Page 61 of The Grumpy Defenseman

Retrievable.

At the corner of the front-office wing, the ceiling camera still had its status light on. The building was actively monitored, because the building was always actively monitored.

I noted both things. Thought about Silas saying we would be having a different conversation, with more people than just him.

I kept walking.

If this cost me the job, it cost me the job.

I was past the point where the job was the thing that mattered most.

The weight-room door was cracked open. The sound of plates came through: the soft clink of metal meeting metal, the controlled exhale of effort.

He was in there.

Of course he was.

The man’s coping mechanisms had two settings: skate until he could not think or lift until he could not feel. Either way, the prescription was the same: exhaust the body until the mind went quiet.

I pushed the door open.

He was at the squat rack. Shirt dark with sweat, forearms tensed around the bar, mouth set with the concentration of a man trying to bury something heavy under something heavier. The weight room was otherwise empty: just him and the iron, the low hum of the HVAC, and the kind of silence that felt less like absence and more like pressure.

He did not see me at first. He was mid-rep, deep in the movement, his body locked into the rhythm athletes used the way other people used therapy.

Up. Down. Reset.

The world shrinking to the width of a barbell and the distance between the floor and standing.

He racked the bar. Exhaled. Reached for the towel hanging beside him.

Then he looked up.

And froze.

Not the defensive freeze I had seen a dozen times. Not the walls going up, the face rearranging into something controlled and safe. This was different. This was a man caught between one version of himself and another, and both of them were looking at me.

“Sam?” His voice was rough, like he had not used it in hours, which he probably had not.

I stepped into the room. Let the door close behind me.

The sound of it clicking shut was definite. It meant something neither of us could pretend it did not.

“I needed to see you,” I said.

His hands tightened on the towel. Not nervous. More like his body was processing information his brain had not approved.

“Sam…” he started, and I heard the beginning of a sentence that would have been reasonable and measured and absolutely wrong for this moment.

“No.” I stepped closer. “Let me talk.”

He closed his mouth.

Good.

I took another step.

We were close now. Close enough that the heat from his workout radiated toward me, close enough that the scent of clean sweat and soap registered in my lungs like a language I had been learning without knowing it.