"It's fine."
"Like hell it is."
I pulled my jersey up. The bruise was already spectacular—purple-black spreading from collarbone to bicep.
Jake whistled low. "Damn."
He disappeared and returned with an ice pack wrapped in a thin towel. He pressed it against my shoulder, and I hissed.
"Hold that," he ordered, then sat back down. "Okay. Explain."
I pressed the ice pack to my shoulder, the cold biting through the towel. "Rhett says he's staying. In Thunder Bay. Not moving to Nipigon." My voice came out flat. "He chose this. Chose—me, I guess."
Evan stepped up to us. "That's good news."
"Yeah."
"So why do you look like someone died?"
I knew every word I said was stupid, but I let them tumble out anyway. "Because nobody ever actually stays."
Silence.
Then Jake: "Bullshit."
I looked up. "What?"
"I said bullshit." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "The team's staying. Coach is staying. Margaret literally offered you a piece of her shop. You've got more roots in this town than half the people born here."
"That's not—"
"Not the same? Yeah, I know." His voice turned sharp. "Listen to you. You're acting like if Rhett leaves, everything disappears. Like you're only worth something if he wants you."
"I didn't say that."
Evan took over. "You didn't have to. Your head is rattled because you don't know how to trust good things when they happen."
The ice pack was going numb against my shoulder. "You don't get it."
"Then explain it," Jake insisted.
I started to untape my shin guards with my free hand. The tape came off in long strips, adhesive catching on my fingers.
"I'm loud," I said finally. "I'm big. I fight, and I chirp, and I make people laugh because that's how I fit. When I'm not doing that—when I'm just sitting on a couch, trying to sleep, or standing in someone's kitchen making coffee—I don't know what I am."
Jake and Evan didn't say anything. They let my words settle.
"And Rhett—" I pulled another strip of tape free, wadded it into a ball. "He sees all of it. The loud parts and the quiet parts. And he says he's staying anyway, and I—" I threw the tape ballat the trash can. Missed. "I keep waiting for him to realize he shouldn't."
"Because you don't think you're enough," Evan said quietly.
"Because IknowI'm not." The words were like razor blades, ready to slice my skin. "I'm thirty years old. My body's breaking down. I don't know what comes after hockey. And the only thing I've ever been good at besides fighting is making things with my hands that nobody takes seriously anyway."
"Margaret takes it seriously," Jake said.
"Margaret's—"
"Don't." I heard a growl under his voice. "Don't dismiss it. She offered you co-ownership. That's not pity. That's business."
