14. Lucy #3
I nodded once. Then again, because the first one didn't feel convincing enough. "Okay. Drop acting from the title."
Sarah's tablet made a faint sound as her fingers moved across the screen immediately. "Already updated," she said.
I stared at her. She didn't look remotely sorry. Dad smiled. Bea let out a soft laugh under her breath. And Alois, of all people, gave me a single approving nod like I had just survived a shift on the penalty kill. Maybe I had.
By the time I made it home, Northbend had gone quiet under a fresh layer of January cold.
Snow lined the edges of the sidewalks in uneven ridges, gray where the plows had shoved it aside, clean and silver where the streetlights touched the tops.
My apartment building rose from the old warehouse district in dark brick and black-framed windows, warm light glowing in scattered rectangles against the night.
Dottie dragged me through the lobby like she had been personally responsible for getting us home.
Her nails clicked across the floor. Her leash pulled tight in my hand.
The second the elevator opened, she trotted inside with all the confidence of a creature who had never questioned whether she belonged anywhere. I envied that about her.
Inside my apartment, the quiet wrapped around me differently than the arena had.
The exposed brick held the amber glow from the floor lamp near the couch.
Books sat stacked in too many places because I kept pretending shelves would magically install themselves if I ignored the problem long enough.
A half-unpacked box leaned against the wall near the window, its flaps folded inward, the word OFFICE written across the side in black marker from when I'd moved in and insisted this place was temporary.
That word had followed me around all night.
Temporary.
Acting.
Almost.
Not quite.
I kicked off my heels by the door and shrugged out of my blazer, hanging it over the back of a chair instead of putting it away.
Dottie was already on the couch before I made it across the room, circling twice before collapsing into the corner with a dramatic sigh that made it clear she had also endured a very difficult evening of sleeping peacefully in my office.
"Yes," I murmured, plugging my laptop in on the coffee table. "Your bravery has been noted."
Her tail thumped once against the cushion.
I changed into soft pants and an old sweatshirt, washed the arena off my face, then returned to the couch with a blanket, my laptop, and the strange, unsettled awareness that my life had shifted while I was still inside it.
Dottie pressed against my side immediately, warm and heavy and unquestioning.
I opened my email settings.
For a moment, I just stared at the signature block.
Lucy Thomas
Acting Director of Player Operations
Minnesota Frosthawks
It was absurd how long I sat there. My cursor blinked after the word Acting like it was waiting for me to do something brave.
I deleted it.
One word.
Six letters.
Gone.
Lucy Thomas
Director of Player Operations
Minnesota Frosthawks
The apartment didn't change. No music swelled. No hidden audience applauded. Only Dottie’s soft snores as she pressed against my hip. And still, something inside me settled.
I saved the change before I could talk myself out of it. Then I opened a blank document. I didn't know why. Habit, maybe. Or instinct. Or the part of me that had been trying to speak for years and kept getting buried beneath practical decisions.
The empty page glowed back at me. White. Unmarked. Patient.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
I thought about a girl who had spent her life orbiting a world that kept asking her to choose between who she loved and who she wanted to be.
I thought about a boy with too much light in him, and all the ways good intentions could still break someone.
I thought about second chances and timing and the terrible, stubborn hope of loving someone despite every reason not to.
I typed one line. Then another. Not much. Just an outline. A beginning. But it was more than I'd let myself have in years.
A quiet thought slipped through before I could stop it. Why couldn't I do both?
I could work for the team. I could write in my spare time. I could build a life that didn't require me to abandon one version of myself to become another.
Dottie shifted in her sleep, burrowing deeper into my side, her warm weight pinning me in place like she knew I had a habit of running from realizations once they became inconvenient.
I looked around the apartment. At the books still stacked on the floor. The art still leaning against the walls. The boxes I had never finished unpacking because some part of me had been waiting for permission to leave.
I rested my hand lightly on Dottie's head, my fingers sinking into the soft fur between her ears. She didn't wake. I smiled down at her, tired and quiet and more certain than I had been when the night began. "I guess it's time to finish unpacking these boxes and really make this place our own."