One new message.
Break a leg Friday.
Kidding, of course.
You know I’d never want that for you.
The arena is suddenly too bright.
I shove the phone back into my pocket so hard it bumps bone, and for a moment, the ice doesn’t look like ice at all.It looks like a painted surface that remembers falling.It looks like a mouth that could open if it wanted to.
I swallow until my throat burns and lift the clipboard higher, a small shield in a place that doesn’t protect the right things.
I will not break here.
I will not break here.
I will not break here.
“Wren,” someone says quietly at my shoulder, and I force my face toward the voice before the tears decide to show themselves.
Finn again.Just a step away, exactly far enough.He nods toward the bench.“You dropped your pen.”
I didn’t.He knows I didn’t.He holds one out anyway, like a lifeline I can say yes to.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it.
He doesn’t leave yet.He lowers his voice even more.“You okay if I stay close out here?Not in your space.Just...here.”
I think about saying no.I think about saying yes.I think about the text humming in my pocket like a mosquito I can’t swat in front of the entire world.“Here is fine.”
He smiles, small and real, and drifts a little down the boards, enough to give me air and still be there if my knees unlock.
On the ice, Kael snaps at a rookie who’s drifting the wrong way.Atlas throws his weight into a turn that should not be legal in three states and makes it look like gravity is a rumor.The arena breathes again.So do I, barely.
My phone buzzes one more time.I don’t look.
I’ll look later.
Or I won’t.
Either way, he is here with me now, without being in this building at all.
I watch the ice.I take notes.I steady my hands on the edge of the boards until the tremor becomes a pulse again.When Finn glances back at me, I give him half a nod—nothing anyone else would see—and he gives me the same one back.
I am not fine.
But I am upright.
And for this minute, that is the only thing I know how to be.
