CHAPTER 16
The right decision still felt like being fired from a life he had not been allowed to begin.
Micah carried the signed recusal to the parking garage. He did not wait for Simone. He did not send a message. He drove to the Forge with anger riding beneath his ribs.
Dante found him alone in the film room watching the same red-zone rep for the fourth time.
“That corner hasn’t changed strategy since the last replay,” Dante said.
“I’m considering whether he’ll feel guilty.”
“Film rarely does.”
Micah paused the screen. “Simone transferred me.”
Dante sat beside him. “Clean?”
“Cleaner than surgery.”
“You wanted her not to?”
“I wanted it not to be necessary.”
“Different problem.”
Micah told him only what was his to tell: no contact had occurred, a personal conflict existed, Leah held permanent authority, and a cooling period applied. Dante listened without turning it into locker-room entertainment.
“You angry because she left,” Dante asked, “or because she made the call before you could?”
“Both.”
“Which one makes you want to do something stupid?”
“Second.”
“Then don’t confuse motion with choice.”
Micah leaned back and let the film-room chair take his weight.
The need to move had followed him from the conference room: call Simone, demand one unrecorded answer, post the truth before strangers rewrote it.
Each option felt like action. None respected what she had given up to make a future choice free.
“What would you do?” he asked.
Dante’s expression changed. “About my agent being attracted to me?”
“About the right boundary feeling like rejection.”
“I’d stop asking the boundary to make me feel good.”
Micah looked back at the paused coverage.
“Cami taught me that one,” Dante said. “A person can say no for reasons that have nothing to do with your value. You decide whether you respect the no before you know if it ever changes.”
“I respect it.”
“Then be angry without making anger her bill.”
The bluntness worked. Micah restarted the film.
Dante made him diagnose every leverage cue on the red-zone sequence. The corner’s inside foot. Safety depth. Backside pressure. By the twentieth replay, the ache behind Micah’s sternum had not vanished. It had stopped controlling the next decision.
At treatment, Leah called for their first post-transfer check-in. She did not mention Simone’s feelings or offer reassurance about June. She reviewed the contract status, two endorsement proposals, the family gift, and the secure communications protocol.
“Do you have everything you need from me?” Micah asked.
“Professionally, yes.”
“And the file?”
“Complete. Simone cannot supplement it except through logged transition corrections requested by counsel. I do not need her approval to act.”
“Good.”
The answer hurt too. Clean independence removed every excuse for private contact.
When he reached home, a meal delivery waited at the rental door. For one hopeful, stupid second he thought Simone had sent it. The receipt showed it came from his mother.
He called to thank her.
“Are you eating alone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That woman made you move across the country and left.”
“Austin drafted me. I chose the lease. Leah represents me.”
“You keep defending her.”
“I’m correcting the facts.”
His mother lowered her voice. “Did she do something to you?”
The question carried genuine fear. Micah made himself hear it.
“No. She noticed a professional conflict before anything happened and removed her power. That is all I’m telling you because the rest is not mine alone.”
“You sound older.”
“I’m the same age I was this morning.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
After the call, the gossip post appeared. He drafted a denial, deleted it, drafted another. Each one disclosed enough to make Simone the subject of a defense she had not requested.
He sent the link to Leah and Jocelyn with one line: Correct only representation status. No personal details.
Then he opened the playbook. Motion could be a choice when it belonged to the right life.
The advice irritated Micah because it was good.
He returned to the screen. “Show me the leverage on this release.”
For two hours, he let guidance expand rather than shrink him.
At home, he read the recusal again. Leah was not a figurehead. Simone could not review his deals, touch his fees, speak to Austin for him, or reclaim commission. If anything happened after June twenty-four, it would not be payment for the contract or gratitude for the draft.
That mattered.
So did the emptiness of his phone.
He wrote: I’m angry because the right decision costs me access. Not because you owe me anything.
Then he sent it to Leah for the transition record, not Simone.
Leah replied: Received. No response required under the cooling protocol.
Good.
Terrible.
By evening, a gossip account had learned enough to invent the rest.
ICE QUEEN DUMPS AUSTIN ROOKIE AFTER DRAFT-NIGHT DRAMA.
The post implied Micah had been difficult, Simone mercenary, and Leah assigned to clean up. His family called within minutes.
“Did she abandon you?” his mother asked.
“No.”
“Then why transfer?”
“A professional conflict. Leah is my agent. I’m fully represented.”
“What conflict?”
“Private.”
His brother swore. “Vanguard said she’d lose interest after the draft.”
“Vanguard sent a hidden-money offer.”
“Allegedly.”
Micah closed his eyes. “Do not contact them.”
“You don’t get to order us.”
“Correct. But you don’t get to negotiate my career.”
The call ended badly.
He stood alone in his kitchen while evening heat pressed against the windows. Simone had warned him people would call access love and control protection. She had not warned him how clean boundaries could feel like grief.
The gossip claim reached Austin’s commercial office before Micah finished film. Adrian requested a brief meeting with Leah and Micah; Simone’s name appeared only in the subject line of the public post.
“Does the transfer alter your contract?” Adrian asked.
“No,” Leah said. “I hold the file and all negotiation authority.”
“Any allegation of pre-draft contact?”
Micah answered for himself. “No romantic or sexual contact occurred. The conflict was disclosed before anything did.”
Adrian nodded. “Then Austin treats this as representation administration unless evidence says otherwise.”
No favor. No punishment. The clean response made Micah’s anger less dramatic and more bearable.
At home, he removed Simone from the emergency favorites on his phone. The act felt absurdly intimate. Her number remained preserved, but no accidental tap would make contact easy.
He placed the recusal beside his playbook on the kitchen table. One document described the authority she had surrendered. The other described the work he still had to do.
Micah chose the playbook. He studied until the formation language stopped looking hostile, then prepared breakfast for the next morning. Pain did not exempt him from ordinary discipline. It also did not make him less certain about the woman he was refusing to contact.
Micah changed one name in his phone and then changed it back.
Simone Grant — Agent became Simone Grant. The edit felt too personal during cooling, as if punctuation could create contact. He restored the original entry and then deleted the number from his active device under Leah’s protocol.
The information remained with counsel for evidence purposes. Micah did not need it in his hand.
At the Forge, Gabe tested the rookie on formations until frustration burned away self-pity.
“You look distracted,” Gabe said.
“I am.”
“Can you work anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Then do not make me become the audience for whatever you are refusing to say.”
Micah reset. The next ten answers were correct.
After practice, his mother called to ask whether Simone’s transfer meant the family had done something wrong. Micah explained the conflict without discussing attraction.
“Can’t you tell her to stay?”
“I could ask. She could still leave. And asking now would put pressure on the rule.”
“So you just wait?”
“I live.”
He said the word before fully understanding it.
That night, he cooked, studied, called his sister, and slept without checking for a message that should not come. Grief remained in the room. It did not become the only furniture.
He did not break one.