“Clear,” Triston says. “And fair.”
“Fair has nothing to do with it,” Wayne says, and for the first time all morning I almost smile because there he is—the man who taught me to skate around corners without losing speed. “But it’s what you’ll get from me if you earn it.”
We sit inside that shape for a while. It’s not a blessing. It’s not a ban. It’s a provisional bridge built out of pride and terror and the grudging respect that men like my father give men who stand and do not posture.
He leans back, palms braced on the table like it will be responsible for what happens next. When he speaks, his voice is stripped. “I see something I didn’t want to see last night.”
“What?” I ask, breathless without meaning to be.
“The way you looked,” he says quietly. “Like… like you were lighter for the first time in a long time.” He can’t look at me when he says it, so he looks at the chip on my mug, like he can forgive porcelain what he cannot yet forgive us. “I don’t know how to make sense of hating the method and being grateful for the result.”
The tears arrive without warning. They don’t fall. I swallow them back and let them salt my voice instead. “You don’t have to make sense of it today.”
He nods once, brittle. “No. Today I have practice and a press call and a daughter who is apparently dating my captain.”
“Loving,” Triston says, and I elbow him under the table because sometimes honesty is gasoline.
Wayne rubs his jaw, stares at the ceiling like it contains a memo that will absolve him. “Then I guess I have a daughter who is apparently loved by my captain.” He pushes back his chair. The scrape on the floor sounds like a verdict. “I’m not blessing this. I’m not banning it. I’m… watching.”
I stand because he does. He doesn’t hug me. He doesn’t kiss my forehead. He touches two fingers to the table the way he used towhen I was ten and we agreed a truce would last until homework. “Text me if you’re not coming to the rink,” he says, already moving toward the hallway.
“I’m coming,” I tell him. “I’m always coming.”
He stops in the doorway. For one second he looks back, unarmored. He sees our hands, still joined, and does not flinch. He nods, once, and is gone.
The house exhales like it was holding its breath, too. My knees wobble in the way skyscrapers must when the wind plays with them. Triston is beside me before I finish the thought, palm braced at my spine, heat and steadiness and you did it all in a touch.
I laugh—a helpless, ridiculous sound that does not know whether it is relief or shock. He grins, the dangerous, boyish one that has always felt like a crime and a cure, and kisses my hair. “You were perfect,” he says against it.
“I was a person,” I say. “I’ve spent a lot of time being a symbol. It’s louder to be a person.”
He bumps my shoulder with his like we’re fifteen and sharing a secret in a hallway where teachers patrol. “It’s louder,” he agrees. “And it’s better.”
We move into the kitchen like we live here together, which is laughable and also true in every way that matters. I pour coffee with hands that still remember shaking; he leans his hip against the counter and cleans a nonexistent spot with a paper towel because motion is the only thing that keeps men like him from boiling. I slide him a mug. He takes it with mouth, not hand—leans and kisses the fingers I forgot were curled around ceramic. Heat flares in my face and my wrist and other places that are nobody’s business but the night’s. “Indecent,” I scold, delighted.
“I have it on good authority,” he says, eyes bright, “that indecent is permitted after honesty.”
We stand shoulder to shoulder and look out the window where my yard remembers snow. “What now?” I ask, because logistics are my love language and the future is a room I intend to arrange.
“Now we go to the rink,” he says. “You run the building. I skate until my lungs learn your name and stop calling it pain.”
“Poetic,” I tease. “Coach hates poetry.”
“Coach hates being human,” he counters. “So do I. Except with you.”
The ribbon under my cuff warms like an ember. Without thinking, I press two fingers to it. He notices and goes very still—listening for orders I haven’t issued yet. “On my right,” I say, a whisper that rules a city. “Always. Even when we’re not touching.”
“Copy,” he says again, softer now. Then, after a beat: “Samantha Michael.”
“Hmm?”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it; he looks at the yard like he’s asking permission from trees to speak aloud. “If this gets worse before it gets better, don’t… don’t carry my weight and call it yours. Tell me when I’m heavy.”
“You’re heavy,” I say immediately, and he startles, then laughs, and the laugh breaks something that needed breaking. “You’re also air. I’ll tell you which you are on the days I forget how to breathe.”
He places his mug in the sink very carefully, like it cost him his rookie salary. Then he turns me by the waist, palms broad and careful, and kisses me in my kitchen at nine-something in the morning with the porch light still on because no one remembered to switch it off, and the taste of coffee and future and a night that recalibrated my spine. It’s not the public dare of a ballroom. It’s the private ritual of two people who intend to repeat a thing until it teaches their bodies it is safe.
We separate because time is a rude thing and the rink is a hungry animal. He grabs his jacket from the back of a chair. I find my bag by the door and the sensible shoes I dropped there yesterday when I was still pretending sense and desire were at war. We step into the entryway and there, on the little table where keys live beside old game pucks, is my father’s whistle. It sits like a relic from a religion I still practice. I touch it with the back of my fingers. The metal is cold and familiar. I do not take it with me. I do not leave it behind angry. I only acknowledge it the way a person tips a hat at a monument: with respect, not worship.
