My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Ninety-Five

The Saturday outreach session started at nine, and by tradition Richard had never missed one when he was home, not once in the four years since he'd taken on a regular coaching slot with the youngest skaters — the six- and seven-year-olds who still fell more than they glided, whose parents stood at the glass with the particular anxious hope of people watching their kids try something hard for the first time.

He was lacing a small skater named Dario into his gear, double-knotting laces the boy's own fingers weren't quite strong enough to manage yet, when his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket with a text from the Thunderbolts' player development coordinator. Following up on our call — would love to get you into a private skills evaluation next month, ahead of draft rankings. Let us know your availability.

Richard read it twice, the way he'd read every scouting communication since Central Scouting's letter, and then he tucked the phone away and finished tying Dario's skates, because Dario was looking up at him with the specific trust of a kid who didn't know or care that his coach might be a future professional hockey player, and that trust felt, in that particular moment, like it mattered more than the text did.

It wasn't until the session ended, until the last small skater had been walked back to a waiting parent and the ice had been resurfaced for the next group, that the two things — the text and the trust — sat down together in his chest and started arguing.

He found his father in the equipment room, sorting through a bin of donated helmets that had come in that week for the program's expanding gear-lending closet, and stood in the doorway for a moment before Adrian noticed him.

"You've got a face on," Adrian said, not looking up from the helmets. "The face you get when something's chewing on you."

"The Thunderbolts want a private evaluation next month. Ahead of the draft rankings coming out."

"That's good news."

"I know it's good news." Richard leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching his father's hands move methodically through the bin — checking straps, checking padding, setting aside the ones that needed replacing before they could go to a kid. "It's just — it's the same week as the summer session finals. The one where Dario and his group do their little end-of-year skate for their families. I've been coaching that kid since September. I promised him I'd be there."

Adrian set down the helmet he was holding and finally looked up. "Ah."

"Don't say 'ah' like that. Like you already know exactly what I'm going to say next."

"I'm not saying anything yet. I'm listening." Adrian gestured to an overturned bucket next to his, and Richard sat, the two of them at eye level now amid a room full of donated gear that smelled like rubber and old leather and years of other people's outgrown equipment.

"I don't know how to be torn about this and still be a good person," Richard said finally, the words coming out rougher than he meant them to. "Because on paper it's not even a real choice. A private evaluation with a professional team, ahead of my draft year, versus a kid's summer hockey recital. Anybody would tell me to take the evaluation. It's not close."

"Is that what's actually bothering you? That it's not close?"

Richard was quiet for a moment. "No," he admitted. "What's bothering me is that it should feel like it's not close, and it doesn't. I keep picturing Dario's face if I'm not there, and it makes my chest hurt worse than missing the evaluation would."

Adrian didn't answer right away. He picked the helmet back up, turned it over in his hands, checked the chin strap out of old habit before setting it in the "keep" pile.

"When I was your age," he said finally, "I thought love for the game and love for people were supposed to be the same thing, pointed in the same direction all the time. Turned out that's not how it works. Sometimes they pull against each other, hard, and you don't get to pretend they don't just because it would be simpler." He looked at his son directly. "Your grandfather spent decades believing the game — or the business, or the reputation, whatever you want to call it — had to come first, always, no exceptions, because that's what he thought love required of him. It took him a heart attack and half a lifetime to understand that wasn't true. That real love, the kind worth building a life around, doesn't actually ask you to choose it over every other good thing. It just asks you to choose honestly, every time, instead of on autopilot."

"So what's the honest choice here?"

"I can't tell you that. That's not a cop-out, Richie, I mean it — I genuinely don't know, and I wouldn't trust myself to know, because it's not my choice to make. But I can tell you what I've learned about telling the difference between the two." Adrian set the bin aside and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "One kind of pull is fear talking. It sounds like I have to do this or I'll lose my only chance, my only worth, my only shot at mattering. That kind of pull, I chased for years, and it cost me nearly everything good in my life before I understood what it actually was. The other kind of pull is love talking, plain and simple — I want to be there because that particular kid, in that particular moment, matters to me. That kind of pull is almost always worth listening to, even when it's inconvenient. Even when it doesn't look impressive on paper."

Richard sat with that for a long moment, turning it over. "How do I know which one this is?"

"I think you already know," Adrian said gently. "I think that's exactly why your chest hurts more at the thought of missing Dario's skate than at the thought of missing the evaluation. Fear doesn't usually feel like that. Fear feels like panic. What you're describing sounds like grief — grief over the idea of letting someone down who trusts you. That's a different thing entirely."

He called the development coordinator back that evening, sitting on the back porch steps with the whole conversation with his father still settling into place, and asked, carefully, whether there was any flexibility on the date.

There was, as it turned out — more than he expected. The coordinator, a woman named Priya Okafor who Richard had spoken to twice before and liked for her directness, laughed a little when he explained the conflict.

"You want to reschedule a private pro evaluation because of a kids' hockey recital," she said, not unkindly, more like she was turning the fact over with genuine curiosity. "I don't think I've had a prospect say that to me before."

"I know how it sounds."

"It doesn't sound bad, Richard. It sounds like exactly the kind of thing our scouting notes already flagged about you — the leadership stuff, the maturity stuff. For what it's worth, I think that instinct is going to matter more to your career, long-term, than one evaluation date ever could. We'll move it two weeks. No harm done."

Richard hung up and sat on the porch steps for a long moment afterward, feeling something settle in his chest that felt less like relief and more like recognition — the quiet, unglamorous sense of having chosen correctly, even though nothing about the choice had been dramatic or obvious from the outside.

Dario's summer skate, when it came, was exactly as small and unremarkable as these things always were — a handful of six- and seven-year-olds wobbling through a simplified routine of stops and crossovers in front of a rink half-full of parents holding up phones, more determination on the ice than actual skill, more pride in the stands than the moment probably objectively warranted.

Richard stood at the boards through the whole thing, calling out encouragement, catching Dario when he stumbled at the very end and turning it into a laugh instead of a fall the boy would remember badly. Afterward, Dario's mother found Richard at the glass, her eyes a little wet, and thanked him for something he almost hadn't thought worth thanking anyone for.

"He talks about you all the time," she said. "Coach Richard this, Coach Richard that. I don't think you understand what it means to a kid like him, having someone he looks up to actually show up. Really show up. Not just for the big stuff."

Richard thought, standing there, of his father's words in the equipment room — love doesn't ask you to choose it over every other good thing, it just asks you to choose honestly — and understood, maybe for the first time with real clarity, that he hadn't actually been torn between two loves at all. He'd been torn between one love and one fear wearing love's clothing, and it had taken his father, and Dario's stumbling, laughing recital, to show him which was which.

He texted Talia that night: I think I finally get what Dad's been trying to tell me for years. Might take me a while to say it out loud right, but I get it now.

Her reply came back within minutes: Take all the time you need. I'll be here when you're ready to say it.