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Logan’s there instantly, no hesitation, sliding in under my arm like he’s done it a hundred times even though this is the first time he’s ever stood this close to me. Noah’s slower, careful, positioning himself on my other side like he’s not sure he’s allowed to lean in the way Logan already has. I put my arm around him too. He goes rigid for half a second, surprised, and then relaxes into it.

Margo takes the phone from Noah’s outstretched hand without being asked, because of course she does, because she’s already read exactly what this moment needs from someone who isn’t in the photo.

“Everyone look normal,” she says, deadpan, and Logan cracks up before the picture even takes, and Noah’s trying not to smile and failing, and I look at the two of them on either side of me and feel something shift that I wasn’t expecting to feel tonight.

They didn’t do anything. That’s the part I keep circling back to, standing here with my arms around two kids who share half my blood and none of my history with the man who made all three of us. Noah and Logan didn’t choose their father any more than I chose mine. They didn’t choose to be born into the second version of his life instead of carrying any of the weight of the first one. They’re just kids who think their brother plays hockey and it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen, and they asked for a picture like it might be too much to ask, and I was the one who almost made them feel like it was.

I was a kid too, once, when I needed a father and didn’t get one. I don’t say that out loud. I don’t need to. But standing here, looking at Noah’s careful, hopeful face and Logan’s easy, unbothered one, I find myself glad — actually glad, not performed, not managed — that they have him. That whatever version of Lucas Mercer failed me, they’re getting something different. They deserve that. Nobody chooses the family they’re born into, and it isn’t their fault that mine came apart before theirs even started.

Margo hands the phone back. “Got a good one. You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” Noah says, to her, and then, quieter, to me: “Thanks. For letting us come tonight.”

“Thanks for coming,” I tell him. And this time I mean it all the way through, no wall behind it, no bracing.

I look back at my dad. His smile’s still there, waiting for something more than what I’ve given him — a hug, a longer conversation, some acknowledgment that tonight meant what he wants it to mean.

“Good to see you,” I say. That’s all. A handshake, brief, and I step back before it can become anything else.

His smile flickers, just slightly, the first honest thing I’ve seen on his face all night. “Alright.” He nods, like he’s absorbing the size of the wall and deciding not to push on it. “We’ll get out of your hair. Congratulations, son.”

Son. I don’t react to it. I’ve had a lifetime of practice not reacting to that word from him specifically.

“Drive safe,” I say. To all three of them. And I mean it, mostly for the boys, and I watch them go, and something in my chest sits heavy and complicated and entirely unresolved, the way it always does with him, the way it probably always will.

Margo’s still right beside me. She waited through all of it — the introduction, the photo, the whole exchange — patient and present the way she always is when it matters, and now that they’re gone she turns to face me fully.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I look back once at where my dad and the boys disappeared into the concourse. “That’s about as good as it gets with him.”

“You did good. With the boys, especially.” She says it quiet, just for me. “That wasn’t easy, and you made it easy for them.”

“They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No. They didn’t.” She takes my hand, right there, careful but not hiding it either, because tonight the whole team’s too high on the win to notice or care. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

We walk toward the exit together, the noise of the celebration fading behind us. The parking lot’s mostly empty by the time we reach my truck — a few stragglers, a couple of parents loading equipment bags, the specific quiet that settles over a rink an hour after the horn goes off. Cold air. Clear sky. The kind of night that would feel like nothing but relief if there weren’t two separate things sitting in my chest right now instead of one.

“Hey.” She stops beside the passenger door, looking up at me. “You went somewhere just then.”

“Just thinking.”

“About your dad?”

“Some.” I look at her. This is the moment, if there’s going to be one — parking lot quiet, both of us finally still, no game left to play and no crowd left to perform for. I could ask her right now. The question’s right there, sitting on my tongue, three words that would cost her whatever she’s been carrying alone all week if I actually said them.

I don’t say them.

Instead I say the thing I’ve been building toward all night.

“You’re the reason I got my game back tonight.” I stop walking. Look at her. “Not Coach. Not Beau’s speech. You. Whatever you said to me at intermission, it worked, and I don’t — I don’t know how to say what that means without it sounding smaller than it is.”

She looks up at me, something soft and a little overwhelmed behind her eyes. “Theo —”

“You’re the thing that gets me back into my own body,” I tell her. “When everything else knocks me out of it. That’s not — I’ve never had that. With anyone. And I don’t know how to thank you for it except to keep saying it.”

She’s quiet for a second. Then she steps into me, arms around my waist, face against my chest, and I hold her in the cold parking lot with the arena lights still washing everything gold behind us.