“Tess?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be there tonight.No matter what.”
She’s quiet for a beat.“I’ll be here waiting for you,” she finally whispers.
The call ends, and I sit on the edge of my bed and press the phone to my chest, eyes burning.
Tonight.
Tonight, everything changes.
Practice is a blur; I go through the motions, skates, drills, plays.Reeves watches me like he knows something’s different but doesn’t know whether to trust it.To question it.
I don’t say anything, not yet.I will once I give the team my notice, once I tell Tessa, we can have the guys over and tell them together.
After practice, I shower, pull on jeans and a hoodie, and head upstairs to the executive floor.
The GM’s assistant barely looks at me as she opens the door.Ray Decker sits at the far end of the long table, flipping through a stack of papers with that smug half-smile he always wears when he thinks he’s already won.
“Carson,” he says.“Didn’t expect you until next week.”
“Won’t take long,” I say, sitting across from him.
He raises a brow, looking amused.“By all means.”
I steady my breath.Just say it.“This is my last season.”
He stills.He doesn't look shocked exactly, more calculating.
“I’m retiring after the last game or if the team makes the playoffs.I won’t re-sign.I want to walk away on my own terms.”
He leans back in the chair, slow and deliberate.
“Is this about whatever is going on with you and that girl?”he asks.Then he scoffs and shakes his head like I am a disappointment."Nate, you are throwing away your career for a girl?"
I laugh under my breath.“I am not throwing away anything.I have had a great career, and now I want more.I am retiring for me.”
He smirks.“Right.And the girl?”
I say nothing because I’m not giving him another single piece of her.
He studies me for a moment, then reaches into a file and pulls out a stack of glossy photos.
“Tough timing, Carson,” he says, sliding them across the table.
I look down, and my heart stops.They are all pictures of Tessa.It takes me a minute to realize what they are.In one, she is walking out of a clinic, her hand low on her stomach, her face pale, her hair whipping around her.The next photo shows her at a pharmacy, buying prenatal vitamins.But the one that hits hardest, the one that takes my breath away...She is in the parking lot, unlocking her truck… with what looks like an ultrasound photo in her hand.
My vision narrows to a pinpoint, and my pulse pounds like a war drum in my ears.
Ray taps the photo with the ultrasound.“You sure it’s yours?”
The asshole says it with a smirk.A fucking smirk.For the first time in my career, I don’t explode.Not outwardly anyways.But inside, I am fighting the urge to drag him across the fucking table.
I pick up each picture, and I know I am making the right choice.I cannot believe I ever let this man...this team think they had the right to my life like this.To violate the privacy of someone like this.I tuck the pictures carefully into my duffel, next to Tessa's letters.
Then I lift my eyes to the GM of the team I have given too much to.
