Page 22 of Wild Card 13

The room went dead silent.

I felt the hit of that sentence straight through my ribs.

Not because she said it sharply. Because she said it like the nickname physically offended her now. Like it belonged to somebody she no longer allowed to exist.

Lucy sat straighter in her chair, expression perfectly composed again despite the pulse I caught jumping once in her throat. “Moving forward,” Lucy continued evenly, “attendance at all mandatory player obligations will require will require direct confirmation through operations staff. Failure to attend will result in escalating disciplinary action.”

I signed the paperwork without reading half of it. Not because I didn’t care. Because suddenly none of it mattered.

Sarah kept talking for another few minutes after that. Something about organizational accountability. Communication expectations. Sponsor coordination moving forward.

I heard maybe every fourth word.

The entire room had narrowed down to Lucy sitting across from me pretending her hands weren’t gripping that pen too tightly.

Pretending she didn’t know exactly how I took my coffee. Pretending she’d never kissed me in the front seat of my truck after a football game while snow came down so hard we could barely see through the windshield. Pretending I was just another guy in another meeting.

By the time Sarah finally dismissed me, something inside my chest felt scraped raw.

I pushed back from the table slowly.

Lucy still wouldn’t look directly at me.

That part burned.

Because if she’d yelled at me? Fine.

If she’d looked angry? Even better.

But this? This polished, detached version of her acting like I meant absolutely nothing anymore?

That shit hurt.

I grabbed the folder off the table mostly because leaving it there felt too pathetic.

Sarah offered me one final corporate smile. “Thanks for taking this seriously moving forward.”

“Yeah,” I sighed automatically.

Lucy stayed quiet.

I waited half a second too long before finally turning toward the door.

Some stupid part of me expected her to stop me.

Nothing came.

The door clicked shut behind me. And for the first time in years, I genuinely did not know what the hell to do with myself.

Practice sucked.

Not externally. Externally, I was fine. Good even.

I scored twice during rush drills and nearly took Zee’s head off along the boards after he chirped me during battle work hard enough to deserve it. Cam barked at everybody for sloppy defensive coverage halfway through scrimmage while Marco started a near-fight with Boris over a blown zone entry that absolutely had not been Boris’s fault.

Nobody looked at me twice. That was the thing about hockey locker rooms. You could be psychologically unraveling in real time and nobody noticed unless you started throwing punches during practice or shaved your head at two in the morning after a road loss.

As long as you kept skating, you were functional. As long as you kept producing, nobody asked questions.