Page 20

Chapter twenty

Noah

W e'd settled into a modest apartment on the outskirts of Marquette, a short drive from the lakeshore. So much had happened in barely a week. The sun was rising on our new life until the Show came calling.

Micah's phone vibrated once, then stopped. The message was already open when he reached the table—just a blue rectangle, pulsing cold light.

It was the NHL notifying us of the specifics of the promised hearing. Micah read the message and then didn't touch it again. Just laid it there, screen up, like if we both stared long enough, it would blink out of existence.

I'd already read it twice. Once over his shoulder, once with my stomach turning slow and thick.

"Reinstatement Review – 11:00 a.m. EST – Zoom link enclosed."

No salutation. No explanation. Just a meeting time, a link, and a line of legalese. It read like a summons to a sentencing.

Reinstatement itself wasn't the question. It came automatically with the completion of Micah's suspension. However, the league could apply qualifications.

Micah hadn't moved since the message arrived. He sat with his elbows planted wide on his knees. His jaw tensed. It was the same expression I'd seen once in a photo of him mid-fight, right before a punch connected.

The heater hummed in the wall, its rhythm off-kilter. I heard the soft tap of expanding metal beneath the floorboards. All that noise and still, the phone message pulled a curtain of quiet over all of it.

I sat across from him, trying not to fidget. I took a sip of coffee that had turned lukewarm.

"You're going," I said.

He didn't look up. He blinked once. It was all the energy he was willing to spare for a horror he couldn't escape.

"You're not asking a question." His voice was raspy like medium-grade sandpaper.

"I'm not."

Micah reached for his mug and brought it halfway to his mouth before lowering it again. He didn't drink. He only stared at the brown liquid like he expected to find an answer in the bottom of the cup.

He finally looked up and stared back at me. "You think it'll change anything?"

His voice was too flat. Too calm. I'd learned that was worse than anger. It meant he'd already rehearsed what was to come.

I shook my head. "I think hiding already told them everything they needed to know."

"And showing up to this changes that?"

"It tells a different story."

As he continued to look at me, I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot around the edges, rimmed with a kind of bone-deep tiredness that no amount of sleep could touch.

He rubbed his chin. "You're good at stories."

"That's not what this is." I hesitated. "You want it to be the truth, right?"

Micah didn't answer. He asked another question. "You're gonna be there?"

"If they let me."

Silence again. Not heavy. Not hostile. He nodded once, slow and deliberate.

In another life, we might have talked about strategy and practiced his answers. Figured out what the league wanted to hear, but Micah wasn't built for that. And I wouldn't let him lie.

So we sat there instead, the two of us anchored at opposite ends of our kitchen table, not saying another word. Everything important was already in the open.

Micah didn't want to sit at the table for the review, so we set up on the floor, backs against the couch, the laptop balanced on a stack of hardcover books—old scouting binders and some half-read novel I'd brought with me and never opened again.

He wore black. Nothing remarkable, but it worked. It was stark and neutral—a statement on its own.

I watched him click the Zoom link with a steady hand. The screen blinked into a grid of faces and initials and muted microphones. Only a few had cameras turned on. The rest stayed blank, hiding behind blue-and-white placeholders or, in one case, a team logo.

No one said hello.

Micah typed in his name—just KELLER —and hit enter. Bold. Unapologetic. The name alone carried enough weight. It was shorthand now for violence, silence, and walking away.

I typed mine quietly into the guest field: Noah Langley . I didn't expect anyone to acknowledge it.

Next came the voice.

"Good morning. We're going to begin in a few minutes."

It was from a square labeled A. Vaughn, League VP, Player Conduct . His camera was off.

"Present parties include league officials, team representatives, the player rep, a behavioral consultant, and one guest observer."

Pause.

A thin curl of disdain slipped through his following sentence. "Can someone explain why the injured party is here?"

No one said a word. The silence was loud and rattled in my bones.

I leaned forward, elbows digging into my knees, and spoke into the gap.

"Because I'm not only the injured party." My voice was steady, not raised, but I ensured the words had weight. "I'm the reason he's still breathing."

The silence that followed was a different breed. This one sat back on its haunches, teeth bared.

I saw a face twitch in one of the tiny windows—someone whose name I didn't catch. A throat cleared. A woman in the upper left corner blinked hard but didn't look away.

I swallowed once, the words sour on my tongue, but I hadn't finished.

"I asked to be here. He didn't invite me. He didn't ask for cover, but I won't let you talk about him like he's a case study when I've watched him do the work."

No responses. I kept going.

"You think this ends with the hit? Do you think he vanished into the woods because he didn't want to face it? That's not why. He didn't run. Hebled, and when that was under control, he came back."

A few more squares flickered on. Cameras snapped on like they'd only now decided this was worth seeing.

Micah hadn't moved beside me. Not even a blink.

I felt a change. The air around him pulled tight like a drawstring bag while he waited.

He didn't speak right away.

He let the silence spool out until it turned uncomfortable, until people started shifting in their chairs or glancing down at notes that didn't exist. It was the kind of pause that made people remember he wouldn't play by their rules—not anymore.

When he finally did open his mouth, his voice was low. It wasn't hoarse or theatrical.

"I hit him because he reminded me of the kid I used to be."

No one responded.

"The one I couldn't save."

He paused to let his words sink in. He also needed his own space to keep breathing through it.

"So I tried to erase him."

