The memory comes back whole: music upstairs, a party loud enough to hide everything underneath it, a sliver of light through a door left ajar. Dante's hand on the back of Cole's neck. Cole's mouth on Dante's throat. The press of their bodies against the far wall, close enough that the light between them vanished.
I backed out before the floor creaked. Before either of them turned.
Six years. Every article I've written about the Voss-Maddox line has a blank space carved out of the middle of it.
Their chemistry is the product of six years of shared ice time, a rarity in college hockey.
The sentence sits on the screen, sterile and safe.
My phone buzzes against the desk. The vibration rattles the wood. I glance down.
Unknown number. Area code 413.
My hand stops. Western Massachusetts.
The phone buzzes again. Three seconds. Four. Five. The screen pulses white in the dim room.
The room narrows around me, the edges of my vision graying out until only the desk lamp's circle stays sharp. My palms flatten against the wood, bracing. Somewhere underneath the adrenaline, a memory surfaces—not a sound from the phone, but the specific quiet of the house that area code belongs to. A door closing too softly in a house where soft meant something was about to happen.
The call stops. The screen goes dark. Duration: six seconds.
I pick up the phone. My thumb hovers over the call log. The number sits there, a string of digits that means nothing and everything. I could save it. I could file it the way I file everything, cataloged, cross-referenced, kept on record.
Instead I press delete. The entry disappears.
I've never deleted data before. I file, I hold, I keep—that's what I do. This I erase, and something under my ribs contracts once before I lock the screen.
Four seconds in. Four hold. Four out. I repeat it until the rhythm steadies my pulse. The room settles back into place—desk, corkboard, laptop, the unfinished profile waiting on the screen.
My right hand rests on the phone. My left stays on the keyboard. I could call Richard. I could text my mother.
My right hand moves back to the keyboard.
I look at the third paragraph.
Their chemistry is the product of six years of shared ice time, a rarity in college hockey that coaches and scouts consistently cite as the Titans' most significant competitive advantage.
The sentence stays. I write the next one.
The Voss-Maddox transition game operates on a read-and-react system that eliminates the half-second delay most pairings experience between recognition and execution. Voss signals nothing. Maddox waits for nothing. The cut happens and the pass is already there.
The words appear clean on the screen. I keep typing. The office hums quietly around me. The desk lamp pools light across the keyboard. My fingers move steadily, the rhythm returning.
Twenty minutes pass.
My phone buzzes against the desk. My elbows jerk off the surface. The chair wheels scrape back two inches. My hands lift before I realize they've moved.
The screen lights up. Chronicle notification. Staff schedule update.
I exhale through my nose, a sharp sound in the quiet, and pull the chair back in. My hands return to the keyboard, but the muscles in my forearms stay tight, coiled.
The piece. Focus.
My fingers move again.
Voss's neutral zone reads have improved significantly since the Greystone game, suggesting an external input that the coaching staff hasn't publicly acknowledged.
I stop typing. The cursor blinks.
