Todos os capítulos de Behind the Ice Wall : Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

SKY’S POV The glove save happened in the third period, and by the final horn I already knew it would be the highlight of the whole series. Thirty-two shots stopped. A three-goal cushion. The kind of win that should have sent me home buzzing for hours. I sat in the locker room postgame, gear half off, listening to the noise around me, and felt almost nothing. Marchetti dropped down next to me, still catching his breath. “That glove save. That’s going to be the highlight of the whole series.” “Good save.” “Good save. That’s it? You just posted the best individual moment of the playoffs so far and I get ‘good save.’” He studied me a second. “You good?” “Yeah.” He didn’t push it, though I caught him glancing back at me twice more before he moved on to celebrate with guys who actually seemed to be enjoying the win the way it deserved to be enjoyed. The postgame interviews went the way they always did — questions about the save, about the series, about whether I felt like I was fi

SKY’S POV I caught myself checking a spot near the tunnel entrance that hadn’t held her in weeks — old instinct, the way you’d reach for a phantom limb, before I’d even set up in my crease for morning skate. She wasn’t there. She rarely was anymore, not since the distance started. Some part of me kept checking anyway. I ran into her twice that week without either of us planning it. Once in the arena’s back hallway, both of us headed toward the same exit at the same time, our eyes catching for a second longer than a passing colleague’s would have before either of us broke away first. Neither of us said anything. We just nodded, the same careful nod we’d perfected over the past month, and kept walking in opposite directions once we’d cleared the doorway. The second time was in the parking structure, both of us reaching our cars around the same hour, closer to each other than the hallway had allowed. She noticed me. I noticed her. Neither of us crossed the distance to say hello. I

SKY’S POV The review concluded on a Tuesday, and the outcome landed in my inbox before I’d even heard it from Reyes directly — a formal notice, three paragraphs of careful language, informing me that “in light of ongoing organizational concerns,” my treatment would transition to a different provider effective immediately, with Dr. Frank available only in a “consulting capacity” going forward. I read it twice, standing in my kitchen, feeling something colder than I expected given how much distance we’d already built between us these past weeks. I called Reyes. “I saw it,” he said, before I asked. “I fought it. Wasn’t enough. Marcus signed off, and once Marcus signs off on something like this, it’s done.” “Effective immediately means what, exactly?” “Means your session tomorrow gets handled by someone new. Means Amira’s officially off your file.” He sounded as tired as I felt. “I’m sorry, Sky. I did what I could.” I tried to respect it. That was the strange part — after

SKY’S POV The photo didn’t have Amira’s face in it — the angle was wrong, her back mostly turned — but it didn’t need her face. By Monday morning, three different hockey forums had already connected enough dots to name her outright. By Monday afternoon, one of the beat writers who covered us regularly had all but confirmed it in a post that stopped just short of using her name directly. I read the comments once, which was a mistake I wouldn’t repeat. Strangers speculating about a woman they’d never met, about a relationship that didn’t officially exist, building a story out of one blurry photograph and months of half-confirmed rumors that had never fully gone away. Somebody had counted how many times we’d been photographed together over the season and posted it as an exhibit. Three times, they said. As if three times proved anything at all beyond the fact that we worked in the same building. Practice that week felt different in a way I recognized from months earlier, back when

SKY’S POV At the time, I had no idea Amira was thinking about leaving the organization. All I knew was that something had changed. The silences on her end grew longer. The version of her voice I caught in passing hallway moments sounded thinner than it used to. Weeks later she’d tell me she’d already been considering walking away, back around this same stretch. At the time, all I had was the silence itself, and the growing sense that something on her end had changed too. We weren’t supposed to be texting at all anymore. That made the silence easier to explain, but somehow harder to live with. I kept my phone in my pocket most nights instead of on the nightstand, like distance from the object itself might make the rule easier to keep. I broke it once, a single line asking how she was holding up under the ongoing scrutiny, telling myself a plain check-in didn’t count as the kind of contact we’d agreed to avoid. It sat unanswered for two full days before a short reply finally came b