The window doesn’t stay open forever.
I opened my mouth.
“I,”
My throat closed.
This was ridiculous. I had said difficult things before. To coaches. To GMs. To reporters. To my father, once, in a conversation I had no intention of repeating. I had saidnoto bad contracts andyesto systems changes andwe need to fix the neutral zoneto a room full of men who did not like hearing it.
This was one syllable.
“You didn’t want it to be the reason,” Shay said. He was watching me with the particular steadiness he got when he’d decided, finally, to stop performing for me. “The reason for what.”
“For,” I tried again. “For why I,”
My jaw did the thing. I could feel it. It had never felt this obvious before, like an actual mechanical failure I could reach up and adjust.
He didn’t move. Didn’t look away. He just waited.
He had been waiting for two years.
The system had not protected him.
The trade rumor. The GM’s office.If they trade me, it won’t be because of my game.The way he’d said that in the parking lot and stood there in the cold with Charlie’s arm around him and no sound. The way he had come to this apartment and told me the truth and closed the door quietly. The way the locker room had gone silent when he stopped filling it.
I had been protecting myself from a cost he had already been paying.
The word was there.
I stopped trying to structure it.
It came out wrong, the way things do when you pull them out of a place they’ve been sitting for too long.
“I love you,” I said.
It startled me, hearing it in my own voice. Smaller than I’d expected. Rougher.
Shay didn’t move.
I kept going, because stopping now would be worse than anything.
“I love you,” I said again, clearer this time, like repetition could correct for the first attempt. “I have for,” I stopped counting. “For a long time.”
The room did not explode. The ceiling did not crack. The world outside the windows continued to exist.
“I’ve been terrified of what that costs,” I said. The sentence had been running in me for months; now that it was moving, it didn’t want to stop. “The team, management, the microscope, the line. All of it. I,” I had to breathe. “I built an entire system around not letting this become a bigger thing because I didn’t know how to handle the version where it was real, where it affected more than just me.”
Shay’s face didn’t change much. It didn’t have to. I could see it anyway , the small, precise shifts at the corners of his mouth, the way his hands had gone still on the couch arm.
“And I’ve been punishing you for it,” I said.
That was the worst part. It felt like a tooth pulling, sharp and clean.
“Every time I saidwe can’tinstead ofI’m afraid.Every time I let you carry the distance, or pretended it was fine when you were the one making it fine for me. Every time you gave me room and I called it professionalism instead of realizing it was you trying to keep me safe.” The words were landing faster now, less controlled, the way pucks come when a game breaks open.“I’ve been making you pay for a cost that was mine, and I’m,” I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
I meant it. I had saidsorrybefore , for missed coverage, for bad passes, for the occasional penalty I’d actually earned , but not like this, not with this particular hollow feeling in my chest, like I was finally admitting to the exact damage I’d done.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I said.
