Page 358 of The Lies We Play
“Alberto Montoya Navarro Wade.”
My full name in his mouth is a leash tug. Something hot rises in me—an urge to laugh, to curse, to throw my phone hard enough to hear it crack, just so something breaks that isn’t inside me.
I want to yell I quit because I’m fucking done. Instead, “Just fucking say it,” I snap.
“They’re trading you.” He doesn’t hesitate. That’s what guts me. He doesn’t circle it. He doesn’t soften it. He doesn’t pretend I’m a person before he makes me a headline.
My body goes still. Not shock. Shock is for people who expect fairness.
This is the familiar slide of the floor shifting under my feet, the same sensation I’ve carried since I was six, and I learned nothing stays—parents, bedrooms, routines, promises.
“They’re what?” I say, because if I make him repeat it, maybe it won’t feel real.
“They’re trading you,” he repeats, like he’s reading the weather report. “It’s done. It’s going to be announced soon.”
I stare at my kitchen counter. The mail I haven’t opened. A jar of peanut butter and the butter knife in the sink.
Everything looks normal, which feels like the cruelest part. Like the universe is daring me to fall apart while my apartment keeps pretending it’s just another day in the life of Alberto Montoya Navarro Wade.
“Again,” I say, and the word comes out low.
He exhales. “Monty—”
“Again,” I repeat, louder this time, and my voice sounds like someone else’s. Like the version of me that still believed hard work earned stability isn’t dead and gone. “I have the best save percentage in the league. I have the stats. I have the wins. I have the reputation. I have—” My voice scrapes. “Boston fucking needs me.”
They also need a defense that doesn’t treat me like a practice net, but that’s not the point. The point is I did my job. I did it well. I did it anyway.
“They do,” he says quickly. “This isn’t about performance. It’s about another team needing you more—and willing to pay a lot for you.”
“It never is,” I mutter, because that’s the truth no one puts in the press release. You can be excellent and still be disposable. You can be the reason they’re still winning and still be the first thing they move when the math demands it.
He starts talking. Explaining. Framing. Packaging me into something digestible.
“It’s a strong opportunity. Your cap hit works for them. Your contract structure—”
“Stop,” I cut in, because if he says “opportunity” one more time, I’m going to do something violent with the blender I don’t even own. “Just tell me where the fuck I’m heading this time.”
“You’re going to the Portland Orcas.”
My mouth goes dry.
“The Orcas traded me during my rookie year,” I say, because rage is easier than the tiny, brutal fear crawling up my spine. “Why the fuck would they want me again?”
“If you recall,” he says, slipping into salesman mode so hard I can practically hear him smiling, “they’ve been under new management since then, and the franchise moved from Vancouver to Portland. Mills Aldridge, the new owner, believes you’re the key to taking them into a championship window again. Their captain is retiring this year.”
Retiring.
My mind spins through the familiar cycle: new city, new team, new promises, new interviews where I pretend I’m excited. I can already see the welcome video. The jersey reveal. The press conference where I say all the right things while my life gets shoved into boxes.
I still have years left in me, but I’m also so fucking tired.
“You like Oregon,” he continues, like he’s offering me a consolation prize. “Didn’t you train with Philippe Lafontaine?”
Juniper Ridge punches through my ribs.
And then her name follows—Vesper Lafontaine—bright and immediate, like my body says it before my brain can stop it.
Her.
