Page 76

I stared at the folder.

The numbers were clean, typed in a font designed to communicate authority and precision. They represented security. Legacy. The kind of contract that changed a player’s family for generations, the kind my father, driving a Zamboni at eight dollars an hour, could not have imagined in his most extravagant fantasy.

I should have been thrilled.

I should have been negotiating details, asking about signing bonuses, and discussing trade clauses.

Instead, I was thinking about the sound Sam made when I said her name in the dark. About a training office that smelled like rubber mats and something I was starting to recognize as the scent of a life I had not known I wanted.

“Evan.” Mark’s voice sharpened. “We need engagement here.”

“I’m engaged.”

“You’re staring at the folder like it insulted your mother.”

Silas folded his hands. “We need an answer by end of week. Seattle’s window is narrow. If we’re doing the sign-and-trade, both front offices need to move simultaneously.”

“How narrow?”

“Friday. Five p.m. Eastern.”

Three days.

Seventy-two hours to decide whether to accept the biggest contract of my life and relocate two thousand miles from my sister’s kitchen, my nephew’s moats, and a dog who sat in the passenger seat of my truck like it was his constitutional right. Two thousand miles from the room where the veterans knew the set of my shoulders meant leave him alone, and the younger guys still watched how I taped my stick before practice.

And from Sam.

The thought arrived without permission, the way all the important ones did.

Complete.

Non-negotiable.

I was not ready to say it out loud. But it was there, sitting in the center of the calculus like a variable that changed every equation it touched.

“I need time,” I said.

Mark’s jaw tightened. “How much time?”

“A day.”

“Evan…”

“One day. Twenty-four hours. Then I’ll have an answer.”

Silas studied me. Behind his neutral expression, calculations were running: estimating the probability of losing the deal, weighing the cost of patience against the risk of pressure.

Walsh finally spoke.

“We’ll give you the day. But Friday is not a negotiation.”

His voice was lower than I expected, the way authority was often lower than you expected. The people who did not have to raise their voices rarely did.

I nodded. Stood. Walked out before anyone could add conditions or context or the kind of motivational language agents used when they sensed a client was about to make a decision they had not budgeted for.

The twenty-four hours passed.

Not in a dramatic, clock-ticking, cinematic way. In the ordinary way, time passes when you are paralyzed: slowly and without the courtesy of a soundtrack.