The folder is in Franklin’s office. The evaluation is in ten days. The words emotional fitness protocol are sitting in the middle of my brain like a splinter I can’t locate well enough to remove.
I spent years hiding. I spent two months learning to stop. I walked into practices and salons and empty rinks and let people see the parts of me I’d spent twenty-seven years armoring over. I sat in a photo booth and made faces for the entertainment of my entire town.
And now there’s a file with my name on it and a video of my worst moment and a league office that has decided that vulnerability is a liability.
I stop at center ice.
The rink is still empty. Still silent.
I am so tired of being afraid.
The guys arrive at one-fifty. I run them hard.
Not the brutal, punishing hard of two months ago—the kind that came from my own panic bleeding into everything around me. This is different. Focused. We are four wins from a playoff spot and every drill matters, and I know exactly what each of these men needs to do in each situation we might face, and I intend to make sure they know it, too.
They respond. That’s the thing that’s been different since the timeout game, since the Emotion Night win, since whatever shifted in the room when I stopped coaching out of fear. They push back when I push. They trust the plays. They stop when I stop and go when I go and somewhere in the second hour of practice, the power play sequence we’ve been building toward for six weeks runs clean three times in a row without a single correction from me.
I blow the whistle.
“Good,” I say. “That’s it. Go home.”
Shep looks at the clock. “We’ve got twenty minutes.”
“I know.” I skate toward the bench. “You earned it. Go home.”
He watches me with the expression he gets when he’s filing something away for later. I don’t give him anything to file. I just collect my gear and head to the locker room before anyone can ask me what’s going on.
Boone finds me anyway.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Just laces up his street shoes beside me, moving at the unhurried pace of a man who has nowhere to be and knows I’m going to talk when I’m ready or I’m not going to talk at all.
I’m not going to talk.
“Good practice,” he says finally.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
He ties the second shoe. Stands up. “I’m at Power Play tonight if you want to come by.”
“I’ve got tape to review.”
“Sure.” He picks up his bag. Pauses at the door. “You know where to find me.”
He leaves.
I sit in the empty locker room for a while after that, listening to the building settle into its after-practice quiet. The showers running down the hall. Someone’s music from three lockers over, faint and tinny. The specific smell of cold air and effort that has been the backdrop of my entire adult life.
My phone is in my hand.
Gisele’s name is on the screen.
I’ve been opening our text thread and closing it for three hours. She sent something this afternoon—a photo of a color sample she’s trying for a client, asking my opinion as a joke because I have no opinions about color, it’s become a thing between us. The kind of small, stupid, daily thing that accumulates into intimacy without either person noticing until it’s just how you operate.
I close the thread.
