Page 257 of Wild Card 13

“He says he’ll wait,” I said. “And he is. He says he won’t push, and he doesn’t. He says he won’t make me decide before I’m ready, and then he just...” I looked at the coffee cup. “Doesn’t.”

Freya came farther into the room and sat in the chair across from my desk. She did not make the moment dramatic. She simply sat, one ankle crossed over the other, coat in her lap, attention steady. “Healing takes time,” she said.

“I know.”

“And work.”

I looked at her.

She held my gaze. “Not his work instead of yours. Not your work instead of his. Both.”

My entire body flushed.

“I am not saying forgive him,” Freya added. “That is yours. I am not saying trust him because he brought coffee. Coffee is not a sacrament, despite what Naomi may claim.”

A laugh slipped out of me, quiet and reluctant.

Freya smiled. “I’m saying if something is healing, eventuallyyou have to participate in the healing too. Even if participating is just admitting you like the damn coffee.”

“I do like the coffee.”

“That was brave. Alert the press.”

“Freya.”

Her smile softened again. “You are allowed to take your time, Lucy. You are also allowed to notice that time is passing.”

That stayed in the room after she left. It stayed while I answered emails. It stayed while I adjusted player availability notes and sent Sarah the latest travel changes. It stayed when Dottie woke from her nap and wandered to the door fifteen minutes before the coffee delivery arrived, then sat down as if she had a meeting.

“You are getting smug,” I told her.

She looked at me over one shoulder. Dottie was not choosing Ty over me. She was simply trusting the shape of something because no one had taught her to be afraid of it.

The team got stuck coming backfrom Denver two nights later.

A mechanical delay first. Then weather. Then a crew timing issue that made three different staff members use the phrase rolling disruption, which sounded polite for a day coming apart one travel update at a time.

By eight the next morning, the Frosthawks were still not in Northbend.

I was at the arena anyway because schedules did not care whether players were trapped in airport chairs several states away. The building had that hollow, post-road-trip feeling. Too quiet in places that were usually loud. Too much coffee in the wrong rooms. Staff moving through corridors with phones pressed to their ears, trying to rearrange the day around a team that had not landed yet.

I did not expect anything.

That was the reasonable thing.

Ty was not in town. The team was delayed. He had more important things to think about than my morning routine.

At nine twelve, there was a knock at my door. Naomi’s deliverydriver stood in the hallway with rain on his jacket and a Paper Lantern bag in one hand. “Lucy Thomas?”

“That’s me.”

He handed it over. “From Paper Lantern.”

Dottie stood so quickly her new bed slid two inches across the floor.

I took the bag. It was warm at the bottom, the paper faintly damp from the weather. Inside was my coffee. Dottie’s pup cup. A napkin wrapped around a small folded note.

The note was written in Naomi’s handwriting.