Page 139 of Double Puck

The kitchen explodes the second the words leave his mouth.

"BEYOND THE REPORT?" Declan launches to his feet, chair screeching backward and falling to the floor. "The report was the whole POINT! You made him do weeks of six AM runs and therapy and audits. And now you're telling me the homework didn't COUNT?"

"Declan, the league timeline—"

"Screw the timeline!" Mason is standing now too, and the whole room flinches, because Mason raising his voice is like witnessing the furniture talking. "You don't get it. Our parents are splitting up. Our family is coming apart at the seams. This house, this team… this is what's left! And you want to mail a third of it to the desert because some spreadsheet said so and nobody had the guts to hit pause when the spreadsheet CHANGED HER MIND?"

"Um. I resent being called spreadsheet in that tone," I say, standing as well, "but he's right, Colin. What is the point of hiring me if my professional judgment stops mattering the moment it becomes inconvenient? I did the work. I did it honestly, which cost me more than you will ever know. And I am telling you the trade is a mistake—"

"It's not that simple—"

"IT'S EXACTLY THAT SIMPLE—"

Biscuit starts barking. Coach Pearson stands up and says something about everyone taking a knee, which makes no sense in a kitchen. Pete calmly moves the croissants out of the blast radius. Declan and Colin are shouting over each other about contract law, and Declan clearly knows nothing about contract law but is compensating with volume.

Diego is clutching his cleaning cloth to his chest like a Victorian widow who just discovered the handsome duke has died without updating his will.

And then that goddamn tablet mounted on the kitchen wall lights up and starts ringing.

Diego lunges for it like a man reaching for a fire alarm.

"Oh thank GOD," he breathes, and accepts the call.

Zoey Morrison's face fills the screen. She has flour on her cheek, a Butter Batch apron on, but her eyes already narrowed like she could hear us all the way from Chilmore.

"Why," she says, "does my group chat have fourteen messages, two of which are just Declan typing and deleting, and why can I already hear screaming?"

"ZOEY." Diego angles the tablet at the room like a news correspondent breaking live news. "Please, help. Restore civilization. I'm begging you."

"They're trading him, Zo," Declan says, storming over to the tablet. "It's done. They did it overnight, behind everyone's back—"

"It is NOT done, there's a contract—"

"A CONTRACT, he says—"

"Where's Beck?" Zoey asks.

"—and the report doesn't even COUNT anymore, which, by the way, Darcy just torched her whole career reversing—"

"HEY." Zoey's voice cracks through the kitchen like a wooden spoon on a countertop, and every Morrison in a five-mile radius goes silent on pure childhood instinct. Even Biscuit sits. "All of you. Zip it."

The kitchen zips it.

Zoey's eyes find me through the screen. Eight hundred miles away, and somehow, this woman is still the most authoritative person in the room.

"Darcy."

"Yes?"

"Where's Beck?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. I thought he'd be here."

Declan looks toward the empty chair, then at Mason. "How the fuck does he keep doing this?"

Mason frowns. "Doing what?"

"Disappearing."