“And I like the risk,” I say. “Christmas in the basement. The parking garage. The supply closet. Every single time we could get caught it’s—” I wave my hand around because the word I need doesn’t exist. “More. It’s more.”
“Mackie.”
“So you get what you want and I get what I want. The video room has a lock. It’s soundproofed. And it’s in the building where my father works, which is—I know this is insane—that’s the POINT.”
“Nobody wins in that scenario. If we get caught?—”
“We won’t get caught. I’ve been casing that building since second grade.”
He turns off the burner and won’t meet my eyes. “You’re asking me to—” He stops, takes a deep breath, and starts over. “You want me to tie you up in the practice facility.”
“I want you to make my birthday wish come true,” I say. “And I want it to be somewhere that scares us both a little. Yes.”
He leans against the counter across from me and crosses his arms staring at me and his ears are still red but his eyes aren’t embarrassed anymore. I can tell he’s actually considering it.
“The door locks from inside,” he says.
“It does.”
“The walls are soundproofed.”
“For film sessions. Yes.”
“And you know the security schedule.”
“I know everything about that building, Zach.”
He sighs and I know I’ve won.
I’mat the facility the next afternoon for a media debrief—playoff credential stuff, nothing that requires my actual brain, which is good because my actual brain is still in his bed with his hand on my face.
The meeting ends and the smart move would be to go home to study for my final next week. Instead, I’m walking toward Barrett’s office. I have an envelope in my bag that I’ve been carrying around for two weeks waiting for the right moment, and the right moment is never going to come, so it might as well be now.
Barrett’s door is open. He’s at his desk with reading glasses on, which I will never not find hilarious because this is the man who once broke up a bench-clearing brawl by grabbing two guys by their jerseys and smacking their helmets together and now he’s squinting at a spreadsheet.
I knock on the doorframe. “Uncle Dean.”
He looks up and doesn’t exactly smile, but his face does the Barrett thing where it gets a fraction less stern, which is basically his version of a hug.
“Mackinnon. What are you still doing here?”
I drop into the chair across from his desk and pull the envelope out of my bag. “So I had an idea.”
“Never a good sign.”
“A few weeks ago I called the youth center in Wisconsin where Zach learned to play. I asked if the kids in their programcould draw some hockey pictures—goalies, pads, whatever they wanted. They sent me these.” I push the envelope across his desk. “I want to get them to Zach’s helmet artist. See if he can work them into a design. For the Finals. If we get there. It’s short notice, but I thought... maybe, you know, it would mean something to him.”
Barrett opens the envelope. There’s maybe fifteen drawings inside—stick-figure goalies, wobbly pucks, one kid who drew a very enthusiastic cat in full goalie pads which is my personal favorite. Barrett looks at them for a long time. Longer than I expected.
He holds up the cat drawing. “This one yours?”
“That one’s a seven-year-old named Julian, and I will not have you disrespect his art.”
Barrett puts the drawings back in the envelope and I think he’s going to say no but he doesn’t. “I’ll talk to the equipment manager. He can get in touch with the artist who’s done Zach’s masks before. He’ll want lead time but if we’re in the Finals he can probably turn something around.”
“Thank you.”
“Does he know about this?”
