12. Buzz
BUZZ
NOW
The cold bit at the back of my throat with every breath. Just enough to remind me it was late October in Minnesota, and winter was already standing offstage waiting for its cue.
The parking lot beside Alder Lake Park was half full when I climbed out of my truck.
A couple of cyclists were unloading bikes from a rack.
Someone in a neon running jacket stretched beside the trailhead while an older man poured coffee from a dented thermos before clipping a leash onto an aging golden retriever.
Sunday mornings belonged to people like this. The ones chasing miles before the rest of the town finished breakfast.
I pulled my earbuds from my pocket, stared at them for a moment, then shoved them back again.
Not today.
Leaves skittered across the pavement in the breeze as I started down the trail.
Most of the maples had already surrendered, their branches bare against a cloudless blue sky, but enough gold and burnt orange still clung to the trees to catch the early sunlight.
Frost glittered along the shaded grass near the shoreline, slowly disappearing where the sun finally reached it.
My feet settled into a rhythm almost immediately.
Left.
Right.
Breathe.
Running had always been the closest thing I had to thinking. Or maybe it was the closest thing I had to outrunning thoughts.
Usually, somewhere around mile two, my brain stopped trying to solve the universe.
Today it apparently had other plans.
I saw New York every time I blinked.
The hotel hallway.
Lucy standing in front of my door with her hair still damp from the shower.
The way she'd looked at me across breakfast like briefly she'd forgotten how to breathe.
Then—nothing happened.
I exhaled harder than I meant to. Bullshit. Something had happened. Maybe not the thing we'd both wanted to happen. But something shifted.
I'd felt it every time she forgot to hate me for half a heartbeat. Every laugh she'd caught before swallowing it back down. Every time our eyes met and neither of us looked away fast enough.
She hadn't said nothing happened because she believed it. She'd said it because she needed it to be true.
There was a difference. A painful one.
I rounded the bend where the trail opened beside the lake, sunlight dancing across ripples pushed by the wind.
Runners moved past in both directions. A dad jogged beside a little girl riding a scooter. Someone walked two huskies that looked far more interested in wrestling each other than exercising. A woman balanced two coffees while talking animatedly into her phone.
Just... life. The kind that kept moving whether your heart had caught up or not.
I tried to focus on that instead of the ache sitting behind my ribs. It lasted all of thirty seconds. Because up ahead, I caught a flash of auburn curls escaping a charcoal knit headband.
My stride faltered.
Lucy.
She wore black leggings, running shoes, and a dark green quarter-zip I'd never seen before. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, little clouds of breath disappearing in front of her every few steps.
She looked different. Not because she'd changed. Because she looked like herself.
Not Director of Player Operations. Not Ezra Thomas's daughter.
Just Lucy.
Then something darted across the trail in front of her. Fast. Golden. White paws.
The dog lunged after a leaf tumbling across the pavement, nearly tying itself into the leash before bouncing back toward Lucy with its entire back end wagging.
Lucy laughed. It wasn't loud. Just one soft, helpless little laugh. She shortened the leash before the dog could investigate another runner's shoelaces. "Easy," she murmured, smiling down at it.
The dog immediately ignored her in favor of trying to sniff a squirrel that was halfway up an oak tree.
I blinked. Since when did Lucy have a dog? The thought barely finished before another one landed harder.
She looked comfortable, as if this wasn't a brand-new thing she'd decided to try. She knew where she was going. The dog kept checking back with her between moments of complete and utter chaos.
Without thinking, I slowed to a jog. Then a walk.
She spotted me before I decided whether I should keep going. The smile disappeared. Like someone had closed a book in the middle of a chapter. Her shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly. One hand tightened around the leash.
The dog, blissfully unaware of whatever history had just walked onto the trail, finally noticed me. Its ears perked. Its tail started wagging so hard its entire body joined in.
I couldn't help smiling. "Well..." I muttered under my breath, leaning down to pat the wiggling pup on its head. "You definitely don't hate me."
Lucy snorted. “She’ll learn.”
“Good morning to you, too.” I stole a quick glance as Lucy’s expression hardened further. “Bit chilly, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing, Ty?” Lucy crossed her arms, and the dog sat instinctively at her feet, pressing her entire body against Lucy’s leg.
“Exercising?” I tossed out with a quick shrug. “It’s a public park, Lucy.”
“Don’t,” she sighed. “You know what I mean.”
