Both paths are good. Both make sense.
But only one of them includes Piper.
I sit there in the empty locker room, championship trophy sitting on the bench where Coach left it, and stare at my phone like it holds answers it definitely doesn't have.
My phone buzzes. Sage:
Sage: Where are you? Piper's asking.
The firehouse is quiet when I pull up at midnight. No active calls. Just the trucks sitting silent in their bays, ready for the next emergency. I let myself in with my key—perks of being on the volunteer crew—and head straight for the memorial wall.
It's in the hallway between the bays and the offices. Plaques with names and dates going back sixty years. Firefighters who died in the line of duty. Dad's is third from the left, second row.
DAVID LOCKWOOD 1975-2014 GAVE HIS LIFE SAVING OTHERS
There's a photo—Dad in his turnout gear, helmet tucked under his arm, grinning at the camera with soot on his face. He looks exactly like I remember. Strong. Confident. Happy.
"Hey, Dad." My voice echoes in the empty hallway. "I could use some advice."
The photo doesn't answer. Obviously.
"I got the NHL offer. Multiple teams interested. They want to fly me out for meetings this week." I lean against the wall across from his plaque, sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor. "This is everything we talked about. Everything you wanted for me."
But is it what I want?
"Chief offered me lieutenant. Same rank you had. Same job. I could stay here, run the department someday, matter to people the way you did." I scrub my hands over my face. "And there's this girl. Piper. She's—complicated. And temporary. And I'm pretty sure I'm in love with her, which is terrifying because I don't know what she wants or what I'm even allowed to want."
The memorial wall is silent except for the hum of fluorescent lights.
"I keep thinking about that roof collapse. The thirty seconds you had to choose. You could've gotten yourself out. You should've. But you went back in because that's who you were." My throat tightens. "Were you scared?"
The answer comes not from the wall, but from memory. Dad's voice in my head, clear as the day he said it: "Courage isn't not being scared, Ry. It's being scared and doing the right thing anyway."
But what's the right thing here?
The NHL is glory. Achievement. Everything a kid could dream about.
But staying? Staying is purpose. It's choosing the people who matter over the dream that might not. It's deciding that being a big deal in a small town means more than being anonymous in a big league.
Dad didn't chase glory. He chose purpose.
He could've been anything—he was smart enough, driven enough. But he chose the fire department. Chose this town. Chose being there for the people who needed him over being somewhere else being someone else.
And he was happy. Right up until the end, he was happy with that choice.
I look at the photo. At the soot and the grin and the man who taught me that mattering to the people you love is the only success that counts.
"I know what I want," I tell the photo. "I know what I'm choosing."
The photo doesn't argue.
I stay there on the floor for what feels like hours but is probably twenty minutes. Just sitting with the decision. Testing it for cracks, for doubts, for anything that feels wrong.
It feels right. Terrifying and right.
"Thanks, Dad," I tell the photo.
The grin in the picture seems to widen, but that's probably just the fluorescent lights playing tricks.
