I type:Can we talk?The words look small. Cowardly. They look like a guy who wants a hand on a hot stove because at least then the pain makes sense. I delete them. I tryI owe youan apology.Delete.I miss you.Delete so hard the phone haptic buzzes, insulted.
There’s a knock I imagine before there’s a knock I hear. My body is up before my brain; I’m halfway to the door like I’m nineteen and stupid and luck is going to show up just because I stood in the right place. I stop with my knuckles inches from the wood and stare at them like they belong to someone reasonable.
I back away, one step, then another, until the mattress hits the back of my knees and I sit because the alternative is wearing a rut in the carpet. The phone waits on the bedspread, patient predator. I set it face down. The ache doesn’t leave; it learns to sit beside me and breathe in tandem.
The bed whines when I push off it, an old sound in a new hotel. I leave the phone where it lies and make it three steps before I turn back and snatch it up like I left my pulse on the nightstand. Hallway light slices under the door, a thin, accusing blade.
In Contacts, her name sits there like a trap I built for myself.Riley Lane.It would take less than a second to cross a distance that took years to make. I thumb the text field and type,Can we talk?The bubble looks pathetic. Like asking a hurricane for a rain check.
Delete.
I owe you an apology.Delete. I owe her a lot of things that don’t fit in a text.
I miss you.The three words blink back like a dare. I delete them so fast my phone buzzes a complaint in my hand.
Okay. New plan: motion. If I move, maybe I’ll outrun the part of me that wants. I pocket the phone and crack the door. The suite opens onto a carpeted hallway that smells like lemon cleaner and tired money. Down the length of it, the EXIT sign throws red light like the city did neon—soft until you’re looking straight at it.
Her room is five doors down. I know without checking the paper sleeve the keycard came in, because I watched her carry her bag in earlier, pretending to scroll my phone while I mapped her steps like a criminal casing a bank.
I don’t remember deciding to walk. One minute I’m anchored in my doorway; the next my shadow is keeping pace with my feet, long and cut to pieces by the sconces. The carpet hushes my steps. Every door looks the same; hers does not. That’s a lie. They all do. I’m the one who’s different by the time I get there.
I stop with my knuckles an inch from the wood. My hand hangs there, stupid and hopeful, like it expects the door to lean forward and meet it halfway. I could knock. I could do the thing that gets me out of my head and into whatever wreckage comes next. I could put my mouth on the problem until it stops feeling like one.
On the other side: maybe she’s asleep. Maybe she’s awake with the TV on low, the blue wash moving over her knees where she’s curled up, hair in a knot that will be gone in the morning. Maybe she’s reading the treatment plan I printed and cursing my handwriting. Maybe she’s composing a text to me and deleting it even faster than I do because she’s smarter, because she has more to lose.
Knock, and I make this a story about bad choices and worse timing. Don’t, and I get to pretend I’m a man who learns.
I close my fist. The motion feels like leashing a dog that still thinks it’s a wolf. I hover one more breath—two—until my arm shakes from holding back something heavier than my own hand.
A door down the hall opens and laughter spills out, a reminder the world exists and it’s nosy. I step back like I meant to, like I was only stretching my legs, like my heart isn’t banging around with nowhere safe to land.
Phone in my palm, door in front of me, rules in my ear. I make the hardest choice I know how to make: I turn away.
I walk back to my room without looking over my shoulder, because if I do, I’ll sprint, and if I sprint, I’ll knock, and if I knock, I won’t stop.
Halfway to my door, the elevator dings and spits out two wingers and a defenseman still high on the win we wrestled out of a bad second period. They’re carrying hotel ice in plastic buckets like trophies, voices pitched for privacy that the hallway refuses to give.
“—telling you, PR’s twitchy,” one says. “New memo says no trainers, no staff, no nothing. Zero tolerance.”
“Zero tolerance for Maddox,” the other laughs. “The rest of us can marry the Zamboni if we want.”
“Yeah, well, he was practically making out with Lane on the bench,” the defenseman adds—not unkind, not kind. “Optics, bro.”
A hot wire snaps behind my ribs. I don’t flinch. I keep walking like the carpet is a treadmill and I’m stuck on it anyway.
“Trainer Lane is way out of your league,” the rookie chirps, and they all bark out laughs—good-natured as a shove that still leaves a bruise. “She’d bench you for breathing wrong.”
“Exactly,” the defenseman says. “Which is why management cares. Trainers are Switzerland, man. Can’t have the tabloids turning neutral ground into a battlefield.”
They round the corner and the sound thins. I’m left with the exit sign’s electric hum and the ache of being the conversation when you’re not in the room to field it. It shouldn’t get to me. I’ve lived as a headline long enough to know the script: deny, distract, score. Repeat. But it’s her name in their mouths, and the idea of it getting chewed by strangers makes my hands curl into fists I don’t use anymore outside of faceoffs.
I stop at my door and lean my knuckles against the wood without meaning to, breathing like I just killed a penalty. There’s a version of me that storms back down the hall, saysknock it off,says her name like a warning and a prayer. That version fights for things with force. He also breaks them.
Inside the room, the AC clicks and the fridge hums, and the city keeps being a place where nobody cares about your vows. I key the lock and step in, shut the door softer than I want to, as if slamming it would wake something better than the part of me that wants to break furniture just to stop feeling cornered by rules I can’t outskate.
I set the phone on the desk and stare at the black screen. If I text her, I drag her into my storm. If I don’t, I leave us both under a sky that won’t decide whether it wants to rain. Julia’s warning sits in my head like a cone on a slick turn. Nolan’s math crunches behind it: games, money, optics. Coach’s voice threads through both:Don’t be a hero; be a pro.
I’m good at being the kind of man who skates. I’m trying to be the kind who stays.
