When we stopped for lunch, I stayed on the bus. Brashe raised an eyebrow at me on his way out, but his gaze cut to Tolrek, and he kept going.
Forty minutes of quiet. Just road noise and the hum of the engine and the knowledge that he’d stayed too. I could hear him behind me, both of us alone in a vehicle with empty seats and only inches of padding between us.
At some point, my pen rolled off the edge of my seat. His hand appeared over my shoulder, setting it back without a word.
I didn’t turn.
“Thank you,” I said.
He didn’t reply, but the heat at my back remained all the way to the hotel we’d stay at tonight, after the game. When we pulled into the hotel parking lot, I had twenty seconds to pack up my laptop before the aisle filled with bodies.
Tolrek stood, and the warmth disappeared. I told myself the loss of it didn’t register as a specific absence.
I was lying to myself, but I did that a lot lately.
Away arenas always felt like walking into someone else’s house. Familiar enough that you knew what you were looking at, but wrong in how that added up.
The Silver Slayers’ building was older than ours. I did my walkthrough, identifying the layout so I wouldn’t waste time later trying to find the bathroom or the route back to the team area.
I located the press level access on the northeast corner and claimed a seat. The sight lines were good. Better than good, actually. I could see the full ice without obstruction, and the angle gave me clean reads on both zones.
I set up my workspace, connecting my tablet to the team network. Tugging my headset from my bag, I synced it for communication with the assistant coaches. Then I made sure my software ran as it should.
My father found me ten minutes before warm-ups.
“All set?” he asked, dropping into the seat beside me.
“Yup.”
He scanned my setup and nodded. “Good. Their power play is going to test us. If you see anything new, flag it immediately.”
“I will.”
“You always do.” He smiled, the warmth in it landing in the place that remembered being seven and following him to practices because he was the only parent I had left.
“Talk to you later, then.” He left, moving back down to ice level and the away team’s bench. I could tell he was already lost in coach mode, because he wore his game face, the version of him that belonged to the team.
I turned back to my screen.
Warm-ups started a short time later, both teams skating through their routines. I was supposed to be watching the Silver Slayers. Logging their entries, tracking which forwards pairedwith which defensemen, and noting anything that deviated from what I’d seen on tape.
My gaze fell on Tolrek instead. He skated through the warm-up with the same control he brought to practice. It would look boring to anyone who didn’t understand what they were watching.
I turned my attention to the Silver Slayers. Their power play unit was on the ice, running through entries. I logged three different looks, tagged the sequences, and pushed a note through the tablet to the assistant coach managing things like this. Doing my job.
The woman who’d stood in a stairwell yesterday and kissed Tolrek until she forgot where she was didn’t exist right now.
Play started not long later, and our first period was clean.
I stayed locked in, tagging things in real time, flagging patterns that mattered. Their power play deployed exactly the way I’d predicted. The tell was there. Our penalty kill read it and made some great moves, shutting them out.
I pushed the confirmation through the tablet and got an acknowledgment from the bench.
Between periods, I ran my log cleanup, reviewing tags to make sure nothing had been mislabeled. Then I prepared notes for second period adjustments.
My father would be in the locker room now, addressing the team. He’d use the information I’d given him to make changes that would keep us competitive. This was us at our best.
I didn’t let myself think about the other version, the one where he didn’t know his daughter had been kissing a player on his roster.
