Page 70 of Her Player

I studied him for a second. “How’d she take it?”

“She signed it.” He said it simply, like that was the whole answer. Maybe it was. “Four pages of documentation. Conflict of interest assessment. Recusal clause. Timeline of the relationship.” He paused. “I wrote it myself.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

He looked at me steadily. “Because you need to know what kind of man is in your corner. And because whatever is happening between you and Victoria is going to need the same paper trail eventually.” He picked up his mug. “Get ahead of it, Stone. Don’t make her fight that battle without ammunition.”

I sat with that for a minute.

It was the most words Coach had ever said to me that had nothing to do with hockey. And every single one of them landed exactly where he meant them to.

I’d been ignoring it. The cost of her. The paperwork I should have already started. The league rules I knew the shape of without ever letting myself read the actual language. I’d been spending three years not letting myself look at any of it, because looking at it meant admitting it was real, and admitting it was real meant making decisions I wasn’t yet allowed to make.

I’d just spent the last twenty-four hours holding Victoria together while she fell apart on the anniversary of her husband’s death.

The version of me that didn’t get to make decisions was over.

“Monday,” I said.

Coach raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll have the agent on the phone Monday morning. Pull whatever PHL governance docs apply. File the recusal documentation with the committee before practice ends. Same week as yours so it doesn’t look like I’m hiding behind your paperwork.”

“You don’t need an agent for that,” Coach said. “I’ll walk you through it myself.”

“I appreciate that. But this one’s mine to do.”

He studied me for a second. Then he nodded. “Monday.”

“Monday.”

He picked up his mug and drained the rest of his coffee.

I left them to it.

Victoria was still asleep when I got back to the room. I slid in beside her and she shifted toward me without waking, her hand finding my arm the way it always did now, loose and automatic, like her body had already made a decision her brain was still catching up to.

I stared at the ceiling and let her sleep.

Outside the willow trees moved in the wind. The storm from yesterday had cleared out and left everything washed clean and the light coming through the curtains was the particular pale gold of a morning that had no demands on it yet.

I thought about the franchise. The foundation. The quiet deliberate life she’d built inside her grief for fourteen years. I thought about Brynn saying she doesn’t do that with anyone and I thought about Victoria’s hand loose around my arm and I thought about the fact that I had plenty of time to learn the rest of it.

Every single piece of her, broken and whole and everything in between.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

25

VICTORIA

Everything moved in snippets.

Sometimes I felt something cool pouring down the back of my throat. Other times something warm and salty prodded against my lips. The taste of carrot. Something warm descending over my shoulders. Light, and then no light. Wind, and then no wind. Rain, and then no rain.

Everything moved in still life images. Like a picture book from hell.

It always stormed on the date of my late husband’s death. I remembered thinking that specifically, at some point during the blur of it. What an appropriate day.