"Love you too."
The call ended.
Three hundred a month. Two-forty more on the mortgage. Five-forty total. Manageable if I kept my spot. If I didn't fuck up.
Every shift was groceries.
And I was letting myself want someone who—
My phone buzzed.
Kieran:You asleep?
Heath:No.
The dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Kieran:Good.
That was it.Good.
I stared at the word.
I could hear him saying it in my head.
Down the hall in 842, Kieran was awake. Texting me. Checking to make sure I was okay.
He wasn't asking me to be smaller.
He was checking in because he wanted me to be okay.
Maybe taking up space wasn't the thing that would make me lose my spot. Maybe shrinking was.
Chapter six
Kieran
We blew a two-goal lead in seven minutes.
No catastrophic breakdown. A slow, professional erosion. We had a neutral-zone turnover that became a two-on-one and a power play we couldn't kill because Varga took a lazy interference call.
The final horn sounded with the score 4-3. Their fans rocked the arena.
I skated to the bench. Stick across my knees. Helmet off.
Markel stood behind us with his arms folded. He didn't speak. The loss was clean enough that no single player wore it, which meant everyone did.
In the locker room, I undressed the way I always did. Jersey first, folded once, hung in the stall. Shoulder pads unbuckled left, then right. Elbow pads stacked. Shin guards aligned.
The room smelled the way it always did after sixty minutes: rubber matting and the sharp chemical bite of equipment spray. I breathed through it the way everyone did.
My hands were steady. They were always steady.
My body had played well. Clean shifts. Smart reads. Two assists that should have mattered and didn't. The box score would reflect competence—good enough to avoid blame, not good enough to change the outcome.
Across the room, Heath sat in his stall.
Still mostly dressed. Pads on. Gloves off, but resting in his lap. He stared at the wall opposite, gaze fixed and unfocused.
