The smirk that crosses his face is rueful. Knowing. The expression of a man who has spent twenty-six years navigating the emotional landscape of Eleanora Ashford-Holloway and has developed the navigational instincts of a sailor who knows exactly where the rocks are because he has hit every single one of them.
He sighs, the sound carrying the accumulated exhaustion of decades spent loving a woman who defines affection through achievement metrics and emotional connection through portfolio performance.
Then he leans closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that is meant only for me and the cracked leather cushions and the tarnished trophies gathering dust on every surface of this beautiful, cluttered, imperfect room.
"Your mother chose her life and status, Sage. She needs to find comfort in being in a world that glitters like gold, despite the hollowness in it. That is the path she decided on a long time ago, and she walks it with a conviction that I have never been able to match or change."
He squeezes my shoulder, and I can feel the calluses on his palm through the thin fabric of my compression shirt. The hands of a man who has spent decades gripping hockey sticks and shaking the hands of athletes and holding his daughter steady when the world tried to knock her sideways.
"You, on the other hand, get the choice to walk a path that defies you. One that does not make you feel like a fake to the world. One that hurts, yes. That exhausts you and breaks you and makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself. But a path that is real. That belongs to you and no one else."
I hold his gaze, and the pressure behind my eyes intensifies to a dangerous degree.
Do not cry. Do not you dare cry. You are Sage Holloway. You do not cry in your father's office over a letter and a pep talk and the sound of someone believing in you when the rest of the world has made it abundantly clear that belief is a luxury you have not earned.
"Why do you still have hope in me?" The question escapes before I can cage it, raw and unguarded and carrying every ounce of the exhaustion I have been pretending does not exist. "Everyone keeps rejecting me, Dad. Every tryout. Every scout. Every team. They watch me play and they tell me I am extraordinary and then they send me home because the biology printed on my ID matters more than anything I do on the ice."
My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it. Hate the vulnerability. Hate the way my throat betrays me at the exact moments I need it most.
"Why do you keep telling me I can do this when the entire world keeps telling me I cannot?"
He looks at me for a long, silent moment.
Then he smirks. That specific Rick Holloway smirk that precedes every ridiculous, corny, eye-roll-inducing statement he has ever made.
"Well, obviously because you are my daughter. And literally a prodigy. Because I raised you to be one."
I stare at him.
"Dad."
"What?"
"Only you could ruin a father-daughter moment like this."
He chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest in a way that I can feel through the couch cushions. It is such a familiar vibration. The laugh that used to shake the bleachers when he was coaching from the bench. The laugh that filled the car on drives home from victories and defeats alike, because Rick Holloway believes that humor is the only appropriate response to a universe that takes itself too seriously.
"I am serious though, kid." He squeezes my shoulder again, his grip firm and his expression settling into a sincerity that strips away the joke. "Your happiness shines so brightly when you are on the ice, Sage. I have watched you skate since you were barely tall enough to see over the boards. And every single time you step onto that surface, there is a light in you that I cannot find anywhere else in your life. Not in this house. Not at your mother's dinners. Not in any of the approved social functions or pack introductions or carefully curated experiences that she arranges for you."
His voice drops lower, and the humor is gone. Replaced by the raw, unfiltered love of a father who knows his daughter is in pain and would dismantle the entire world to fix it if she asked.
"I cannot stand by and let you not fulfill a shot at what you dream of. Not when the chance is sitting right here in your hands."
He nods toward the letter still folded in my grip.
We share a look. The kind that does not need words because the history between us contains more vocabulary than any spoken language. Fifteen years of ice time and training schedules and arguments about technique and celebrations after goals and the quiet, steady presence of a man who never once told me that my gender or my designation or my biology made me less than anyone else on the rink.
I swallow hard.
Nod.
Try to express gratitude through the tightness in my chest and manage only a jerky, awkward motion of my head that he seems to understand perfectly.
"Now." He claps my shoulder once and pushes himself off the couch with a groan that belongs to a man whose knees have absorbed thirty years of ice-level coaching. "Go get ready. Your mother wants us to entertain some random family at a fancy restaurant tonight. Something about networking with the Beaumonts or the Castellanos or whichever dynasty she has decided holds the key to our social relevance this quarter."
I groan with more dramatic force than the situation requires.
"Are you serious?"
