“Stop. You don't want to do this.”
Paul throws another. This one Maddox catches on the cage of his forearm. I see Maddox's jaw set. I see the exact second he decides he's allowed to hit back. His right hand comes up, closes, loads.
He lets itfall.
It is the hardest thing I have ever watched a person do. I have watched Maddox Creed drop gloves on three men bigger than him this season. I have watched him bite through a mouthguard because he wanted so badly to hit somebody and couldn't. I have never watched him choose to eat a punch he could have answered. He's choosing it now. He's choosing it because I am behind him, and my father is in front of him, and if he throws that right the video of it will be on every sports blog in North America by midnight and my life will be over in a different way than it's already over.
He puts both his hands up, palms flat, and he takes my father's third punch on his open hand like a catcher's mitt and he says, through his teeth, “I am not going to hit the coach's father of the boy I—I am not going to hit you, Paul. Do not make me.”
Paul doesn't hear. Paul is past hearing. Paul throws a fourth and it glances off Maddox's cheekbone and Maddox's head rocks and blood starts in a thin line from his eyebrow and I think,that's it, now he has to,and instead Maddox turns his shoulder in and absorbs the next three. His body rocks with each one. His feet don't move. His hands stay open.
I find my voice.
“Stop.”
Paul doesn't stop.
“Stop.Stop it.STOP IT!”
The door bangs open.
Tim Callahan owns this team. I have met him twice. Once on day one when we were introduced to the front office, and once at a press dinner where he shook my hand and called methe kid.He is sixty-two years old, five foot eight, wears a blazer with a pocket square even to hockey games. He is the smallest man in this room right now and he walks in like every inch of it belongs to him, because it does.
“Enough.”
Paul stops mid-swing. His fist hangs in the air. Maddox turns his head a quarter inch, blood in his eyebrow, his hands still open.
Callahan takes it in. The desk. The wrapper. Theo with his base layer crooked. Maddox in gear. Paul with his knuckles split. He takes it in like a loss on the balance sheet.
“Out.” He points at me. “Son. In the hall. Now.”
I don't move.
“Theo.” His voice softens half a degree. “Please.”
I look at Maddox.
Maddox doesn't turn his head. He says, very low, “Go. I'm okay.”
“You're—”
“Go, sweetheart.”
I go. My legs finally work. I step around my father, who cannot look at me, and out into the corridor. The door shuts. The fluorescent buzzes. My back hits the wall. I slide down it half an inch and catch myself.
I can hear voices through the door. Callahan's low, controlled. Paul's louder. Maddox's almost silent.
Four minutes. Maybe five. I lose track. Two men from security walk past me and enter the room. More talking.
Then the door opens and Callahan comes out and he walks straight to me.
“Theo.”
My spine straightens against the wall.
“Yes, sir.”
“You're going home with your father tonight.”
