Since I was a kid, making it into the World Hockey League was the ultimate goal. No relationship could match my first love, and after my rough childhood, I wasn't putting my heart on the line.
When Bellerive makes a successful bid to move the Califo...
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I wasn't able to sleep last night, even with Logan cuddled up to me in bed. Learning that he might be traded drove a wedge between us. At least on my end.
We're physically close, but mentally and emotionally, I'm smoldering. Little fires of doubt, angst, and fear, that I'm not sure I should put out. Let them build and rage. Let them burn down what Logan and I have built.
Maybe that would be for the best. If we're over at the end of the season, if we're not likely to work together next season, we don't have to end amicably. We can go out in a blaze.
It might be easier to hate him instead of feeling this desperate desire for our timelines to be more in sync. Right now, his career is the most important thing to him. And my career in Bellerive is the most important thing to me, followed very closely by starting a family with someone I love, someone who isn't asking me to sacrifice myself for their hopes and desires.
As much as I might want to believe that going out in a blaze of anger would be easier, better, even. I've never been one to blow up my life. It might explode around me, but I'm not the one lighting the fuse. I'm usually the one trying to frantically blow it out, usually at my own expense.
Knowing all that, I should stay out of the team's business. Logan didn't seem to care if he got traded, and that should be enough to make me want to stay out of it. His indifference was the sharpest knife, cutting deep. He even went so far as to say a trade might benefit his career. That should also force me to stay in my own, very successful, lane. The deal we made means that if he stays, we're done, and if he goes, we're done.
There's no battle to wage here.
But I'm a fixer, and the notion that he could have the best season of his career and his reward will be a trade? That doesn't seem right to me. An injustice, even. He shouldn't have to go where they tell him. When you're as good as him, you should get a choice.
The Bullets play at home tonight, and I'm already at the arena. I'm not quite pacing outside my dad's office door, but my behavior isn't far off. Normally, Dad's here hours before the game. Being a key player behind the scenes is a point of pride for him. It's one of the few community-focused things he's done that didn't involve my mother.
In Bellerive and in our family, he's been more of a supporting player or a background figure than the main attraction. Convincing a WHL franchise to take a chance on Bellerive was his pet project with King Alexander, and it's entirely possible it's the one accomplishment he's most proud of. It's certainly the first thing in his life, since he retired from a short career in finance, that I've seen him take seriously.
When he first told me about the team, I might have thought the whole idea was a bit silly—a professional hockey team here?—but that's not at all what I think now. The team seems to have become an unexpected unifying force across the country, something to be proud of. Even if the team isn't winning, Logan is.
