The ice was mine.
I had made it mine at six years old on a rink not unlike that one, skating until my body gave out, and I took it back from him. I took it and I built something out of it and no version of my father got to have it.
Everything else was negotiable.
Everything else could be put in a room.
He could have everything else.
I was sixteen years old and I was learning the second most important thing anyone would ever teach me.
You don’t get to have everything.
You picked the thing worth keeping and you held it and you let everything else go — the boy in the locker room and the hands on your face and the look that said I see you without flinching, all of it, you let it go — because the alternative was handing your father another piece of yourself to break.
Handing him something you loved and watching it get turned into something that withered and turned to ash right before you.
I looked out the window.
The streetlights came and went.
I picked the ice.
I would always pick the ice.
I would keep picking the ice.
Every single day for the rest of my life I would stand at that exact door and choose the same thing.
Until I couldn't bury it anymore.
Chapter 17
Jamie
Each step toward Fitch's office feels like walking through concrete. I've been replaying it since it happened. The crack of my knuckles. Rhys stumbling back. The bell above the door. Over and over again on a loop I can't shut off. I stop outside the door and shake out my hand. The knuckles are bruised, skin split at the middle.
I look at it and knock with the other hand.
"Come in."
Fitch is behind his desk. He doesn't look angry. He looks like a man who has already had the worst version of this day and was hoping it would end differently.
"Coach, I need to—"
"Sit down, Jamie."
I take a seat, press my back into the chair and wait.
Fitch folds his hands on the desk. Looks at me for a long moment. "This is serious." He pauses. "What I'm hearing is that you hit Callahan because he's gay."
The floor drops out and I go completely still with shock.
"Coach." My voice comes out wrong. I stop. Start again. "You know me. You know that's not—"
"I do know you." He rubs a hand over his face. He looks exhausted in a way that makes my chest hurt because Fitch has been good to me for too many years and he doesn't deserveto be sitting in this office right now looking at me this way. "I know you're not that person. But there's a reason Rhys feels that way and I can't just ignore it."
"Then—"
