Page 101 of The Grumpy Defenseman

For a while, neither of us spoke.

The rink lights clicked once overhead and brightened by a fraction. The building was starting to wake up around us.

Soon, there would be staff in the halls. Skates on rubber. Coffee in paper cups. Men shouting across the locker room about tape, sticks, and whatever argument Brick had decided was worth turning into a group activity.

But not yet.

For another minute, it was just the two of us on the bench, hand in hand, with the ice in front of us and the morning waiting behind the doors.

“There is one more thing,” she said.

I looked at her.

“It’s out of the system,” she said. “Sandra and I cleared the review path, the cache, the mirrored folder, and the draft deck. Everything the building can touch.”

I nodded.

“I know.”

She paused. “The local copy was still on my laptop. I deleted it before I came here. It was yours before it was ever mine.”

Her fingers tightened around mine.

“I needed you to know there isn’t a file waiting somewhere because I couldn’t let go.”

I looked at her for a long second.

“Thank you.”

“Okay.”

The rink stayed quiet around us.

No file in the system. No image waiting in a sponsor deck. No private frame sitting on her laptop, asking to be turned into proof. Just the memory of what she had almost taken, the boundary she had named, and the choice she had made to give it back.

It did not fix everything.

But it mattered.

“Thank you,” I said.

Her eyes moved over my face, careful now in a way that hurt and helped at the same time.

“I don’t want to do that again,” she said.

“Then don’t.”

“I won’t.”

I believed her.

That did not make the bruise disappear.

I held onto her hand and let myself feel the relief of that without mistaking it for repair.

It was choosing the next honest thing, then the one after that.

This was one.