No morning practice.
I text him at seven.
Nothing.
Eight.
Nothing.
He's reading them.
Choosing silence the way I chose it last night — not out of cruelty, out of self-preservation — and I have no right to be hurt by it. I know exactly what it is to be the one who keeps reaching and keeps getting nothing back. I've been doing it to him for months. Now he's doing it to me. Now I know how it feels.
The pre-game skate is the longest forty minutes of my life.
Rhys is there on the ice. Present. Professional. Moving through drills with that locked-in quality he gets when he's decided to be somewhere else inside himself while his body does what it's trained to do. He passes accurately. Calls plays. Does everything right. And exists in the same space as me like I'm not there. Not anger. Not hurt. Just — removed. The Rhys who fell asleep on my chest and left his hand open on the pillow.
Gone.
Like a switch.
I know that switch. I built mine over twenty-one years. Hebuilt his at Eldridge.
When Fitch dismisses us I drive straight to his house and Blake opens the door.
I look past him and Rhys's door is closed shut.
"He doesn't want to see you," Blake says.
"I know."
"Jamie—"
"I know." I stay where I am. The cold at my back. The closed door in front of me. "I need him to know I understand what I did. That I know what it looked like. Just let me explain, please."
Blake says nothing for a bit, but I see it all in his eyes.
"He's been here before," Blake says. "You know that. He's stood in that exact place and watched someone make that exact choice." He holds my gaze. "He's not angry. That would almost be easier." He pauses. "He's just protecting himself. That's all he has right now." I look at the closed door.
"Can you tell him I'm sorry," I say. "Tell him it won't—"
"Will it?" Blake says. "Happen again?"
Blake looks at me, waiting for me to say something, anything.
And I don't answer because I cannot promise that yet and Rhys deserves more than a promise I'm not sure I can keep and we both know it and Blake nods once.
"Go get ready for the game," he says and closes the door. I stand at the porch. The quiet on the other side of that door is the loudest thing I've ever heard.
Tonight I play Eldridge.
Tonight I get on the ice with Marcus Hale — the man who watched Rhys alone for a year and felt his grief from across a room — and I have to be focused and be the person I have spent my entire life becoming. And for the first time standing here I don't know if that person is someone I want to be anymore.
Or if I ever really chose him.
Or if he was just what was left after everything else got beaten out.
I walk away from the door.