“I know.” I lifted both hands a few inches, palms out. “I’m not trying to ambush you.”
Her mouth pressed into a line.
The dog took that exact moment to shove her nose into my palm like she had concerns about everyone’s emotional priorities.
I looked down at her. “Thank you. I also feel like this meeting is going great.”
Lucy made a small sound in her throat. Not quite a laugh. Not quite irritation. Somewhere between the two. “She is friendly.”
“I noticed.” I crouched lower, letting the dog sniff my fingers properly before I scratched gently under her chin. “Hi there.”
The dog responded by trying to crawl directly into my arms.
Lucy pulled back on the leash. “No. Absolutely not. We are not tackling strangers on day two.”
I glanced up before I could stop myself. “Day two?”
Her expression shifted immediately, like she realized she’d given something away.
The dog licked my wrist.
Lucy looked at the lake instead of me. “I adopted her yesterday.”
Something in my stomach loosened and tightened at the same time. “You adopted a dog yesterday?”
“She chose me,” Lucy offered. It was quiet. Almost too quiet to hear beneath the bicycles clicking past and the distant bark of another dog near the playground.
Lucy’s hand tightened around the leash again, but this time it did not look like defense. It looked like memory. Like whatever had happened yesterday still sat warm and impossible in the middle of her chest.
“She chose you?” I asked.
Lucy swallowed, eyes still fixed somewhere over my shoulder. “There was an adoption event at North Line. She got loose. Ran straight to me.” Her lips twitched faintly. “Ignored everyone else.”
“Smart dog,” I muttered.
Lucy looked at me then. For one stupid flash, all the cold disappeared. Then she glanced away. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it sound like something.”
I stood slowly because staying crouched in front of her felt too much like asking for forgiveness. “Maybe it was something.”
“It was a dog adoption.”
“Lucy.”
Her eyes snapped back to mine. There it was. The wall. It rose in pieces. Her shoulders first. Her jaw next. Then her eyes, shuttering one careful inch at a time until the woman in front of me looked almost like the one who worked at the arena.
Except her cheeks were still pink from the cold. Her curls were still loose around her face. And the dog was still sitting on her foot with a dead leaf hanging out of her mouth.
“I should keep going,” she said.
“Can we talk?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast. The dog’s ears perked at the sharpness of it.
I nodded once, like it hadn’t hit me. “Okay.”
That seemed to surprise her more than if I’d argued. Her brows drew together slightly. “Okay?”
“If the answer’s no, the answer’s no.”
She studied me like she was looking for the trap. “Since when?”
Fair.
The wind moved across the lake, roughing up the surface in silver shivers. A runner passed behind us, breathing hard, shoes striking the pavement in a steady rhythm that faded into the trees.
“Since I’m trying not to keep making the same mistakes,” I admitted.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” Lucy bit back.
“I don’t either.”
Her mouth softened, and that was almost worse than anger.
Then the dog darted between us after another leaf, the leash wrapping once around Lucy’s calves.
“Oh my God.” Lucy looked down, exasperated. “No. We talked about this.”
“It’s been two days,” I said. “Seems early for performance reviews.”
“She has ignored every single onboarding procedure.”
“Maybe your procedures are flawed.”
Lucy bent to untangle the leash, and the dog immediately tried to kiss her face. “My procedures are excellent.”
“They are very intimidating procedures for someone with paws.”
“She needs structure.”
“She needs a union rep.”
Lucy shot me a look.
I bit back a smile because it did not belong there. Not really. Not with all that space between us filled with things neither one of us had touched yet. But the dog wagged like she’d fixed something.
Lucy straightened with the leash gathered more tightly in her hand. “This is exactly why I can’t do this.”
The smile left me. “What?”
“This.” She gestured between us, small and frustrated. “You. Me. The way you make everything feel…” Her voice thinned, and she looked down at the dog. “Easy.”
I could not breathe.
Easy. That had been us once. Before everything got complicated. Before distance. Before hockey. Before every choice I’d made because I thought I was doing the right thing and every choice she’d made because I’d taught her not to trust me.
“I’m not trying to make it easy,” I said. “We live in the same town, work for the same team. I am just trying to make it less awkward.”
Her laugh was quiet and humorless. “That’s the problem, Ty. You don’t have to try.”
The name hit different when she said it like that. Not sharp. Not cold. Tired. Like she had been carrying it too long.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.
Something flickered across her face. Pain. There and gone. “You already did.”