Page 60 of The Grumpy Defenseman
Not hesitating.
Organizing.
There was a difference.
Okay, Sam. Let’s review the plan. Step one: walk inside. Step two: find him. Step three: say the thing you’ve been not saying for six weeks.
Step four: don’t throw up.
Step five: there is no step five. After step three, the universe takes over, and you either get what you want or you get a really good story for Bella. Either way, you are not sitting in this parking lot anymore.
I got out of the car. Walked to the side entrance. Used the badge Sandra had given me on day one: the badge that said I belonged in this building, whether the man inside it was ready for me or not.
The hallway was dim. After-hours lighting, the facility was running on its overnight settings, everything turned down to a hum. My footsteps echoed on the polished floor. Somewheredeeper in the building, an industrial washer thumped through a load of practice jerseys, and the air carried the layered smell of rubber mats and the training staff’s medicinal clean.
I walked past the media room, past the coaching offices, past Silas’s door, closed and dark, and turned toward the weight room.
The security guard’s sign-in log sat on the front desk on my way past. My name was already on it, timestamped at 4:47, because policy required every after-hours swipe to be recorded.
Permanent.
Retrievable.
At the corner of the front-office wing, the ceiling camera still had its status light on. The building was actively monitored, because the building was always actively monitored.
I noted both things. Thought about Silas saying we would be having a different conversation, with more people than just him.
I kept walking.
If this cost me the job, it cost me the job.
I was past the point where the job was the thing that mattered most.
The weight-room door was cracked open. The sound of plates came through: the soft clink of metal meeting metal, the controlled exhale of effort.
He was in there.
Of course he was.
The man’s coping mechanisms had two settings: skate until he could not think or lift until he could not feel. Either way, the prescription was the same: exhaust the body until the mind went quiet.
I pushed the door open.
He was at the squat rack. Shirt dark with sweat, forearms tensed around the bar, mouth set with the concentration of a man trying to bury something heavy under something heavier. The weight room was otherwise empty: just him and the iron, the low hum of the HVAC, andthe kind of silence that felt less like absence and more like pressure.
He did not see me at first. He was mid-rep, deep in the movement, his body locked into the rhythm athletes used the way other people used therapy.
Up. Down. Reset.
The world shrinking to the width of a barbell and the distance between the floor and standing.
He racked the bar. Exhaled. Reached for the towel hanging beside him.
Then he looked up.
And froze.
Not the defensive freeze I had seen a dozen times. Not the walls going up, the face rearranging into something controlled and safe. This was different. This was a man caught between one version of himself and another, and both of them were looking at me.
