Page 118 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“More than I will admit to her face.”
This time I did laugh.
A real one.
It still surprised me sometimes, the sound of it.
Sam heard it and smiled like she had been handed something private.
Maybe she had.
She leaned her head against my shoulder, and I rested my cheek against her hair.
The city stayed where it was. Not waiting. Not demanding. Just there. A place I had chosen and could keep choosing.
For a long time, neither of us moved.
The decision did not stop being risky.
It only stopped feeling like something I had to survive alone.
That was enough for tonight.
Samantha
The next morning, the rink smelled the same.
The players skated the same warm-up laps, chirped the same insults, and Brick still waved at me like he was signaling aircraft.
Colt was already at the far end, tape still on one wrist, taking his warm-up touches like prayer. Ryan stood near center ice with the calm posture of a man who could settle a room without raising his voice. Finn cut through a turn hard enough to spray Cross,which set off an argument loud enough to qualify as team culture. Mack glided through his first turns with the ease of a man who had been doing this longer than some of the younger guys had been shaving. Jake Morrison and Tommy Kowalski were talking near the bench, both grinning in the dangerous way men grin before doing something inadvisable.
But the air was different.
Not in a way I could photograph or explain to someone who had not been standing inside the last seven weeks of my life. Just different. Lighter. Like the building had decided to stop holding its breath.
Or maybe that was me.
I set up my equipment along the boards, checked my settings, lifted my camera, and for the first time since I had arrived in San Antonio, the viewfinder did not feel like a barrier.
It felt like what it was supposed to feel like.
A way of seeing.
Not a wall between me and the world I was documenting.
Look at you, Sam. Emotionally available and professionally competent at the same time. Alert the press. Notify Bella immediately so she can take credit.
Brick materialized beside me within four minutes of my arrival, which was approximately three minutes longer than usual and suggested he had been exercising restraint.
He leaned against the boards, arms crossed, his expression arranged into something that was trying hard to be casual and failing.
“You and McKinney,” he said.
Not a question. A statement of fact from a man who had been watching the whole thing unfold for weeks and had been waiting for exactly this moment to acknowledge it.
“Me and McKinney,” I confirmed.
“Ishe good to you?”
