Page 122 of Uncoachable

His eyes lift to mine, steady and unflinching.

“I was wrong.”

The apology is there—unpolished and unadorned—but it is unmistakable.

“I tested you,” he says, his jaw flexing. “I took shots I didn’t need to take just to see if you’d blink.” His mouth tightens into a thin line. “That’s on me.”

“I’m sorry,” he finishes. “For all of it.”

I realize in this moment that he wasn’t trying to break me because he thought I was weak. He was testing the strength of the ship before we sailed into the storm.

“You stood your ground,” he says quietly. “When it mattered. When everyone was watching and waiting for you to fail.”

He pauses. “Don’t change. We need you the way you are. Not the way the papers want you to be.”

He nods once, a stiff gesture, like vulnerability is a language he’s only just learning and doesn’t want to speak for too long.

I watch him go, his silhouette disappearing into the bright light of the arena. The hallway feels different now—lighter, as if a weight has finally been set down.

I’ve always told myself I keep my distance because it’s smart. But standing here, accepted by the hardest man on this roster, I understand the truth.

I don’t avoid love because I don’t believe in it.

I avoid it because I do.

I know exactly how powerful it is. I know how devastating and irreversible it can be. And for the first time in my life, I’m not interested in outrunning that fear anymore.

I push off the wall and step toward the rink door. The cold air spills out to meet me like a greeting. I put on my skates and step onto the ice.

The ice feels different beneath my feet.

It’s not hostile.

It is mine.

I walk along the boards, and the players naturally part around me. I stop at center ice. Twenty pairs of eyes settle on me, waiting. My breath fogs in the cold air, steady and sure.

I don’t need to be untouched to be strong. I don’t need to be alone to be safe.

And I certainly don’t need to become my father to honor what he lost.

If loving someone means risking the kind of pain that leaves scars—then maybe those scars are proof that I lived fully instead of carefully.

“Alright,” I say, and my voice carries to every corner of the rink. “Let’s work. We have a series to win.”

***

Two days later, we take Game Five without Callahan. And somehow, impossibly, the momentum holds and two nights later, we take Game Six too.

It’s not pretty—nothing in May ever is—but when the final horn blares and the boys erupt off the bench, it hits me like a punch to the ribs.

We did it.

We’re going to the Stanley Cup Final.

The locker room becomes a storm of noise and sweat and disbelief, and for the first time all season, I let myself smile without restraint. Not the polite, professional kind—the real one. The one that feels like oxygen after months underwater.

My phone vibrates.