Page 75 of The Grumpy Defenseman

It was very annoying that the one had to be me.

His forehead rested against my stomach for one second.

Then he said, very quietly, “Thank you.”

And that nearly finished me.

Not the bruise.

Not even the kiss.

The thank you.

The sound of a man who had finally let someone see the cost and had not been left alone with it.

Chapter twenty-eight

Evan

The conference room had the particular smell of high-stakes negotiation: dry-erase markers and the controlled perspiration of men who were paid to remain calm while discussing numbers that could buy houses.

Four people in the room. Three across from me.

Mark, my agent, with his laptop angled so I could not see the screen, which meant the numbers on it were designed to motivate me, and he was not sure they would.

Silas Vane, tie loosened, but expression buttoned tight, leaning back with the practiced neutrality of a man who had learned silence could do half the work for him.

David Walsh, executive leadership in a tailored suit, present because risk always wanted a witness.

Sully was not at the table.

That told me plenty. The head coach belonged in these meetings. Defensive pairings for next year’s second line were a coach question, and what a trade did to Brick and the rookies was a coach question. If Sully had been in the room, the offer would have come with those questions attached.

Walsh did not want those questions.

Walsh wanted the deal.

Sully’s absence was a decision somebody had made that morning, and the decision said this was not a coach conversation. It was a front-office conversation with the agent attached.

And me.

Silas slid a folder across the table.

“Eight years. Eleven-point-two AAV. Full no-movement clause through year five. Modified for six through eight.”

Eighty-nine-point-six million dollars.

The number sat in the air the way a puck sat on the blue line before a power play: loaded, waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Mark leaned forward. “This is the best offer you’re going to see, Evan. Seattle’s committed. They’ve restructured their cap to make room. They want you as the cornerstone of their rebuild.”

Cornerstone.

The word was supposed to feel like an honor. It felt like a relocation notice.

Across the table, Walsh had not spoken. He was listening. He had set his pen on a legal pad and had not picked it up again. When he shifted his weight, the unhurried adjustment of a man who was negotiating and wanted the person on the other end to think he was not, every head at the table tracked the movement without meaning to.

That was the kind of authority executive leadership bought you. You did not have to say things. You just had to sit there while the room noticed you had not.