For once, the dream doesn’t hurt.
It solidifies my choice.
20
SAUCER PASS: A PASS LIFTED SLIGHTLY OFF THE ICE TO CLEAR STICKS
Dr. Halvorsen never rushes. Never fills the silence. He lets it stretch until whatever I’m avoiding starts to itch.
“Let’s talk about the moment you left Amy,” he says calmly. “Not what happened. Why.”
I exhale through my nose. “I’ve answered this before.”
“You’ve explained it,” he corrects. “You haven’t examined it.”
That lands. I lean back in the chair, eyes drifting to the window. “Hockey made sense,” I say finally.
“How so?”
“It had clear rules. Clear expectations. If I dominated the ice, I was accepted.”
“What if you didn’t perform?”
I shrug. “Then you lost ice time. You trained harder. You fixed it.”
He nods. “So acceptance was conditional.”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “But predictable.”
The word hangs there.
“With Amy,” I continue slowly, “there wasn’t a scoreboard. There wasn’t a coach telling me what to do next. She expected trust. Communication. Emotional follow-through.”
“How did that feel?”
“Risky,” I admit. “Terrifying in some ways.”
He leans forward slightly. “Talk with me about why you prioritized hockey.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Didn’t you?” He lets that resonate for a moment. “What was it about hockey that earned that devotion?”
I let out a humorless breath. “You’re taught your team is everything. Loyalty above all else. You sacrifice for the group. You don’t make waves. You protect your teammates.”
“What about Amy?”
I close my eyes. “Amy wasn’t part of the system. She wasn’t protected by it. When everything happened—when the photo surfaced—she became a liability in a world where I was rewarded for cutting weight.”
The words taste bitter.
“So when you believed she’d done something wrong?—”
“I reacted the way I was trained to,” I cut in. “Eliminate the threat. Preserve the team. Preserve the future.”
The therapist doesn’t flinch. “You didn’t ask questions.”
“No,” I say quietly. “I didn’t want answers. Answers would’ve complicated things.”
