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River laughs — a real one, the specific laugh of a guy who’s realizing he actually belongs in this yard and not just tolerated by it. Beau catches my eye across the smoke from the grill. Something passes between us that doesn’t need words. He’s doing for River what he did for me. I know exactly what that’s worth.
“You’re staring,” Margo says. Quiet. Just for me.
“I’m not staring.”
“You’re doing the thing where you watch everyone and don’t say anything and think you’re being subtle about it.”
“I am being subtle about it.”
“You are the least subtle person I have ever met when it comes to noticing things.” She bumps her shoulder into mine. “It’s actually one of my favorite things about you. You catch everything. You just don’t say most of it.”
“Efficient.”
“Extremely.” She steals a chip off my plate, which she does constantly and pretends is an accident every single time. “What are you not saying right now?”
I look at Beau, at River, at the whole loud mess of the backyard. “That Beau’s good at this. The captain thing. Even off the ice.”
“I know.” She follows my eyes to the picnic table. “Sloane says the same thing. Says he does it without trying, which apparently makes it worse, because you can’t even accuse him of performing it.”
“He’d hate that description.”
“He would.” She smiles. “Don’t tell him I said it.”
Cash yells something about the burgers being done. The whole yard converges on the grill at once. Margo and I stay on the porch steps a beat longer than everyone else — not moving, just watching. And I think, not for the first time, that I could sit on these steps for the rest of my life and be entirely fine with that.
Sunday is slow in the specific way Sundays are supposed to be and rarely are during the season.
Morning lift at the facility. Not a real practice — just conditioning, the kind of thing Coach schedules the day after a big win so nobody’s legs seize up before the next one. Cash complains the entire time. Wyatt says nothing and outlifts everyone by a margin that’s honestly a little insulting. I work through my sets with the specific focus I bring to everything physical, and Beau’s there the whole time, brace and all, spotting for guys who need it even though he can’t touch a bar himself right now.
Watching him do it is its own kind of instructive. The way he racks weight for Cash without making it a production. The way he catches Wyatt’s form on a set and quietly corrects it before it becomes a habit. The specific patience of a captain who’s found a way to lead a room even from the sideline.
“You don’t have to be here,” I tell him, between sets, sweat already soaking through my shirt.
“I want to be here.” He adjusts the pins on the rack, gets ready to spot Cash’s next set. “I miss this. The room. Even the parts I can’t do right now.”
“Three more weeks.”
“Three more weeks.” He says it like a countdown he’s keeping in his chest. “I’ve been cleared for light stuff starting next week. Coach wants me skating by conference finals, just to have the legs under me for next season.”
“You’ll be back before Frozen Four.”
“That’s the plan.” He spots Cash’s bar, counts the reps out loud, gives him the nod when he racks it clean. Somewhere behind us, Cash mutters something about his shoulders being on fire, which Beau ignores entirely, because Beau has heard every possible complaint Cash has about every possible exercise and has stopped registering most of them as actual information.
“You good, watching from the sideline?” I ask. Genuine question. I know what it costs him.
He’s quiet for a second, resetting the pins for my next set. “Some days. Some days it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done — standing there watching guys do the thing I’ve done my whole life and not being able to join in.” He shrugs, one-shouldered, the brace side staying still. “But I’ve got a good reason to be patient about it. And I’ve got a good group to be patient with.”
“Sappy.”
“I contain multitudes.” He racks the bar for my next set. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
I get through the set. He counts it out loud the whole way, same as he did for Cash, same as he’ll do for Wyatt after me, and there’s something steadying about that — the specific consistency of a guy who treats every person in this room like they matter exactly the same amount, captain or freshman, star or depth guy. It’s part of why this team works. It’s part of why I ended up here in the first place, back before any of this, back when Beau Sorensen decided I was worth the effort before I’d given him any real reason to think so.
Then, quieter, just to me, while Cash and Wyatt are arguing about something across the room: “You looking forward to the call tomorrow?”
I hadn’t told him the exact time. I told him it was happening. Apparently that was enough for him to be tracking it.
