I called Derek every night after practice. Dad was adjusting, he said. There were good days and bad days.
I listened and said the right things and hung up and lay in the dark thinking about all the dinners I wasn't making him, all the pills I wasn't counting out, all the mornings I wasn't there to tell him who I was when he forgot.
The apartment the team had set me up with was nice in a way that made me uncomfortable. New appliances, fresh paint, thick walls, and absolute silence. Some nights I woke up in a panic because I couldn't hear him, because I'd forgotten for a second that he wasn't in the next room anymore.
Vega didn't say much, but he kept showing up. He left coffee at my stall before morning practice, black with two sugars, which was exactly how I'd ordered it once at the hotel restaurant the night I'd arrived. He had a quiet word with the equipment manager when my skates weren't fitting right, and the next morning there was a new pair in my stall, already broken in to my specifications.
He never explained any of it.
"You know he's adopting you, right?" Murphy dropped onto the bench beside me after practice one day. "Like a stray cat. He does this sometimes."
"I'm not a stray."
"Sure you're not." Murphy grinned. "That's why you show up an hour early every morning and skate until you can barely stand."
Across the room, Vega was packing his bag. He glanced up, caught my eye, and gave me a nod so small it was barely there.
"He's never gotten anyone coffee before," Murphy said, quieter now. "Doesn't even drink the stuff himself."
I thought about the coffee and the footwork correction and the way he'd looked at Briggs in the locker room that first day, his jaw going tight for just a second.
"I'm not doing anything," I said.
"Yeah." Murphy stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. "That's probably why."
My first game was against Colorado.
Eighteen thousand people filled the stands, and the noise hit me like a physical thing when I stepped onto the ice for warmups. This was a wall of sound that vibrated in my chest and made it hard to hear myself think.
Vega passed me on the third lap and tapped my shin with his stick. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
The game started fast and stayed fast. By the end of the first period I'd been on the ice for six minutes, and every shift felt like trying to drink from a fire hose.
But I was keeping up.
Midway through the second period, I saw it. Their defenseman, number 27, had a habit. Every time he recovered the puck behind his own net, he took an extra half-second to look left before passing right. The kind of tell you'd never catch if you weren't actively looking for it.
I cheated toward the passing lane before he'd even started his motion. The puck came off his stick, and I was already there, intercepting it clean, turning toward the net with nothing but open ice ahead of me.
The goalie came out to challenge. I waited until he committed, until his weight shifted to his left side, and then I slid the puck through his five-hole and watched it cross the line.
The horn sounded. The crowd erupted.
Then Vega slammed into me hard enough to knock me sideways, his glove on the back of my helmet, and Murphy was right behind him screaming something unintelligible, and then the rest of the line was piling on.
Dad would have loved this. I wondered if Derek was watching. I wondered if he'd tell Dad about it tomorrow, and if Dad would understand what it meant, and if he'd remember by the time I called.
We won 3-2. I finished with a goal and an assist.
In the locker room after, Coach Barrow stopped by my stall.
"Not bad, Piper." He didn't smile. "Do it again Thursday."
Someone plugged a speaker into an outlet across the room. Music filled the space, some pop song with a driving beat.
And then I heard the voice.
I knew it before my brain caught up. Milo's voice poured out of the speakers, smooth and polished, singing about wanting someone you couldn't have.
