"I heard you."
"Okay. Think about it."
I hung up and sat with that for a moment. The tunnel was emptying. Down the hall, Volkov was yelling about someone's car being in his spot. The locker room smelled like rubber and old sweat.
It was simple backup goalie math. I'd been doing it since I got drafted. You track starts. You track your starter's health. You track the contract calendar, and you know—you always know—that your future in any building is conditional. Kieran Walsh was thirty-two, locked in on a long-term deal, and still one of the best in the league. I was twenty-eight and in the last year of my contract. The math had always been clear.
This wasn't new. Every backup goalie in every room in the league had this running in the background at all times. The call from Marty was the system working as designed.
What I couldn't explain was why the wordSacramentosat in my stomach like I'd swallowed wrong. Sacramento was a good organization. They were rebuilding with money and a plan. A starter role there was real—the kind of opportunity that backup goalies were supposed to want. Men built their entire careers around hoping for this.
I'd wanted it. I'd spent years wanting it.
I didn't want to examine that wanting my own starting position had gotten complicated around the time Jamie Hayes started stocking his kitchen for two without being asked, around the time I started noticing that the mug he always handed me, the blue one with the chipped handle, was always clean and always in the same spot on the shelf.
Like it belonged there.
I put my phone away and finished stripping my gear.
Hayes was at his stall when I came into the room, half out of his pads, talking to Theo about something that had Theo gesturing with both hands. Theo Callahan didn't have a low gear. Whatever the conversation was, it had Jamie leaning back in his stall with his arms crossed and an amused look on his face, the one that said,Go on, I'm listening. This is going to be good.
He caught my eye as I crossed to my stall. His attention always shifted, landed, stayed for a beat, then moved on. He did that with everyone. He tracked the room like I tracked the ice. He did it so naturally that most people mistook it for personality.
Itwaspersonality, but it was also skill. I'd spent enough time watching him to know the difference.
I dressed without rushing. Bishop was telling a story that had Morrison laughing quietly at the edge of the circle. Morrison was quiet a lot these days.
Kieran was three stalls down, re-taping his stick. He glanced up when I sat down, held eye contact for a second, and went back to his tape.
That was a complete conversation between goalies.
When I grabbed my bag to go, I didn't look to see if Hayes was ready. I didn't need to. We'd been walking out together long enough that the timing was instinctive.
"Abbott." He fell into step beside me in the tunnel, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched. I had long since stopped pretending it was accidental, on either side. I couldsmell his body wash over the lingering rink cold. I'd been aware of it for three years without ever once commenting on it. "You want my extra protein bar or are you going to steal it again like some kind of parking lot mugger?"
"I'm going to steal it." I grinned.
"At least you're honest." He unzipped the side pocket of his bag without breaking stride and held the bar out. I took it from him, his fingers warm where they brushed mine.
We walked out into the September sunlight. The parking lot was half-empty, and the facility's glass walls threw a glare across the asphalt. Hayes squinted against it and fished for his sunglasses. His SUV was three spots from my car. It always was. I often wondered if he did that deliberately.
"See you tomorrow?" he asked easily, like he always did. As if the answer was obvious—as if there was no version of tomorrow that I wasn't there.
"Yeah."
He tapped the roof of my car twice as he passed. I didn't know when that became a habit. Some things just became part of a friendship. You didn't think about it.
Most days, I could stop thinking about it.
"Hey." He turned back, one hand on his car door, sunglasses on his face. The light caught behind him and I couldn't read his expression. "Good skate today. You looked sharp."
"Thanks."
"I mean it. That glove sequence in the second drill—Kieran didn't have that read."
He was always doing this—noticing specific things. It wasn't general praise. Someone else might have saidgood practice.Hayes saidthat glove sequence in the second drill.
He did it with everyone on the team. He did it with rookies and veterans and equipment managers and the woman who ran thefacility cafeteria. He made people feel seen because he actually saw them.
