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“Theo.” He’s got the smile going, the easy one, the one that’s worked on people his whole life. “Hell of a game. Hell of a third period.”

“Thanks.” I keep it short. I keep my face doing the thing it does, which is harder than usual with this many people close enough to overhear, close enough to read whatever I let show.

I catch Cash’s eye across the room mid-sentence, still narrating to a cluster of somebody’s parents, and he does a double take when he spots the man standing with me — a beat of recognition, a flicker of is that, before he has the sense to keep his story moving and not make it a thing. Beau’s watching too, more subtly, the specific quiet attention of someone who’s already worked out exactly who this is and is giving me room to handle it without an audience deciding to gather around it.

“Noah and Logan haven’t stopped talking since the third goal. You should’ve seen them.” He gestures behind him, and there they are — both boys, still in their creased jerseys, practically bouncing.

“They’re good kids,” I say. Because they are, and because it’s the safest true thing I have available right now, and because half my team is fifteen feet away and I am not doing this loudly.

“They are.” Something in his face shifts, a beat of something almost like real feeling, before it smooths back over into the easy version he leads with. “I should’ve brought them sooner. To one of these. I know that.”

I don’t say anything to that. There’s a version of this conversation where I tell him exactly how long sooner has actually been — fifteen years, every game he skipped, every practice he wasn’t at, every ride home from the rink my mother made alone after a double shift because there was never anyone else to make it. I don’t say any of it. Not tonight. Not with Cash twenty feet away and Wyatt close enough to hear a raised voice and half the team still buzzing off the biggest win of the season. Tonight I don’t have the room, and tonight isn’t the place even if I did.

I look at the boys instead. Something in my chest does something complicated and involuntary. None of this is their fault. They’re just two kids who got excited about their brother playing hockey, and they don’t understand the weight of anything happening above their heads, or the fact that we’re having this conversation in the middle of a room full of people who know exactly what my father is and isn’t to me.

“Hey,” I say, to them specifically. Warmer. “Thanks for coming.”

Logan grins, gap-toothed, delighted. “You were so fast. Like, really fast.”

“Appreciate that.”

Noah’s quieter, more careful, watching me with an expression that’s got a little of my own face in it, which I try not to think too hard about. “Good game,” he says. Simple. Genuine.

“Thanks, bud.” I look at him a second longer than I mean to. There’s something in the way he holds himself — watching, cautious, absorbing more than he lets on — that I recognize a little too well. I hope it’s not the thing I think it is. I hope he gets to just be a kid who likes hockey for a while longer before he has to figure anything else out about his father.

Margo appears at my side before I’ve decided whether I want her to.

She doesn’t ask permission. She just steps in, easy, warm, and holds her hand out to Lucas first because that’s the correct order of things and she’s never once needed to be told the correct order of things. “Hi. I’m Margo.”

“Lucas.” He shakes her hand, and I watch him do the read — quick, practiced, the same easy assessment he’s probably run on a hundred people. “Good to meet you.”

She turns to the boys next, crouching slightly to be closer to their height, which is such a small thing and does something to my chest anyway. “And you two must be Noah and Logan. Theo talks about you.”

That’s not entirely true. I’ve mentioned them exactly twice, both times briefly. But she says it like it’s obvious, like it’s just a fact about our lives, and Logan’s whole face lights up at being talked about at all.

“He does?”

“Of course he does.” She smiles at him, easy and genuine, the smile she doesn’t perform.

Logan looks at her for a second, head tilted, with the specific unfiltered directness of a nine-year-old who hasn’t learned yet that some thoughts are supposed to stay internal.

“Whoa,” he says. “You’re pretty.”

Silence for half a beat. Then Noah groans, mortified, and Lucas laughs — a real one, surprised out of him — and something in the tight coil of my chest loosens, just slightly, at the sound of it. Even Margo laughs, delighted, not remotely embarrassed on Logan’s behalf, crouching down to his level.

“Thank you,” she tells him, entirely serious, like he’s just paid her the most sophisticated compliment she’s received all week. “That’s very kind of you.”

“You’re welcome.” Logan nods, satisfied, mission apparently accomplished, and goes back to talking to Noah about something on his phone.

The moment holds for a second — lighter now than it was thirty seconds ago, the tension actually broken instead of just contained — and I catch Margo’s eye. She gives me the smallest look, the one that means I did that on purpose, though I don’t think she did, not really. I think she just showed up and was herself, and Logan being nine and honest did the rest of the work.

Noah steps forward before I can turn back to my dad. He’s got his phone in his hand, held loosely, like he’s trying to be casual about a thing he clearly isn’t casual about at all.

“Could we—” He stops. Starts again, quieter. “Would it be okay if we got a picture? Me and Logan? With you?”

He asks it like he’s already braced for no. Like the question cost him something to get out, the specific nervous courage of a kid asking his hero for something and expecting to be told he’s asking too much.

“Yeah.” I say it fast, before he can talk himself out of having asked. “Course. Come here.”