I see what it cost her. I see exactly what it cost her and I don’t look away.
“Three bones,” I say.
She turns.
“Hand fracture. Three bones. High glove side, rookie defenseman in a preseason game, low-percentage shot that Imisread.” I look at the floor. “I hid it. Eight days before anyone knew. I was terrified of losing my spot.”
She says nothing.
“It went in my file as a soft tissue injury. I came back six weeks later and nobody asked questions because I didn’t give them reason to.” I pause. “The old piece said the absence was disciplinary.”
Her face changes. Not much. Enough to tell me that one landed somewhere it hurt.
“I know.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“I was scared,” I say. “That’s all it was. Three broken bones and a guy terrified of losing the only thing he knew how to keep.”
She looks at me then, and whatever she sees makes her go quiet in a way that feels heavier than words.
“You should have told someone,” she says finally.
“I know.”
“The team physio. The coach. Someone.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been managing a two-season-old ghost alone.”
“That’s what I do.”
She looks at me for a long moment.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I know.”
Midnight. An empty locker room in Pittsburgh. The ghost still loud. Nova beside me on the bench, close enough to feel, not close enough to ask for anything.
Neither of us says anything for a while.
That helps more than it should.
I came through the tunnel after the buzzer and she wasn’t there.
I noticed.
That’s the part I keep coming back to.
I noticed the empty space where I expected her to be.
And then she came here instead. No recorder. No notebook. No questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
Just Nova.
Sitting next to me in the quiet like staying was the only thing that made sense.
