The buzzer sounds to end the game, and as the players are shaking hands, Tamiko sends me a text.
They’re talking trade up here in the box. Brace yourself. Dalton wants the deal with Oregon.
I’d heard rumblings of where Logan might go, but Oregon is the worst-case scenario. A new conference. No games in or against Bellerive unless both teams somehow make it to the cup finals. Otherwise, they’ll never face each other.
More than anything, I hate that Dalton is in control of Logan’s career. That, somehow, that spiteful man is still determining aspects of my life. There are few things I regret, but talking to Dalton at the first charity event, being charmed by him, seeing flags that looked more orange than red and ignoring them until the red was leaking out of my head in the form of blood is the greatest regret of my life.
Instead of going into the dressing rooms, Logan comes back to the bench, and he beckons me down. There’s a side entrance into the bench, and he unlocks the door to bring me in. We’ve neverdone this transition before during a game, but I’ve been through this way during a practice or when Logan’s just come here to skate.
He holds up a puck. “For your collection.”
“I have a collection?” I ask with a hint of a smile.
“First goal I scored with you at an away game. And this is the last goal I’ll score as a Bullet.”
“Logan,” I say, and I can hear the watery nature of his name.
“If this is the last time I get to skate off this ice, I’m taking you with me,” he says, passing me the puck.
“What does that mean?” I ask, clutching the puck harder than necessary to keep from crying.
He steps out onto the ice and offers his hand. “Put your feet on top of mine.”
I do as he suggests, and my chin is almost even with his shoulder, and then we’re skating toward the player exit. A gentle breeze ruffles strands of my hair, and the crowd begins to clap and cheer. Maybe it’s for us. Maybe it’s for him. Maybe it’s for the team in their last regular season game. But it fills my heart with sorrow to be acknowledging the end. Somehow, I never really believed we’d get here.
“Thanks for making this the best season of my life,” he says in my ear, his voice gruff just before he steps off the ice into the hallway that’ll take us to the player dressing rooms.
“You worked for that season,” I say, a lump in my throat as I regain my feet on solid ground.
“It’s not the hockey I’m talking about, doc,” he says, taking my hand and leading me past clapping fans who are still crowding the stands.
We’re at the dressing room door, and Logan turns to face me, smoothing my hair back behind my ears. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Might be better if we just meet at my apartment.”
“No,” I say, and that lump is back. “I’ll wait here. I don’t care how long you take.” Because I don’t want to miss my last chance to wait for him, to walk out of here hand-in-hand with him. If I went to his apartment alone, I’d just sit on his couch crying, or curl up under the quilt his mother made and wish that our lives were different.
He tilts my chin and gives me a lingering kiss. “Fuck, I love you. Part of me can’t believethisis how we end, you know? It’s bullshit.”
“We’ll talk at your apartment,” I say.
Hope sparks in his eyes, and I immediately regret that I’ve led him to some other conclusion. I just don’t want to be bawling in the hallways of the arena while members of his team pass me, confused about whyI’mcrying over their shitty season.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“I just… I don’t thinkhereis the place.”
His expression closes again, and my heart squeezes at the immediate shift from the Logan who loves me to the guy I met at the start of the season. The difference is that stark. And I know he’s just protecting himself—in my own way, I’m doing that too—but it doesn’t stop the ache from coming. The realization that this might be the end of me seeing the Logan who loves me. That we might return to a place where I don’t know him, not even a little bit, not even at all.
The urge to cling onto him, to tell him to quit, to say any number of things that are impossible or improbable surfaces. Rather than saying any of it, I give him a gentle push toward the dressing rooms. “I’ll see you when you get out.”
He gives a sharp nod before kissing my temple and then shoving open the door to the dressing rooms. The buzz that filters through when the door opens is surprising, but it shouldn’t be, I guess. Logan is still one of the top scorers in the league. His potential is limitless, and I should be happy for himthat he might end up with a team where that potential leads to even greater things.
It's hard right now to think like that—to be happy for him—when my heart is cracking in two. If Logan ends up somewhere that wins a cup, Dalton doesn’t get to make us both miserable. At least there’s that.
Logan’s quiet on the car ride home. Unlike normal, Tamiko didn’t text me clips of whatever he said in the dressing room to the press, and I didn’t go looking for anything hopeful or inspiring he might have said. Misery is really my best friend.
At the front desk, the concierge hands Logan an envelope that required a signature to receive, and as we take the stairs up to his apartment—never the elevator—he rips it open.
“They finally sent it,” he says in a hushed almost whisper.
