The two weeks that the compliance office had promised turned into the longest stretch of Reese's life, longer, somehow, than the eleven months Cole had spent rebuilding his ankle, longer than every lonely lunch she'd eaten alone during training camp in August. Time had a way of stretching itself thin around uncertainty, and this particular uncertainty — whether the thing she'd fought her whole life for could be taken from her over something she hadn't even chosen to be reckless about — stretched thinner than anything she'd survived before.
She kept practicing. That was the one mercy in it: nobody had told her to stop skating while the review happened, and she suspected that was deliberate, some quiet acknowledgment from Halloran that benching her before a decision was made would be its ow
