30. Lucy #2
“You liked him once.”
“Yes, and then I thought he cheated on my best friend. My opinion adjusted.”
“He didn’t.”
“But,” Naomi’s voice softened without losing its edge. “He still left you standing on that porch. He still chose silence when you needed him to fight. He still let you carry the weight of not being worth the explanation.”
The path blurred for a second.
I stopped walking.
Dottie, who had been trying to drag us toward a trash can with apparently fascinating historical value, came back and shoved a stick against my shin.
“No thank you,” I whispered.
She pushed harder.
Naomi crouched slightly. “Dottie, babe, we are having a crisis.”
Dottie wagged.
I laughed, and this time it did not break.
Naomi straightened. Her expression was still warm, still unsparing, still hers. “You’re scared.”
I stared out at the lake. Snow blurred the far shoreline into a pale gray haze. The frozen surface looked calm enough to walk across, but I knew better than to trust ice just because it looked solid from a distance. “I don’t want to punish him forever,” I said.
“Then don’t do that.”
“That sounds very simple.”
“It is not simple. It is just not today’s job.”
I looked at her. “What is today’s job?”
Naomi tucked the empty carrier more securely under one arm. “Today’s job is walking your dog, drinking your coffee, going to work, and not making a permanent decision while your body thinks three hours of fake sleep counts as a recovery plan.”
Dottie barked once at a squirrel and then startled herself with the force of her own opinion.
We had reached the far end of the loop. The parking lot was visible through the trees, our cars softened beneath a thin layer of new snow. The park still looked impossibly beautiful. Gentle. Clean. Like the whole city had been given a fresh page.
I hated how much I wanted one.
Naomi stopped beside me before the path curved back.
Her cheeks were pink from the cold. A strand of hair had escaped her bun and stuck to her lip gloss.
She brushed it away impatiently and looked at me with the kind of love that never asked permission before telling the truth.
“Showing up once is easy,” she said. “Let’s see if he can be boring about it. ”
I looked down at Dottie, who had dropped her stick and was now licking snow off the top of my boot.
Then my best friend took my empty coffee cup from me, because Naomi had been putting my pieces in the right place since middle school, and we walked back to the parking lot without trying to solve the rest.
By the time I reached the arena, my hair had gone wild around the edges from the damp air, my eyes looked worse than they had in my apartment mirror, and Dottie had decided fresh snow was a personality trait.
I parked in the staff lot and sat for a moment with the engine running.
The arena rose in front of me, glass and steel and banners, the Frosthawks logo stark against the winter morning.
Talon Arena always looked different before the day fully started.
Less like spectacle. More like infrastructure.
Loading doors. Security lights. A few early staff cars.
The quiet machinery behind all the noise.
I had built a life in quiet machinery.
Systems did not ask you to forgive them.
Dottie whined from the back seat.
“I know.” I turned off the engine. “Some of us have jobs.”
She wagged like she considered emotional support a full-time profession.
Inside, the corridors were warm enough to fog my glasses for the first few seconds.
The familiar smell of the arena wrapped around me: ice, rubber mats, old coffee, cleaning solution, cold air trapped beneath concrete.
Somewhere far down the hall, a door shut.
A cart rattled. The building was beginning to wake.
I let Dottie into my office first, filled her water bowl, then grabbed the garment bag from the hook on the back of the door and headed to the staff bathroom with my makeup pouch in one hand.
The bathroom mirror was cruel in fluorescent lighting. My face looked pale beneath the freckles that always came out more when I was exhausted. My eyes were puffy. The skin beneath them looked bruised with lack of sleep. My curls had given up on structure and chosen weather.
I set my makeup pouch on the counter and stared at myself.
For one second, I saw the girl on the porch.
I gripped the edge of the sink until the cold porcelain bit into my palms.
I washed my hands. Patted under my eyes with cold water.
Pulled my curls back loosely, then let a few pieces fall because fighting them would cost more energy than I had.
I put on concealer carefully. Mascara. A little blush so I looked alive instead of professionally haunted.
Tinted balm. Gold hoops. The delicate necklace I touched too often when I was trying not to feel anything.
Then I changed into navy trousers, a cream turtleneck, and my emerald blazer.
When I stepped back, I looked tired, but functional.
