Alle Kapitel von Behind the Ice Wall : Kapitel 61 – Kapitel 70

SKY’S POV Game five went our way, a clean win that pushed the series to 3–2 in our favor, and I left the arena that night with the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from playing well instead of just surviving. Amira texted before I’d even reached my car. Saw the highlights. That third-period save might be the best thing you’ve done all postseason. Come celebrate with me. Not publicly. Just — come over. The invitation sat on my screen a long moment before I answered it, both of us understanding exactly what we were agreeing to by saying yes. • Her apartment looked different from what I remembered from the handful of times I’d been there months earlier, before any of this had gotten complicated — same furniture, same quiet warmth to the place, but walking through her door now felt different, heavier with everything that had happened since the last time. “You look tired,” she said, taking my jacket, studying my face the way she used to during sessions, except now there was

SKY’S POV The offseason started differently than any other I remembered, no immediate rush of exit meetings and highlight reels to distract from everything else sitting underneath the loss. Instead, for the first time in years, I had nothing but open time, and a woman who’d stopped pretending she wanted anything less than to spend most of it with me. We fell into something that felt, almost frighteningly, like an ordinary relationship. Dinners at her apartment, careful about which restaurants we risked in public, long mornings that stretched later than either of us intended because neither of us had anywhere urgent to be. “This is dangerous,” she said one morning, still in bed, sunlight cutting across the room in a way that made the whole apartment feel warmer than it probably was. “How easy this feels. I keep waiting for my instincts to kick in and remind me why we’re supposed to be careful.” “Maybe easy isn’t the enemy this time.” “Maybe. Or maybe easy is exactly what gets peo

SKY’S POV Training camp started that week, and with it came the particular exhaustion of two-a-days, media obligations, and the growing realization that the private world Amira and I had built that summer was about to get significantly harder to protect once the season’s actual schedule took over. “We need one more normal thing,” she said, a few days into camp, catching me between sessions. “Before everything gets complicated again. Something we’ve never actually done.” “Like what?” “A real date, Sky. A movie. Popcorn. Sitting in a dark theater like two people who don’t have to think about cameras or hearings or any of it.” I laughed before I could stop myself. “You know that’s basically impossible for me at this point, right? I can’t exactly walk into a theater as Sky Wilson.” “So don’t,” she said, a mischievous look crossing her face. “Disguise yourself. I want to see you actually try.” • I took the challenge more seriously than I probably should have, showing up at her apa

SKY’S POV We pulled back after that conversation about the bartender, careful the way Amira had insisted, no more window seats, no more small risks that felt harmless in the moment. For a few weeks, it worked. The season kept moving, my form stayed strong, and whatever had been watching us seemed to fade into nothing more than a lingering unease neither of us mentioned directly anymore. I invited her to my apartment more often instead, safer than anywhere public, and one evening in late October, sitting together after a home game, I found myself talking about things I’d never fully said out loud to anyone. “My father used to sit in the stands during my college games,” I told her, the memory arriving without much warning. “Never said much afterward. Just a nod if I played well. Nothing if I didn’t.” “That sounds lonely.” “It was. I didn’t understand that until years later, honestly. I just thought that’s what love from a parent looked like — conditional on performance, quiet unle

SKY’S POV It arrived on a Tuesday, a plain manila envelope left with the front desk of my building, no return address, no note beyond my name printed in block letters across the front. I almost didn’t open it right away, assuming it was something mundane, a fan letter forwarded through the wrong channel, the kind of thing that occasionally found its way to players despite the organization’s usual filtering. The doorman mentioned it had been dropped off by hand, not mailed, sometime that morning before he’d come on shift. Nobody on camera. Nobody who signed anything. I opened it standing in my kitchen, coffee still in hand, and felt the mug nearly slip from my fingers when I saw what was inside. Photographs. Four of them, printed on ordinary paper, no message accompanying them, none needed. The first showed Amira and me outside the movie theater, my cap pulled low, her laughing at something just out of frame, timestamped from the night of our cinema date months earlier. The secon