Page 76 of The Grumpy Defenseman
“One day. Twenty-four hours. Then I’ll have an answer.”
Silas studied me. Behind his neutral expression, calculations were running: estimating the probability of losing the deal, weighing the cost of patience against the risk of pressure.
Walshfinally spoke.
“We’ll give you the day. But Friday is not a negotiation.”
His voice was lower than I expected, the way authority was often lower than you expected. The people who did not have to raise their voices rarely did.
I nodded. Stood. Walked out before anyone could add conditions or context or the kind of motivational language agents used when they sensed a client was about to make a decision they had not budgeted for.
The twenty-four hours passed.
Not in a dramatic, clock-ticking, cinematic way. In the ordinary way, time passes when you are paralyzed: slowly and without the courtesy of a soundtrack.
I drove home. I sat in my condo. I almost called Sam four times and did not. I almost called Lena twice and did not. I almost called Mark to say yes, but I could not make my mouth form the word.
At 4:47 p.m. on Friday, my phone rang.
Mark.
“It’s done,” he said. His voice had the flat quality of a man delivering news he had hoped he would not have to. “Seattle signed Karlsson an hour ago. They had you both on the same shortlist. Once they committed to him, the cap room was gone. The window’s closed.”
The words registered in my body before my brain processed them.
A release of pressure I had not known I was holding.
And beneath that, steady and undeniable, something that was not relief and was not regret.
Recognition.
I had let it go. Not by choosing. By standing at the fork and refusing to move until the path chose for me.
Eighty-nine-point-six million dollars. Gone because a man who had spent his entire life being decisive had, for the first time, failed to decide.
“Evan,” Mark said. “Talk to me.”
“I’llcall you back.”
I hung up. Got in my truck. Put both hands on the wheel and sat in the parking lot of my condo complex while the San Antonio sky did something with the light that I had never noticed before: a slow gold that touched everything it reached and made it look like something worth keeping.
Then I drove to my sister’s house, because Lena was the only person alive who could look at the wreckage of a decision and tell me what it actually meant.
Lena opened the door with Ranger pressed against her leg and a dish towel over one shoulder.
She looked at my face and stepped back without asking a single question.
That was my sister’s gift. She knew when a man needed words and when he needed to be allowed through the door first.
Ranger was at my feet before I made it fully inside. Not his usual full-body greeting, but a quieter version. Head tilted. Focused. The stillness of a dog who couldread a room before the room knew it needed reading.
When I crouched, ribs still tender from the game, he pressed himself against my legs and stayed there, heavy and completely silent.
Dogs did not need you to explain. That was their gift. They just felt the weather change and adjusted.
“Seattle signed someone else,” I said.
Lena’s expression did not change much. “And?”
