Chapter 2
SAWYER
Ican hear them before I even get my key in the lock.
The sound carries through the hallway of our building, greeting me with what I can only compare to a thousand decibels.
There’s raucous laughter, someone yelling about a cheap shot, and the unmistakable sound of a video game reaching critical chaos.
The condo I share with my cousin, Campbell, overlooks the Potomac, all floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed brick, the kind of place that looks like it should be quieter than this. But, since we moved in, it never is.
I push open the door and the noise once muted to its thousands of decibels and out of sight now hits me like a wall.
“Stockton!” My buddy Owen’s sprawled across the sectional, controller in hand, not even glancing up from the screen. “You’re late, and I’m about to obliterate your cousin.”
“Dream on,” Campbell calls from the kitchen.
The condo is really Campbell’s. He bought it and then didn’t have to fight too hard to convince me I needed to move in as well—open floor plan, river views, the kind of space real estate agents call “sophisticated urban living.” Which right now looks like a frat house, with at least ten empty pizza boxes on the coffee table, someone’s gear bag blocking the hallway, and an empty and abandoned dirty protein shaker on the counter.
Huh. If people could only witness this outside of our little conclave. No one really understands that this is what twenty-something NHL players with more money than sense look like in their natural habitat.
“How was plant prison?” Owen asks, eyes still locked on the screen.
I drop my keys in the bowl by the door. “Productive.”
Ty, our teammate and now neighbor after moving in a few floors down, appears from the kitchen carrying a bag of potato chips, his kryptonite. He’s in sweats and a Dominion hoodie, wet hair suggesting a recent shower. “Did you actually learn anything or just stand there looking pretty?”
“Both. I’m multitalented.”
“Did you break anything?” Liam asks. He’s our honest-to-goodness local boy, having grown up in the area and now in the big leagues and getting to play on home turf. The dream.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Never say never!” Campbell laughs from where he’s leaning against the kitchen island. He’s watching me with that look—the one that says he knows me too well and is already three steps ahead of whatever I’m thinking.
When Campbell was drafted from our old team, the Renegades, to play on the Dominion, I’m not above saying that I was the tiniest bit jealous.
Not in a competitive way, like where I was mad at him, but in that way where I wanted to be where he was, too.
New team in the NHL, blazing my own trail.
Goals, right? I’m lucky that it wasn’t long, maybe two weeks after he’d heard his good news, that I found out I was selected, too.
“So.” Owen pauses the game, finally looking up. “When do you go back?”
“Monday,” I respond.
The room goes silent for exactly two seconds. Then they’re all grinning.
“Dude. Didn’t have you being in your houseplant era on my bingo card for the year,” Ty says.
I flip him off and head for the fridge, but I can feel Campbell’s eyes tracking me across the room.
“If I have to do it, then I have to do it,” I say, grabbing a bottle of water. “At least the woman I’m working with is nice and not hard on the eyes.”
Oh no. Well, that’s me opening a can of worms I won’t be able to close for at least ten minutes.
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” Campbell says mildly. “What’s she like? Older? A grandma?”
“Her name is Juliette.” A vision of her comes to mind, dark brown eyes drilling into me as she threads her fingers through honey blonde hair. “She’s nice, that’s all.”
“Juliette. French.” Owen’s eyes light up. “Is she hot or terrifying?”
My head swivels on its axis between the two. “Both,” I answer, once again with regret. These guys are pack animals. Once they smell blood…
“Methinks he’s got a crush already,” Owen purrs.
Campbell tosses a magazine at his head. “He only dates models, you know.”
“Stop it.” I roll my eyes. “I’m doing something for the team. It’s community service.”
“Uh-huh. That you’re forced to do, but go on and let’s sail down that river they call denial,” Ty chuckles.
Owen looks at Ty and says, “I thought it was the Nile?” and Ty slaps his head.
“I’m not in denial,” I protest. “I’m taking part in mandated outreach.”
“Right. Outreach you did not want to do a few hours ago, but now that you’re back from the store, all of a sudden you seem to be breezier than a makeup advertisement.” Campbell shakes his head. “Please just stay focused. New team that’s headed to the playoffs and all that. You know.”
“Trust me,” I say, grabbing his arm. “That’s one thing I won’t ever let you down about.”
Liam drops onto the couch next to Owen, looking way too entertained. “It is cool that the town wants to do this community outreach program, but the timing of it is just so cruddy.”
“If anyone can handle juggling a part-time job while headed for playoffs with an inaugural team,” Campbell says with a snicker, “it’s gonna be Sawyer.”
I lean against the counter, take a drink, and stare out at the river through the massive windows. The sun’s setting, turning the water gold and orange, boats cutting white lines across the surface.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’ll show up, do my hours, and then I’ll be back. Hopefully, whatever they have me doing helps her and her shop, but the real reason I’m there is that it helps get me out of the penalty box with the coach and the owners.”
Campbell raises an eyebrow but doesn’t push. He knows when to let things breathe.
My phone buzzes. It’s our team group chat, someone posting a meme about our last game. The Dominion’s first season in the NHL and we’re on a roll. The entire city’s losing its mind. I know the feeling.
