"I know what you're doing. You've been doing it since I was eight years old, and I understand why. You built something, and you wanted me to fit inside it. I did. For a long time, I fit perfectly."
"You still fit. That's what I'm—"
"I don't want to fit. I want to choose." The words came out clean, without the heat of anger, and the steadiness surprised me. "The choices I make about my career and my life are mine. Not yours. Not Thompson's. Not the franchise's."
Silence. A genuine pause.
"This is about the extension."
I could have told him the truth, that it was about Heath Donnelly. I said something simpler.
"This is about me."
More silence.
"Whatever I decide about the contract, my future, anything, I need you to hear me when I say that the person making those decisions is me. Not a continuation of you. Me."
My father took one breath. The measured inhale I'd heard a thousand times at dinner tables and in arena hallways, the one that preceded recalibration.
"Okay," he said.
One word. It wasn't acceptance. It was the acknowledgment that the terms had changed.
"I love you, Dad."
"I love you too."
"Tell Mom I'll be there for dinner."
"I will."
The call ended. I set the phone on the passenger seat.
My hands were steady. I checked, palms flat against my thighs. No tremor.
I backed out and pulled toward the facility exit. At the security gate, I slowed down .
Through the glass, I saw the hallway that connected the locker rooms to the garage. Heath was walking toward the doors. Gear bag over one shoulder. Hair still damp. He moved with his shoulders level and his head up.
He pushed through the door into the garage. Saw my car idling at the gate and stopped.
We looked at each other through the windshield. Five seconds. The gate arm between us.
He nodded once. I nodded back.
He turned toward his car on the lower level, and I pulled through the gate. Separate cars. Both headed home. The gate arm dropped behind me in the mirror.
Chapter twenty-one
Heath
The bruise from Thursday's practice was fading on my left forearm, yellow at the edges, and still tender when I pressed it. I pressed it anyway. Sat in my stall and ran my thumb along the discoloration, testing the tenderness, confirming that the body underneath was still mine and still responding to input.
Playoff morning. The practice facility felt different before anyone spoke. The tunnel was concrete and flat white light casting the surfaces in sharper relief. An Ironhawks crest above the door had been there since September, invisible for months. Today I saw it.
Varga was talking as usual, but the room had absorbed his voice, turning the volume down with no one touching a dial. Nobody complained.
I reached for my tape. Heel to toe. Half-overlap. Clean under my thumb, base to tip. No bubbles. No gaps. I cut the tape with my teeth, pressed the end flat, and set the stick across my stall.