Micah didn't explain further. Didn't soften the blow. He let the sentence land like a gut punch and didn't flinch from the pain.

Onscreen, someone winced—Micah's coach. He looked older than I remembered, his eyes shadowed and mouth drawn in like a man who'd spent the last few months watching game film and coming up with no answers. His hand came up to rub at the back of his neck, a gesture I'd seen a hundred times when reporters cornered him after a tough loss.

"Jesus, Keller," he muttered, the words half-swallowed. His gaze dropped to something off-camera. I could almost see the highlight reel playing in his mind—every fight, every penalty, every time he'd sent Micah over the boards with that subtle nod that meant "make it hurt." Now, he knew why his enforcer never needed much encouragement.

Micah continued.

"I didn't realize it at the time. I thought my aggression was adrenaline. It was the heat of the moment. That's the story we tell ourselves, right?"

He glanced at the camera. At them. At me.

"But the truth is, I saw him flying down the ice, and all I could think was—he doesn't get to survive it. Not when I didn't."

A long inhale. Audible. Measured.

"I disappeared after that. Not because I didn't want to face it, like Noah said. I faded out because I was afraid I'd do it again. Not to him. To someone else. Because I didn't trust myself not to confuse survival and defiance."

He ran a thumb along the seam of his jeans.

"I left my isolation to be with Noah. Not to skate. Not to make things right. Just… tobe present."

No one interrupted. No one dared.

"If you let me on the ice again, I'll earn it. And if you don't—I'll still show up. Outside of what you have set up. I'll still take the hits because the only thing I've got to prove now is that I'm not hiding anymore."

That was it. He didn't tie up any tidy little bow at the end. He didn't make a pitch. He only dropped that final sentence. Weighty, rough, and real.

Micah didn't look at me, and no one spoke. The screen seemed to freeze. It was seventeen blinking cursors in a courtroom with no gavel.

Then, Vaughn cleared his throat.

"We'll confer. Cameras off, please."

The screen blinked dark, one square at a time.

The laptop screen dimmed to a grid of empty, labeled boxes. Blank avatars and muted icons. Names suspended in a kind of purgatory. It was like being left behind in a house after somebody locked the doors from the outside.

Micah didn't move. Didn't sigh. He didn't adjust his posture, roll his neck, or rub his temples like most people might when the pressure eased.

It hadn't eased. Not yet.

It sat on his shoulders with the same relentless weight as always.

I spoke up. "They're not going to forget what you said."

His eyes stayed fixed on the screen, the reflection of his name staring back at him.

"That's not the point."

"No." I swallowed. "But it's part of it."

He blinked, slow and deliberate. "The part where they think I'm salvageable?"

"No." I turned to face him more fully. "The part where they remember you're human."

Micah exhaled through his nose. I reached for my coffee—stone cold now—and didn't bother drinking it. I only wanted something in my hands. Something real. I wanted to bridge the silence with more than words, but I didn't know how.

I turned to look at him, really see him.

My eyes fixed on the rough patch where his beard didn't quite grow even. Then, I studied the scar bisecting his eyebrow that most people mistook for tough-guy drama. It wasn't. He'd told me it was from falling face-first onto concrete after a practice when he was seventeen and too dizzy to stand up straight.

My voice was low. "Whatever they say, you did good."

Micah didn't argue. He didn't agree either.

He continued staring at the blank space where judgment would eventually appear.

"You meant it," I added. "That's why it hurts."

That got him. His eyelids fluttered. He didn't speak, but his hand drifted a little closer to mine. Not touching. Not even halfway there, but closer.

So, I waited.

The screen blinked back to life without warning.

One by one, the names reappeared. Cameras turned on again like eyes opening after a long blink—some hesitant, some sharp, and one or two already flicking toward emails on second monitors. It was an illusion of humanity, restored just enough to get through the final minutes.

The League VP was the last to show. Andrew Vaughn, square-jawed and flat-eyed, sat behind a desk that looked like it cost more than the whole rink in Marquette.

He leaned back in his chair, hands steepled like a man preparing to deliver a lecture, not a sentence.

"Keller."

Micah didn't answer. He stared into the screen, expression flat.

"You're reinstated, as follows on league rules."

The words landed without ceremony. No preamble. No justification. Just that: reinstated.

My breath caught—but Micah didn't flinch.

"Effective immediately, provided you comply with oversight."

Micah blinked once. "What kind of oversight."

"Six-month behavioral review window. Mandatory sessions with a league-assigned mental health professional. Weekly check-ins with your player rep. Any misconduct or off-book incidents will terminate reinstatement without appeal."

Micah didn't argue. Didn't object. He nodded. It was a single, steady tilt of the head.

Vaughn leaned forward. "This isn't a pass. It's a tether."

"I know."

"Good, because if you fuck up again, no one's going to come looking."

Micah's jaw flexed once, and then he said the quietest, most honest thing I'd ever heard from him.

"No one did the first time."

Vaughn didn't respond. Maybe he couldn't.

The meeting ended the way it began—blunt and cold. One click at a time, the cameras disappeared again.

And then it was just us: two men and a silent laptop.

Micah exhaled. Not a sigh—more like a pressure valve finally releasing.

I didn't speak. Neither did he.

We sat there, backs pressed to the couch we'd brought from the cabin. It sagged in the middle and held the shape of whoever needed it most.

I turned to Micah slowly, not asking anything.

He met my eyes.

Not smiling.

But there.

Still there.