My fists clench in my lap, the tendons in my forearms jumping visibly against skin that is still flushed from two hours of exertion. The blisters on my right hand scream in protest, the raw skin pulling tight over swollen tissue. My nails dig crescents into my palms, adding fresh marks to the collection of old ones.
Outside the window, the arena recedes as Jeffrey pulls the Escalade out of the parking lot with the smooth deference of aman who has perfected the art of driving as if the passengers in his backseat are not engaged in quiet emotional warfare.
My mother has already returned to her tablet. Her attention has moved on, the conversation filed away with the same brisk finality she applies to board meetings and personnel evaluations.
Done. Resolved.
Next item on the agenda.
But I am not done.
I am never done.
This is my life.
Constant rejection. Doors that open for everyone except the girl who trained harder, skated faster, and wanted it more desperately than any Alpha in the building. A mother who views my passion as a pathology and my ambition as a character flaw. A world that acknowledges my talent in the same breath it uses to tell me that talent is irrelevant when the body housing it is wrong.
The city scrolls past the tinted windows in a blur of streetlights and shadowed buildings. I press my forehead against the cold glass, letting the vibration of the road travel through my skull, and close my eyes.
But I am still here.
Still fighting.
Still lacing up my skates at four in the morning when the world is still dark, and the ice belongs only to me.
Continuing running drills until my body fails and then running them again because failure is just the space between attempts. Always showing up to tryouts where the scouts will not look at me, and the players will laugh about me and the coaches will tell memaybe next year,with the tired compassion of men who knownext yearwill look exactly like this year.
I am the Omega who will not stop.
The girl they cannot figure out how to get rid of because she keeps coming back, keeps getting better, keeps outperforming every Alpha they put in front of her, and then standing at center ice demanding that someone, anyone, have the courage to put her name on a fucking roster.
The thought is fierce. Burning.
A coal lodged in my chest that refuses to cool, no matter how many buckets of rejection they pour over it.
And I am terrified.
Not of the rejection. I have survived that. Survived it so many times that the sting has dulled into a permanent ache that I carry the way other people carry their phone or their wallet. Always present. Always accounted for.
I am terrified because I do not know how many more tryouts I have in me. How many more empty arenas can I stand in while my best performance goes unrecorded? How many more drives home with my mother's disappointment filling the car like perfume designed to suffocate.
I am terrified because I can feel the doubt creeping in.
Slow. Quiet. Persistent.
The voice that sounds like my mother's but lives in my own head. The one that whispersshe is right, you know.The one that suggests, gently at first and then with increasing volume, that maybe the world is not broken.Maybe I am... that the dream is not being denied because of prejudice but because it was never meant for someone like me in the first place.
No.
I shove the thought away with a violence that makes my whole body jerk.
My mother glances up from her tablet, one sculpted eyebrow arching in silent inquiry.
"Muscle cramp," I mutter.
She returns to her screen.
No.
