I tell myself it’s noise.
I tell myself it’s nothing.
I don’t tell Rafe.
Not because I’m hiding it maliciously, but because I can’t handle another big talk. I can’t handle Rafe reacting to uncertainty when we already feel like we’re balancing on a wire. I can’t give him one more reason to look at me like I’m slipping away.
So I keep it to myself and call it protection. I’ll tell him when it’s real.
After another win, after another round of “good job” from people who don’t know what it costs me to be steady, I sit on my hotel bed and stare at my phone. My thumb hovers over the mic icon.
I don’t want to say something polished. I don’t want to say something safe. I want to say something true.
I press Record.
“I miss you,” I say quietly.
Three words. Bare and unarmored. I send it before I can talk myself out of it. Hours pass, and I fall asleep with the phone on my chest like a stupid teenager. When I wake up, there’s a voice note waiting. I press Play, my heart in my throat.
Rafe’s voice fills the room, low and tired. “I miss you too,” he says.
There’s a pause, like he’s considering adding more. He doesn’t. The message ends.
And the longing in his voice isn’t soft. It’s weary, like missing me has started to feel like debt.
I’m sittingon the edge of the hotel bed in sweats, phone in my hand, ice pressed to my knee because it’s angry again. The TV is on without volume. Some late-night show flickers across the screen, laughter I can’t hear.
My phone buzzes. It’s Eric.
I stare at his name, breathing turning shallow before I even answer. Like my body knows what I’m about to hear before my brain is willing to accept it. I pick up. “Hey.”
His voice is too steady. Too calm. “You got a minute?”
My stomach twists. “Yeah.”
“Okay.” A pause. The sound of paper shifting. “I’m going to loop in the team. They’re on.”
A second later, another voice joins—our GM. Then someone from player relations. Then someone whose title I don’t catch because the blood rush in my ears makes everything sound far away.
“Oliver,” the GM says. “Appreciate you taking the call.”
I swallow. My mouth is dry. “Sure.”
There’s another tiny pause, like they’re lining up words in the correct order. “We’re going to make a move,” he says.
The phrasing is clinical. Like we’re discussing inventory.
I grip the edge of the mattress. “Okay.”
“We’ve been approached,” he continues, “and we’ve agreed to terms. You’re being traded.”
It’s almost anticlimactic in the way he says it. No buildup. No sympathy. Just a statement, like telling me the bus is leaving at eight.
For a second, I don’t understand English. Then my stomach drops through the floor, and I feel cold all the way to my fingertips. “To… where?” I ask, voice rough.
The GM says it like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t contain a whole future. “Minnesota Eagles.”
The words sit in the air like a block of ice.
