Chapter 9 #2
The footage had given me access to him in ways that weren’t available to anyone else. I’d watched three seasons of tape before the injury numerous times, plus games after, before they traded him. I’d watched him hesitate in every sequence I’d pulled from the last three practices.
He hadn’t hesitated now.
While the crowd cheered, I watched the replay on the arena screen, paying more attention to his face than the guy scoring the goal. Satisfaction flashed across his features.
It was only after a few moments had passed that I realized that play had resumed on the ice and I wasn’t tagging. My hands moved, catching up on the tags I’d missed. I was behind on my log. This had never happened.
I caught up, filling in for the gap.
A handful of journalists and two scouts from other teams stood in the press area, but I doubted they knew what they’d just seen. There was no one I could turn to and say, Did you see that? Do you understand what that cost him and what it means that he did it anyway?
I was so proud of him.
The third period was tight. The Slayers pushed hard, trying to make up for the goal. My team held. The final score was decided by the second-period goal.
As the buzzer rang, the arena noise swelled. Players poured onto the ice to slap hands with the opposing team. Congratulations, and all that. Standard post-game stuff that looked the same in every building.
I stayed in my seat and ran my real-time log cleanup.
This was standard too. I was often one of the last people out of the press area. The assistant coaches needed the breakdown before they left the building, and I provided it.
My father found me twenty minutes later.
He was still riding the energy of the win, the version of him that came off a successful game, satisfied in ways he wasn’t when we lost.
“Your power play call was perfect,” he said. “They tried it twice, and we shut it down both times.”
“I’m glad it worked.”
“It worked because you saw it.” He stood to my left. “I don’t say this enough, but you’re the best thing about this program. You do a lot of work that few see. But I do.”
I’d been invisible at team dinners, standing in corners because I didn’t fit anywhere else.
He saw my work, but he didn’t see me.
The warmth of his pride and the shape of my grief lived in the same place now. I didn’t know how to separate them anymore.
“Thank you,” I said.
He clapped my shoulder and left to handle post-game logistics.
I packed up.
Through the press-level glass, I watched the building staff clearing the arena.
I found Tolrek.
He’d showered and changed into a suit and stood in the bench area, talking to Brashe. He looked up, directly at the press level. Directly at me.
He held my gaze before he returned to whatever Brashe was saying.
I left the press area and headed for the lot where the bus would be waiting.
The ride back to the hotel was quieter than the morning trip. Post-game exhaustion had set in after adrenaline wore off and bodies remembered they’d been hit for over an hour.
I took the same seat and opened my laptop to work through the preliminary breakdown I’d send to the coaching staff tonight. Brashe settled in the seat across from me again while Tolrek dropped into the seat behind me.
The warmth returned, holding me like an embrace.
Not long after, the bus pulled into the hotel lot, a mid-tier place teams stayed in when the budget didn’t cover luxury but couldn’t justify cheap. When I’d dropped off my bag earlier, I’d found it clean and functional. Forgettable in the way most road hotels were.
We stepped inside, and I slung my bag over my shoulder, heading for the elevators. The doors were closing when I reached them.
A hand appeared in the gap.
Large. Green-skinned.
The doors reversed.
Tolrek stood inside, his bag at his feet. He didn’t say anything as I stepped inside.
The doors closed, and it was just us, alone for the first time since last evening. Our kisses hung between us. We hadn’t spoken about them, but I felt them as if his mouth was on mine this very second.
The elevator was standard hotel size, maybe four feet by six and designed for four people who weren’t orc hockey players.
He took up a lot of it.
The mirrored panels on the wall reflected us both, making our size difference stark. My head came to just above his chest. If I turned, I’d be looking at the center of his sternum.
The elevator climbed. Third floor. Fourth.
Neither of us spoke, though it wasn’t an awkward silence. It was the other kind, the one that felt full instead of empty.
My bag slipped off my shoulder.
He caught it before I had to adjust. He took the strap and held it toward me, his fingers wrapping around the canvas, making the bag look tiny in comparison.
The elevator pinged. Fifth floor.
My floor.
The doors opened, and we both stepped out.
Of course.
“What room are you in?” I asked.
He told me the number.
Next to mine. I processed it without letting it show on my face.
We walked down the corridor.
My room was second-to-last on the left.
I stopped outside the door and found my key card. He remained with me, waiting while I scanned the card on the panel, watching me with the same focus he gave footage when he was trying to understand something.
“I felt it,” he said.
The words landed between us.
He didn’t need to say what he meant.
I swung my door open and glanced his way. We had a choice here, and we both knew it.
“I’m glad,” I said.
“Me too.”
I went inside and closed the door behind me.
It wasn’t until I’d turned the deadbolt that I heard his footsteps moving away. His door opening. Then movement in the room next to mine.
I didn’t unpack my overnight stuff right away. Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall we shared.
There was no questioning what this was anymore.
The question was what I did about a father who didn’t know, a team that probably did, and a job that was the only thing I’d built that was completely mine. I’d been invisible in this world for years. That invisibility was the only thing that had felt safe.
It didn’t feel safe any longer.
I showered and brushed my teeth, climbing into bed without turning on the light.
The window looked out over a parking garage and a chain restaurant with its sign still lit. The usual view of a road trip hotel.
I lay in the dark and listened, hearing him drop his bag down on the other side of the wall. Water running. A long silence that meant he was standing somewhere, thinking in that still way of his. The low creak of a bed frame taking on weight.
Then quiet.
I lay in the dark and listened to him exist on the other side of three inches of hotel wall.