When I was house hunting last year, fresh from a divorce that ended in more silence than shouting, my agent told me Wilhaggin was about to spike. “Sleeper pocket,” he’d called it.
The divorce didn’t only make me want a different place than the two-story I’d shared with my ex; it rewired what I trusted.
When I toured this place, I liked its clean bones and single story. The retired couple who owned it were eager to cash out and chase sunsets in Arizona. Now here I was. A man living where life dropped him, letting the neighborhood grow around him like ivy.
I parked in front of the house. White trim, black roof, and an L-shaped layout greeted me. The porch light clicked on automatically, lighting up a bright pink tricycle tipped halfway across the walkway.
Cassy had promised to clean up before bed. Figures.
The house was mine alone for a while—my routines, my space, a single man’s sanctuary. Then, two months ago, my sister showed up with bags and a five-year-old. Said she and Jeff were “taking some space. Temporary separation, just until things calmed down.”
My gut clenched as I stepped over the trike and climbed the porch. This couldn’t be a family trend. I couldn’t watch another relationship unravel from this side of the glass, especially not with a kid in the middle.
Inside, the stillness hit. Familiar but not comforting after tonight’s loss. I eased the keys into the bowl, jacket on the hook, and walked to the kitchen. I opened the fridge, then closed it. Not hungry.
“Rough night?”
I turned. Abby stood at the kitchen doorway, hair in a loose braid, sweatshirt too big—probably Jeff’s—making her look perpetually tired.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” I said.
“You didn’t. I was up.” She walked into the kitchen, leaned on the counter. “I watched the third; it looked brutal.”
I sighed, dragging my hand through my hair. “It was.”
She gave me the same patient look she’d been giving me since I was fifteen and she was five, as if somehow she knew more than I did.
“You’ll get the next one,” she said.
“I better.”
She nodded. “You always do.”
It wasn’t much, but it settled something in my chest. My sister was my support and had been for years.
“You heard from Jeff lately?” I asked, trying to sound less a concerned older brother and more a casual observer.
She hesitated. “Yeah, we talked this morning. He’s out of town.”
I nodded, letting it lie. She wasn’t offering more, and I wouldn’t dig further. When she was ready, she’d open up. The silence that followed wasn’t the easy kind; it crackled with awkwardness until she left for her room.
I dropped into the leather chair in my office and opened my laptop. The footage from tonight’s loss was already queued up, labeled by period and line. I skipped straight to the third period and started the breakdown.
One hand scrubbed the timeline forward, dragging through every missed opportunity. The other stayed curled around a glass of water I hadn’t touched. The first few shifts told me everything I already knew. Sloppy transitions, dead legs, and a defensive pinch we had no business making.
I paused, rewound, and watched again.
“Come on, Porter,” I muttered as if he could hear me through the screen. “You’ve got eyes. Use them.”
I took notes for what tomorrow’s skate needed to clean up. Players moved across the screen, fluidly, leaving sharp-edged shapes on the ice I knew better than the lines on my palm.
Then my focus faltered. That same ice, where a flicker of memory lingered. That woman hadn’t flinched when I checked her ankle. She had held my gaze, steadily, as if telling me she knew how to rescue herself.
Mel. That’s what the guy had called her, and it was enough to make me back off. Maybe he was her boyfriend, maybe not. Either way, I wasn’t about to find out—not with one game standing between us and the playoffs and not with someone who could already be in a relationship.
I shook off the thought and hit pause.
Either I got my guys ready to fight for their season, or we watched the playoffs from our couches with my sister and her pink-tricycle-wielding daughter.
