I took the long route home, the one that added fifteen minutes and passed the storefronts and the restaurant with the brick wall Beau liked to stop and sniff. He was tired by the time we reached the apartment. I was something else I didn’t have a word for.
Inside, Beau went straight to his water and food bowls. I stood in the kitchen and watched him drink. The post-walk routine was familiar enough that I could do it without thinking.Food measured out. Fresh water. The specific toy he liked to carry around for ten minutes after we got home.
I gently took the sketch from my pocket and unfolded it. Looked at it under the kitchen light.
She’d seen Beau the way I did. Not small or ridiculous. Just himself. The lines were confident, drawn the way someone did when they knew exactly what they were looking at.
I set it on the counter instead of throwing it away.
My apartment was sparse. Functional. I’d moved here with what fit in my truck and hadn’t added much since. The walls were blank, without photos or art. I didn’t want anything that required me to commit to the idea that this place could be permanent.
The sketch sat on the counter, and I couldn’t stop looking at it.
I’d need a frame. Something simple. I’d hang it where I’d see it, not keep it hidden away in a drawer or shoved in a box with the rest of the things I hadn’t figured out what to do with.
Beau finished his routine and curled up on the couch, already half asleep.
I stayed in the kitchen. The sketch was six inches by eight. Standard sketchpad size. She’d probably torn out dozens of pages like it and given them away. This wasn’t special to her, just something she’d done while sitting on a bench on a Tuesday evening.
It was wrecking me, though I didn’t examine why. Examining it would mean acknowledging things I wasn’t ready to admit. Like the fact that I’d walked over to her instead of taking the other path. I’d sat on the bench beside her and told her about Renkar when I didn’t talk about Renkar with anyone. I’d folded this drawing and put it in my pocket and brought it home and now I was standing here planning where to hang it.
Coach’s daughter. Off-limits in every way that counted.
I was beginning to understand that off-limits didn’t stop you from wanting something. It just meant you couldn’t have it.
I’d spent my whole career being a body on a spreadsheet, a piece of muscle used to fill a gap on the ice. But when she looked at me, I didn’t feel like a trade acquisition. I felt like a male lonely enough to love a four-pound dog. And somehow, she was the only one who didn’t find that pathetic.
I left the sketch on the counter and went to take a shower.
When I came back, it was still there. I picked it up. Looked at it again. Put it back down.
Thursday. Four o’clock. Tape session. I’d sit in a room with her and watch footage of myself making mistakes, and she’d point them out with the same accuracy she’d used to draw Beau. She’d see things I didn’t want her to see. She’d probably already seen them.
That should bother me more than it did.
Beau snored on the couch. The apartment was quiet but I lived alone. It wasn’t peaceful, just empty.
I stared at it one more time before turning off the kitchen light. I grabbed the sandwich from the fridge I’d picked up on my way home. I’d eat it in the living room and give Beau a few bites even though everyone said dogs shouldn’t have people—orc—food.
Tomorrow I’d find a frame.
Tonight I’d let the drawing sit on the counter where I could see it when I woke up and entered the kitchen again.
CHAPTER FIVE
HALEY
On Thursday morning, a chew toy sat on my desk like an accusation.
It wasn’t much, just a small knotted rope in blue and yellow. The kind of thing you picked up at a pet store without thinking too hard about it. I’d bought it yesterday on my way home, telling myself it was practical. Beau needed toys. Tolrek probably didn’t have time to shop for dog supplies with training camp in full swing.
I’d been telling myself this for sixteen hours.
My office was cold enough that I’d pulled on my hoodie an hour ago. The screens cast their usual blue glow across the desk, across my hands, and across the toy I kept not looking at. Footage rolled on the center monitor. Tolrek, two seasons ago, before the injury. I hadn’t been able to resist pulling it up and studying it.
Then, as a distraction, I rewatched a clip of Kardok the Wicked, a player for the Teal Terrors, who did this interesting thing with his tongue—hisridgedtongue—every time he scored. While I wasn’t interested in him, I had to admit that there was something about that tongue…
He had fallen for Lila, a former pro figure skater, and she was no doubt enjoying his wicked tongue.
