"He knows."
I shoved my feet back into my Crocs. Hog opened the door for me.
At the threshold, I stopped.
"He offered me a counter-doc," I said. "Different production company. I'd get final cut approval. Veto rights. All of it."
"You gonna do it?"
"I don't know yet." I looked into Hog's eyes. "Is that okay? Not knowing?"
"Yeah, Pickle. That's okay."
I left before my throat could close up.
***
The arena looked different at midnight.
I'd been here a thousand times—practices, games, but never like this. Never alone.
I unlocked the side door with Hog's keys. The alarm beeped twice. I punched in the code Coach had made us all memorize: 1-9-7-2, the year Thunder Bay got its first hockey arena, back when the ice was actual lake water, and half the players had hypothermia by third period.
The beeping stopped. Silence rushed in to fill the space.
I made my way to the locker room. My stall was exactly how I'd left it—jersey hanging crooked, tape scattered across the bench, and my skates shoved in the cubby.
I sat down. The bench creaked under me—the same creak it always made. I removed my Crocs and set them carefully on the floor, side by side.
Then I reached for my skates. Left foot first. The familiar resistance of stiff leather. My heel settled into the pocket I'd broken in over two seasons. Laces through the hooks—pull,cross, pull, tighten. Not too tight at the ankle. Snug through the arch. Lock it down at the top.
Right foot. Same process.
By the time I stood, my body had remembered something my brain had been trying to forget: this was mine.
The ice was dark except for the emergency lights mounted high in the rafters. They cast long shadows across the surface—the nets at either end, the benches, and the Zamboni sitting silent in its bay.
I began to skate.
The first push was tentative. Testing. My edges caught and held, and the sound—that specific scrape of blade on ice—cut through the silence like a bell.
I pushed again. Harder this time. My body knew what to do.
I picked up speed. The emergency lights blurred past. My breath came faster, fogging in the cold air. I hit center ice and stopped hard—edges digging in, snow spraying, my core tight to keep from pitching forward.
Silence. Just my breathing and the faint hum of the building's heating system.
I skated backward. Slow at first, then faster. Backward crossovers—right over left this time, the weaker direction. My ankle wobbled slightly. I adjusted. Found the edge. Held it.
The network could splice footage. They could add circus music, cartoon sound effects, and laugh tracks. They could cut out every moment of competence and leave only the chaos, but they couldn't cut this.
They couldn't erase the muscle memory in my hips, thighs, and core. They couldn't delete the thousand hours of practice that taught my body how to read ice.
Hockey still answered when I asked.
I stopped at the far end. Bent forward, hands on my knees, breathing hard.
The burn in my legs felt good. Real. Proof that I existed outside of Adrian's lens and the network's edits.