I scroll past the chat, my thumb hovering over a different conversation. The one that never answers back.
“Hey. You see Sienna’s engaged?” Owen asks, clearly reading over my shoulder because the man has no sense of personal space. When I shake my head no, he grabs my phone, taps to open an app, and then hands it to me.
I glance at my screen. Sure enough, Instagram’s algorithm has helpfully surfaced my ex-girlfriend’s face—Sienna Hart, pop star, seventy million followers, currently draped over some guy in what looks like a nightclub in LA. Her ring is the size of a small planet.
And I feel…nothing.
“Good for her,” I say, and I mean it.
“Fast though, right?” Owen whistles. “You guys broke up, what, six weeks ago?”
“Two months.”
Owen chokes on a laugh. “Still.”
I shrug. We dated for eight or nine months, broke up three times, got back together twice.
The whole thing felt like trying to hold onto smoke.
Beautiful, sure, but gone the second you tried to actually grab it.
When I think back and reflect on that time with her, she was exactly what I’d been looking for at the time. Which is probably why it didn’t work.
“You okay?” Campbell asks quietly.
“Yeah.” I lock my phone, set it face-down on the granite. “Honestly? I think I always knew it wasn’t real.”
Campbell watches me with an assessing look that sees too much. I’m about to make a joke or point out the window simply to get him to take his eyes off me when Owen mercifully changes the subject altogether. Bless him.
“First year in the NHL and bam! We’re looking at the playoffs. Never thought I’d see it this fast.”
They dissolve back into hockey talk—matchups, strategies, who’s playing or who is out with injury, whether our goalie can steal a series. I let it wash over me, comfortable and familiar.
My phone buzzes again. I glance down, expecting more team chat nonsense.
Instead, it’s an email.
From: Alexandria City Outreach Program
To: Sawyer Stockton
Subject: Community Partnership Schedule
Dear Sawyer,
Attached please find your official schedule for the community partnership program with Leaf & Letter.
As discussed, you will be volunteering your time, as available, over the next eight (8) weeks. The schedule below serves as our working outline and is subject to coordination with the shop owner.
Three (3) weekly shifts for approx. two (2) hours.
Time and day to be determined by Juliette Gianelli.
Beginning this Monday.
Please confirm receipt and advise if you have any conflicts.
Best regards,
Carol Mason
City Outreach Coordinator
I stare at the screen. Two-hour shifts, three days a week, over eight weeks? As we lead up to the play-offs?
“What’s that face?” Campbell asks.
I look up. “What face?”
“The face you’re making. Like you just realized something. If there was a lightbulb over your head, it would be on right now.”
I lock my phone. “Nothing. I’m looking at my schedule for the plant shop.”
“And?”
“And it’s three days a week, two hours a day. Eight weeks.”
Ty’s scrolling through his own phone now, probably looking at game film. “Could be worse. At least it’s not trash pickup.”
“Or reading to kindergarteners,” Liam adds. “Remember when Jackson had to do that school outreach detail last year? Those kids roasted him for three weeks straight.”
“Five-year-olds are brutal,” Owen agrees.
I should be relieved. They’re right—this could be so much worse. Instead, I’m thinking about Monday. About walking into that shop with all its greenery and the woman standing behind the counter who looked at me like I was a problem she didn’t ask for.
Eight weeks. I could learn a lot about plants in eight weeks.
I head to my room about an hour later and sit on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, and open the text thread. I haven’t closed it in two years.
I scroll up, reading through messages that never got responses.
Made the playoffs, Dad. You were right about the wrist shot.
Campbell finally met someone. Wish you could meet her. She’s great.
I miss you.
Season’s going better than expected. Expansion teams aren’t supposed to be good yet.
Coach says I need to work on discipline. You would’ve laughed at that.
Two years today. Still doesn’t feel real.
Hundreds of them. Two years’ worth of one-sided conversations with a disconnected number.
I know it’s pointless. I know he’s not reading them. But I also know that the second I stop, the second I let that conversation end, it means accepting something I’m not ready to accept.
I scroll to the bottom. To tonight’s message.
Met someone today. She hates me. You’d probably like her.
I stare at it for a long time. Then I type another one.
Got my schedule.
My thumb hovers over send. Then I add more.
I know what you’d say. That I should take it seriously. Show up. Do the work. Prove I’m more than the headlines.
I’m going to try, Dad.
Send.
The messages deliver to nowhere, same as always. But I feel lighter anyway.
Out in the living room, someone scores. Owen, probably, based on the volume of celebration. Campbell tells him to shut up. Ty’s laughing. It’s loud, wildly chaotic, and full.
Yet somehow, my brain keeps wandering back to a plant shop.
Thirty minutes with a woman who didn’t care that I play hockey and a kid who apparently loves the sport more than anything. That felt like something worth paying attention to.
I set my phone on the nightstand, lie back, and stare at the ceiling.
The river’s out there somewhere beyond the windows, dark and constant. Boats are probably still cutting across it, people heading home or heading out, living their regular lives, while mine feels like it’s balancing on some kind of edge I don’t understand yet.
Monday.
I’ll figure it out on Monday.