“I’m tired of signing leases.”The words come fast now, spilling out before I can choke them back.“I’m tired of learning new routes to the rink.I’m tired of new kitchens and new beds and new neighbors I never talk to.”
My voice stumbles at the end, and I hate that it does.I hate how easily my body gives me away, like there’s still a kid in there who thinks if he’s quiet enough, maybe nobody will leave.
I drag in a breath that doesn’t feel deep enough.“I’m tired of pretending this doesn’t hurt.”
“Your pay is going up.”There’s a pause.Conrad starts choosing his words with care, like he’s stepping around broken glass.“Significantly.”
I close my eyes.
There it is—the carrot, the silver lining, the thing he thinks can make this easier.As if money is a bandage big enough to cover this.
Money has never fixed what’s wrong with me.
It never brought anyone back.
“I don’t fucking care.”
“You should,” he says, firmer now, because he’s trained to believe dollars can solve most problems.“This changes your future.”
My laugh comes out thin and ugly.“What future?I don’t even know where I’m going to live in six months.”
“You’re going to Portland,” he says quickly, like Portland is a gift.“You’ll be close to the training facility.You’ll have stability.”
I bark out a laugh.“You can’t promise stability.”
“Next year it won’t be like this?—”
“You don’t know that,” I cut in.“Next year it’s someone else deciding they need me.They don’t need me.They just don’t know what the fuck to do with me.”
The sentence hits something deep and my stomach turns, because I’m not only talking about hockey.I’m talking about my whole damn life.
I almost choke on it.
Because I’ve been hearing versions of that line since I was six.
I was safe once.I remember it in flashes that feel too bright to look at for long—my parents in the front seats, my mother turning around to smile at me in the backseat like the world couldn’t reach us if we stayed inside that car.My father’s hand on the wheel.
Then the accident.The hospital.
Months where the ceiling became my sky.
Then, foster homes.Temporary bedrooms.New rules.New faces.Adults who smiled like they cared and then disappeared.
It took more than a year for the state to find Uncle Ernie.
He showed up, and he didn’t recoil from my silence or my anger.He packed what little I had left and moved me across the country like he was pulling me out of a burning house.He did his best.He was good.He was kind.He gave me structure and told me I was safe.
He couldn’t give me my parents back.He couldn’t give me that feeling that things stayed.All he could do was teach me survival.
He gave me hockey, thinking it would heal me.I poured everything into it because my dad loved hockey.Then, because the puck did what physics said it would do.Because effort mattered.Because I could control something in a world that had taken control away from me.
And now?—
Now, hockey is my identity.
Unfortunately, men in suits decide where I exist.
“Why bother,” I say, voice quieter, “when I don’t do stability?”
