2. Buzz #2
That was all she offered. Like we hadn’t once spent almost every day together for two straight years. Like she hadn’t fallen asleep against my shoulder in the old movie theater downtown countless times. Like she hadn’t once looked at me like I was the center of her whole universe.
Something hot and disorienting climbed up the back of my neck.
I leaned back slightly in the chair, still staring at her.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Ty,” Sarah warned lightly.
“No, seriously.” I looked directly at Lucy again. “You work for the team?”
One tiny crack finally appeared.
Not in her expression.
In the pause before she answered.
So small nobody else in the room would catch it.
“I’m Acting Head of Player Operations,” she explained calmly.
Every single word sounded intentional. Distance layered carefully into every syllable. A title between us. Her attempt at armor.
Sarah slid a folder across the table toward me. “This is formal documentation regarding three missed mandatory operations meetings related to upcoming sponsor and community obligations—”
I ignored the folder completely.
Lucy looked down at the paperwork again instead of me.
That somehow hurt worse. Because she was really doing this. And now we were strangers. Or pretending to be. Like none of it had happened.
My mouth moved before my brain approved it. “Shortcake—”
Her eyes snapped up instantly. Ice cold. “Do not call me that.”
The room went dead silent.
I felt the hit of that sentence straight through my ribs.
Not because she said it sharply. Because she said it like the nickname physically offended her now. Like it belonged to somebody she no longer allowed to exist.
Lucy sat straighter in her chair, expression perfectly composed again despite the pulse I caught jumping once in her throat.
“Moving forward,” Lucy continued evenly, “attendance at all mandatory player obligations will require will require direct confirmation through operations staff. Failure to attend will result in escalating disciplinary action.”
I signed the paperwork without reading half of it. Not because I didn’t care. Because suddenly none of it mattered.
Sarah kept talking for another few minutes after that. Something about organizational accountability. Communication expectations. Sponsor coordination moving forward.
I heard maybe every fourth word.
The entire room had narrowed down to Lucy sitting across from me pretending her hands weren’t gripping that pen too tightly.
Pretending she didn’t know exactly how I took my coffee. Pretending she’d never kissed me in the front seat of my truck after a football game while snow came down so hard we could barely see through the windshield. Pretending I was just another guy in another meeting.
By the time Sarah finally dismissed me, something inside my chest felt scraped raw.
I pushed back from the table slowly.
Lucy still wouldn’t look directly at me.
That part burned.
Because if she’d yelled at me? Fine.
If she’d looked angry? Even better.
But this? This polished, detached version of her acting like I meant absolutely nothing anymore?
That shit hurt.
I grabbed the folder off the table mostly because leaving it there felt too pathetic.
Sarah offered me one final corporate smile. “Thanks for taking this seriously moving forward.”
“Yeah,” I sighed automatically.
Lucy stayed quiet.
I waited half a second too long before finally turning toward the door.
Some stupid part of me expected her to stop me.
Nothing came.
The door clicked shut behind me. And for the first time in years, I genuinely did not know what the hell to do with myself.
Practice sucked.
Not externally. Externally, I was fine. Good even.
I scored twice during rush drills and nearly took Zee’s head off along the boards after he chirped me during battle work hard enough to deserve it.
Cam barked at everybody for sloppy defensive coverage halfway through scrimmage while Marco started a near-fight with Boris over a blown zone entry that absolutely had not been Boris’s fault.
Nobody looked at me twice. That was the thing about hockey locker rooms. You could be psychologically unraveling in real time and nobody noticed unless you started throwing punches during practice or shaved your head at two in the morning after a road loss.
As long as you kept skating, you were functional. As long as you kept producing, nobody asked questions.
So I skated. Hard. Every drill. Every rep. Every sprint.
I hit somebody during corner retrievals hard enough to send a message I didn’t fully understand myself.
The trainers yelled about keeping contact controlled.
Cam yelled louder.
Somewhere behind me Marco muttered, “Jesus Christ, Burns,” after I stapled Zee into the glass hard enough to rattle the boards.
I barely heard him. Because every time practice slowed down for more than three seconds, another memory blindsided me.
By the end of skate, sweat soaked through the back of my compression shirt and my lungs burned pleasantly from exertion, but none of it touched the pressure building inside my head.
That was new.
Usually hockey fixed things. Enough noise. Enough exhaustion. Enough adrenaline to drown out whatever else lived underneath it.
Today it didn’t work at all.