Rowan: I think you've forgotten that your Dad talks smack and fast. He already told our old man everything. Full scholarship. Hockey program. The works.
I groan into the empty room, the sound bouncing off bare walls and returning to me with the echo of my own frustration.
My father. The man whose mouth operates on a broadcast frequency that reaches every person he has ever exchanged a handshake with, transmitting information about his son's life with the velocity and indiscretion of a sports commentator who has been told that confidentiality is a suggestion rather than a policy. Rick Holloway is not the only coach in his orbit. The Archers' father exists somewhere in the sprawling network of retired and active hockey professionals who communicate through a combination of phone calls, charity events, and what I can only assume is a secret messaging group where they share scouting gossip and embarrassing stories about their children.
I love my Dad.
Buried beneath the layers of exasperation and the eye rolls and the constant, low-grade mortification of being Rick Rosedale's son in a hockey community where Rick Rosedale's opinions travel at the speed of sound and arrive with the subtlety of a freight train. I love that he submitted my scholarship application without asking because he believed in a version of me that I was too afraid to present to the world myself. I love that he enrolled me in kickboxing because he noticed the cracks before I did. I love that he walked into a stranger's house today and stood in a doorway while his son confronted an Alpha twice his age and did not intervene, because he trusted me enough to handle it even though his coaching instincts were probably screaming at him to blow a whistle and call a timeout.
He is proud of me.
Will never say it in the direct, declarative way that other fathers manage. Will instead communicate it through actions:the scholarship application filed without discussion, the phone calls to old colleagues that "just happen" to mention my academic record and athletic potential, the specific volume at which he describes my achievements to anyone within earshot as if he is narrating a highlight reel for a sold-out arena.
He talks about me like I'm going to cure cancer on an ice rink.
And I pretend it annoys me because admitting that it makes me feel seen would require acknowledging that I have spent most of my life feeling invisible, and that admission costs more than I am willing to pay at eleven forty-seven on a Tuesday night.
I type a response.
Archie: I'll bug you both about it tomorrow. about to sleep.
Ronan: at 11pm?? on a tuesday??? gramps behaviour
Rowan: better count sheep and not pull a sleeping beauty. you can't miss practices like usual, Arch. especially if this program is legit
Ronan: ^^^ fr though. scouts dont give second chances to guys who oversleep through morning skate
Archie: whatever
I toss the phone to the far side of the mattress, where it lands face-down on the sheets with a muffled thud. The screen dims, then darkens, returning the room to the blue-gray monochrome of ambient moonlight filtering through the cracked window.
I remove the broken glasses and set them on the nightstand with a care that feels disproportionate to the damage they have sustained. The cracked lens. The bent earpiece. Artifacts from an encounter that should have been forgettable and has instead embedded itself into my brain with the tenacity of a splinter too deep to extract.
Contacts might be the answer.
The thought surfaces with the practical tone of a man evaluating equipment upgrades. Glasses are a liability. On the ice, they require sports goggles that fog in the first period and restrict peripheral vision. Off the ice, they constitute fifty percent of the mask I have been wearing since middle school. The wire frames, the scholarly silhouette, the visual shorthand for harmless that I have cultivated into a persona so convincing that even my own packmates, if I had any, would struggle to distinguish the costume from the person wearing it.
But she saw past them.
Sage looked at me with the glasses on and saw what was underneath. And then she looked at me with the glasses off and said I looked like a model.
A "damn attractive fucking model," if I'm quoting precisely.
Nobody has ever described me that way. Nobody has ever looked at my face and found what they saw on the other side of the frames worth commenting on, let alone worth blushing over.
I stare at the ceiling crack. Follow its diagonal path from the light fixture to the corner, the familiar trajectory providing the illusion of direction for thoughts that are circling rather than progressing.
Her scent.
The admission arrives with the resigned acceptance of a man who has tried to lock a door and discovered it has no bolt.
Her beauty.
Not conventional. Not the polished, calibrated attractiveness that populates magazine covers and social media profiles and the curated image portfolios that Omegas in elite social circles maintain like investment accounts. Her beauty is feral. Earned. The product of years spent in cold rinks and hot gyms, her body sculpted by function rather than aesthetics, every muscle a tool designed for a purpose more important than being admired.
The weird, intoxicating mix of masculinity and femininity in her demeanor.
The way she carries herself like an Alpha but scents like an Omega. The scarred knuckles paired with the cherry blossom undertone. The profanity delivered in a voice that goes breathy when she is caught off guard. The clover-print panties beneath the oversized t-shirt, a collision of toughness and tenderness so specific to her that I cannot imagine it existing in any other person on the planet.