Young, but not fragile. A woman who could handle a legal threat, a player schedule, a staffing gap, and a communications audit before noon.
A woman who had not cried in Ty Burns’s kitchen hours ago while his dog-fur-covered couch sat in the next room and the whole lake pressed dark against the windows.
I slipped my glasses back on and squared my shoulders. “There,” I told my reflection. “Get in the game.”
My reflection looked unconvinced.
Dottie was sitting behind my desk when I returned, her front paws placed neatly on the rug, her head tilted toward the door like she was waiting for staff. Her tail thumped against the floor.
I dropped my tote beside the desk and started the day the only way I knew how. Email. Calendar. Player availability notes. Charlotte documentation, still organized into folders so aggressively labeled they looked like they had been prepared by someone trying not to have a breakdown.
My coffee from the park was gone, but my body still reached for it twice. The second time, my fingers closed around air and I frowned at my own hand.
I made it through six emails, two schedule confirmations, and one facilities note about a malfunctioning door near the south service corridor before there was a light knock on my open door.
Ty stood in the doorway in team-issued workout gear, damp hair pushed back from his forehead, cheeks still faintly red from cold or exertion.
He looked like he had slept about as much as I had, though he was doing a better job hiding it behind broad shoulders and the irritating athletic ability to look alive under poor conditions.
In one hand, he held a lidded cup. In the other, a small paper cup with a tiny lid and a sticker on top.
Dottie went still. Then her nose lifted. I watched betrayal enter her body in real time. Her ears perked. Her tail began a slow, hopeful sweep across the rug. Her entire expression changed from office dog to woman of opportunity.
Ty’s mouth twitched, but he pressed it flat so fast I almost missed it.
He stayed at the threshold, one shoulder near the frame, both offerings held carefully in front of him like evidence he was not planning to use his hands for anything else. “Morning,” he drawled.
My pulse moved everywhere. “Morning.”
His eyes swept over my face. Not obviously. Not in a way anyone else would have caught. But I caught it because my body still knew too much about the way Ty Burns noticed me. He lifted the cup in his right hand. “For you.”
I looked at it. Paper Lantern logo. My heart fluttered for a flickering moment. The order sticker was turned slightly toward me. Double Italian roast caffè latte. Whole milk. Extra shot. Light microfoam.
Not a flavored latte. Not the overly sweet thing people assumed I drank because I liked seasonal coffee sometimes. Not arena coffee disguised by vanilla syrup and optimism.
My actual order.
The one Naomi made when I showed up at Paper Lantern before opening and looked like I might need caffeine administered by licensed personnel.
“And,” Ty added, lifting the smaller cup, “for Dottie.”
Dottie made a sound I had never heard from her before. Something between a whine, a gasp, and a formal declaration of allegiance.
Probably because Naomi’s café had apparently become an accomplice. But possibly due to the fact that my dog had a more active social network than I did.
Dottie took one step toward Ty. Then another. Then she sat directly in front of him with a level of obedience she had never once offered me in a professional setting.
Ty looked down at her. “That feels like a yes.”
“She is easily corrupted.”
His eyes flicked back to mine. His fingers tightened slightly around the coffee cup. His mouth softened, then closed. His shoulders settled as if he had physically put something down before it crossed the room.
He looked at Dottie instead. “Can I give this to her?”
The question was ridiculous. It also almost undid me. I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms because my body needed a barrier. “You may give Dottie her personalized beverage.”
Dottie’s tail thumped hard.
Ty crouched just outside my office and set the cup on the floor. “There you go.”
Dottie moved with shocking speed for a dog who liked to pretend stairs required moral support. Her nose went straight into the cup.
Ty stood, and this time he did smile. Not huge. Not victorious. Just small and real, gone almost as soon as it appeared.
He held my coffee out.
I stood because staying seated made the room feel too uneven. I crossed the office and took it from him, careful not to touch his fingers.
I failed. A brush of knuckle against knuckle. Nothing more. My body reacted like touch had memory stored in the bones.
Ty’s eyes dropped for half a second.
The cup was warm in my hand. The Paper Lantern sleeve had a tiny ink mark near the seam, probably from whoever had written Dottie Girl with unnecessary affection. I looked down at it because looking at him had become a problem. “Is this you showing me you’ll show up?” I asked.