not looking at the tablet.
“Yeah,” I say.
“And your defensemen keep cheating to the strong side in the second period which is why you’re giving up the back door.”
I look at the tablet. Look at her.
“You’re not watching this,” I say.
“I watched it this morning.” She turns a page. “You’re welcome.”
“You watched my game film.”
“I watch everything.” She looks up then — just for a second, just long enough. “Occupational hazard.”
She goes back to her notebook.
I go back to the film.
She’s right about the defensemen.
I’m not going to tell her that.
She already knows.
I sit across from her.
She puts the phone down.
We’re quiet for a minute — the good kind, the kind that doesn’t need managing — and then she says: “Show me.”
I look at her.
“The Enforcers message,” she says. “Show me.”
I pick up my phone.
Hand it to her.
She reads it. Takes her time. Puts it face down on the cushion between us.
“You already know what you’re going to do,” she says.
Not a question.
“Yeah,” I say.
She nods.
Doesn’t ask what it is.
Doesn’t push.
Just nods. Like she trusts the thing I said in the lobby to still be true up here.
It is.
I pick the phone up.
Put it in my pocket.
We drink our coffee.
Conference Final Game 1.
The building is loud in a way it hasn’t been before — four seasons of building toward something and the city finally believes it’s real. I can hear it warming up from the tunnel. That specific frequency that means something is different tonight.
I tape thirty-one on.
Thirteen wraps. Left to right.
Roll my right shoulder.
The ghost is quiet.
Good.
First period — clean.
They’re fast. Experienced. Don’t give you anything cheap. We match them. Aiden is everywhere. Liam wins every puck battle along the boards like it’s personal.
I stop nine shots.
All clean.
Second period — we score first.
Brody, on a deflection in front that he had no business being at. He celebrates like he planned it. He did not plan it. I love this guy.
They answer four minutes later. Top corner. The defenseman pinches, the stretch pass, the winger gets a step — I get there. Just not enough.
1-1 going to the third.
Brody takes a penalty eight minutes in. Kills it himself forty seconds later. I decide to keep him.
I stop everything they throw at me.
Everything, for two periods.
Third period.
Six minutes left.
Their top line — three household names, guys who’ve been to the Final before, guys who know what this feels like. The defenseman pinches. Aiden’s a half-step slow recovering. The center gets it on the tape in the slot.
I read it.
I move.
High glove side.
The ghost shows up.
Just once. Just for a second — a half-inch of hesitation, a micro-flinch that costs me the angle before I correct. Not much. Barely anything.
Enough.
3-1.
I don’t look at the press box.
I go back to my crease. Reset. Tap the posts — left, right, crossbar — and I get my head where it needs to be for six minutes.
We hold it.
3-1 final.
Loss.
I know it’s not my fault. Offense went cold in the third, we had chances, hockey happens. I know all of that the way I know any stat — cleanly, from a distance.
I also know about the half-inch.
In the tunnel after, I let myself look up at the press box.
She’s not shooting. Camera down at her side, both hands still, just watching me the way you watch something you already understand. Everyone else in that building saw a goal. She saw the flinch.
She’s the only person here who knows exactly what just happened — and what it costs me that it happened tonight, on this stage, with everything finally real.
I don’t know yet whether that’s the best thing or the worst thing.
I go to the locker room and close the door.
And for the first time in four seasons, the quiet after a loss isn’t empty. It’s got her in it.