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His office is small and smells like old tape and the coffee he drinks all day without ever seeming to sleep. He closes the door, which he doesn’t always do, and he sits, and he looks at me the way coaches look at you when they’re about to give you the thing you’ve been working for and they want to see if you can handle it.

“The Bruins scout talked to me after the game,” he says. “He liked what he saw. A lot.” A beat. “He wasn’t the only one in the building, for the record. But he’s the one who pulled me aside.”

The Bruins.

I keep my face doing nothing. I’ve been keeping my face doing nothing about this for years, through every game that mattered, every scout I thought might be watching, every shift I played imagining what it would feel like to hear this sentence. Now I’m hearing it and my face is doing nothing and my chest is doing everything.

“Okay,” I say.

“There’s more.” Coach leans back. “An agent reached out to me this week. Dan Reiss, out of Boston. Solid rep, good track record with college guys. He’s interested in representing you.” He slides a card across the desk. “That’s up to you — I’m not pushing anyone. But if the Bruins are going to move on this, you’re going to want representation when they do.”

I pick up the card. Look at it. Set it down. “What does ‘move on this’ mean for the timeline?”

“Draft’s in June. If they’re serious, you’ll hear something through an agent before then — that’s how it works at this level. But here’s the part that matters, Theo.” He folds his hands on the desk. “They’re going to want to know your plans. Specifically, if they draft you, do you sign and come up to Boston? Or do you come back for your senior year?”

And there it is.

The thing I’ve been turning over since the minute Coach said Burlington, upper bowl, blue jacket. The thing I knew was coming before I was ready for it.

“I want to finish,” I say.

I hear how it sounds. A player with a clear shot at the NHL, first-round potential, saying I want to finish school. Some coaches would hear that and worry you’re not hungry enough. Coach isn’t some coaches — he knows what the degree means to me, knows about the double major, knows it’s not a hobby. But this is still the part where the dream and the plan bump into each other, and I have to figure out which one gives.

“Talk me through it,” Coach says. He’s not arguing. He wants to understand.

“I’ve got one year left,” I say. “The degree is my fallback. If my knees go wrong, if I get injured, if the contract doesn’t come — I need something to walk back to. The double major’s not a vanity thing. It’s what I actually want to do when I’m done playing.” I stop. Reframe it, because that’s also not the whole truth. “And I want to finish what I started. I’m not walking away from it a year early.”

Coach nods slowly. “Some teams will pass on that. They don’t want to use a pick on a guy who’s going to make them wait a year.”

“I know.”

“The Bruins might not be one of them.” He taps the desk. “Reiss would know better than me. Some organizations, especially for a defenseman at your level, they’re willing to hold rights and wait. You’d come back for senior year, they’d have your rights locked, you sign the week you graduate.” He pauses. “It’s not the easiest ask. But it’s been done.”

I pick up the card again. Dan Reiss. Boston. A door I haven’t walked through yet, and I can see the shape of what’s on the other side.

“Talk to your mom,” Coach says, and it’s the truest thing he’s said, and he knows it. “Then call Reiss. In that order.”

I fold the card into my pocket, and I shake his hand, and I walk out of the office with the coin in the air and the first real chance of landing somewhere concrete.

The house is quieter than it’s ever been. Cash and Wyatt are still out. Just Beau on the couch, arm iced, a game on the TV he’s watching with the specific neutral face of a man who’s been thinking about something else for two hours.

I drop my bag. “Where’s Sloane?”

“Sailmaker. She dropped Margo off at home and went in to see June and Wren.” He doesn’t look away from the game. “Said she’d be back for dinner.”

I drop my bag by the stairs. Get a glass of water. Stand in the kitchen and try to decide which of the three things currently occupying my chest I want to deal with first.

Beau saves me the trouble.

“How’d the coach meeting go?”

I look at him. “News travels.”

“I saw him pull you aside off the bus. And you’ve got the face.”

“I have one face.”

“You’ve got four. There’s the scowl, which is the default. There’s the game face, which is the scowl with intent. There’s the one you get when your father texts you, which is the scowl with a wall behind it.” He nods at me. “And there’s this one, which is the scowl with a door behind it. Something happened.”