If my father decided the relationship was too much of a complication and benched Tolrek or traded him, I’d be watching footage of what I’d helped him find before I’d helped him lose it again.
I closed the laptop.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor, players arriving early, their voices carrying through the walls.
Mark appeared in the doorway, a coffee mug in one hand and his tablet in the other. He looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
Then he nodded once and kept walking.
His nod said it all. He wasn’t going to pile on. He was wishing us good luck.
When it was time for practice, I left my office and walked to the press box, taking a seat. Below, the team took the ice for warm-ups. The sound of skates on fresh ice carried up through the glass, familiar enough that it usually settled me.
Today it made everything worse.
My father stood behind the bench, his arms folded across his chest, watching the players cycle through drills. This was the stance he took when he was operating on three hours of sleep and too much coffee, trying to hold everything together through sheer will.
Practice started, and I logged sequences on autopilot, my attention split between the footage I was supposed to be capturing and the body language of every person on the ice.
Tolrek took his position with the first defensive unit.
My father’s voice came through the headset, calling out adjustments as the drill began. “Nosh, tighten that gap. You’re giving the forward too much space.” His tone sounded clipped, professional to the point of being cold.
Tolrek adjusted, his shoulders pulling back in a way that told me he’d heard the difference too.
The drill continued.
My father didn’t look at Tolrek once after that, not even when he made a perfect positioning read that cut off a developing play. Not when he called out an adjustment to Mikael that improvedthe whole unit’s structure. Not even when he stripped the puck from Crim in a sequence that should’ve earned praise.
The team noticed. Crim glanced between my father and Tolrek multiple times during the water break, his expression thoughtful. Brashe skated close to Tolrek, and the two of them talked, but I couldn’t hear what they said from the press box.
Whatever it was, it helped Tolrek for about thirty seconds.
Then my father called the next drill, and Tolrek’s body language changed again. He was closing off, protecting himself. It showed in how he positioned himself on the ice.
I watched him guard his left side on the next sequence.
The hesitation was back.
My fingers rested on the keyboard, ready to tag the sequence for review, but I held myself back. The footage would sit in my archives as evidence of what I’d helped him build before I’d helped tear it down.
Mikael missed an easy pass and swore loud enough that it carried up to me. He usually cracked a joke after mistakes like that. Today he skated back into position without saying a word.
Several players glanced up at me. Then back down at Tolrek. Then over to my father.
They were piecing it together.
The tension was thick enough to choke on, and we were only twenty minutes into practice.
Eventually, it ended. I packed up my gear, watching the team file off the ice below. Most of them headed straight for the locker room. A few lingered, talking in clusters that broke apart when my father walked past.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
A message lit up the screen.My office. Both of you. 15 minutes. -Dad
Not Jim.
Dad.
