SKY’S POV
Five days into avoiding each other on purpose, and I understood something I hadn’t fully accounted for when we agreed to it. Managing anxiety alone was one thing. Managing it alone while also missing the person who’d taught me how to manage it was a different weight entirely, one I hadn’t budgeted for when the plan sounded reasonable over the phone.
Game one of the next round arrived regardless of any of that. Elimination hockey now, single mistakes carrying more weight than they had all season, and I skated out for warm-ups with a version of the old tightness already sitting low in my chest before a single shot had been fired.
I told myself I could handle it. I’d handled worse.
The first period went fine, mechanically. I stopped what I needed to stop, communicated with my
