Page 158 of Wild Card 13

Fraser had already moved toward a stack of folding chairs near the spectator section without being asked. One of the volunteers was struggling to separate two that had locked together. Fraser set his coffee down, stepped in, and freed them with a practical twist of his hands.

Behind me, Ty’s voice dropped low. “You came.” He had gone still a few feet away from his family, the bundles of sticks forgotten beside the equipment table. His eyes moved over Marion, Ruth, Hal, his father. For half a second, something young and unguarded crossed his face.

Marion smiled at him. “You said it was important.”

Ty swallowed. “Yeah.”

“So we came,” Fraser stated, as though that explained everything.

It did. And that was what made it unbearable.

Ty glanced at me then, and whatever he saw in my face softened the edges of his own expression. He did not smile. He did not makea joke. He only looked at me long enough for the old ache of wanting to belong to the Burns family to settle directly beneath my breastbone.

A child near the check-in table shouted, “Buzz!”

The spell broke. Ty turned toward the sound, and the morning pulled him into motion.

For the next hour, he was everywhere without making himself the center of anything.

He knelt beside a boy named Eli who informed him that his shot accuracy was “medium good,” which Ty accepted with the seriousness of a contract negotiation. He helped adjust the grip tape on a short stick after asking the Mighty Blades coordinator first. He let a little girl in a sled score on him three times and reacted to each goal like his professional reputation had been personally damaged. He made a father laugh quietly when the man looked close to tears watching his daughter take her first lap around the cone course.

Alois was different. Alois did not fill space. He settled it. He stood near the supported-skating station, broad and silent in a black Frosthawks jacket, listening more than speaking. Children approached him with the cautious fascination usually reserved for statues that might possibly answer questions. When they did, he lowered himself immediately, not in a way that looked practiced for cameras, but like his body understood the simple math of not looming over someone smaller.

Bea watched him from near the media tape line, her mouth tight as she spoke into her radio. A sponsor representative had arrived early with a photographer who seemed to believe consent forms were suggestions and access badges were decorative.

I was two steps from intervening when Alois crossed behind Bea and leaned down slightly, his mouth close to her ear.

He said something in French.

I did not understand the words. I understood the result.

Bea’s shoulders lowered. Her hand relaxed around the radio. She glanced up at him, and whatever passed between them was small enough to pass on a breath. Then Bea turned back to the sponsor representative and dismantled him politely enough that he thanked her afterward.

I looked away because watching them made something in me feel exposed.

Emotionally guarded men were supposed to be dangerous.

Alois Müller stood beside the woman he loved and made her steadier without needing anyone else to know he had done it.

That complicated things.

I did not have room for complicated things.

“Lucy?”

“Yes?” I asked, turning toward a woman with dark espresso hair twisted into a messy bun, her cardigan slipping off one shoulder as she balanced a backpack and a water bottle while holding the hand of a little boy in a Frosthawks hoodie three sizes too large.

“I’m Tina Pappas.” Her smile was warm but tired around the edges. “My sister’s son is Niko. He’s in group two. I just wanted to say thank you before everything gets too busy.”

“For what?”

“For making this feel…” She glanced around the rink, eyes moving over the quiet room sign, the volunteer table, the low music, the earmuffs now lined neatly beside the check-in area. “Possible.”

The boy beside her studied me with serious brown eyes.

“Theo,” Tina said gently. “Say hi.”

“Hi,” he whispered, then looked past me toward the equipment table. “Are those sticks sorted by height or by blade curve?”