Chapter 115 The Life I Chose
Crew's POV,
I found Tyler in the weight room at 6 AM.
Not because I'd planned it. I came in early to review game tape before the rest of the team arrived and there he was; headphones in, bar loaded heavy, working through something he clearly hadn't slept off.
I watched him through the glass for a moment before going in.
He saw me in the mirror but didn't stop. Just kept lifting. Controlled rage in every rep.
I pulled up a bench and sat down.
He finished his set, racked the bar, pulled out one earbud. "I've got another forty minutes."
"I know. I'm not here to kick you out."
"Then what do you want?"
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. "To talk. Just us. No team meeting, no management, no audience."
Tyler grabbed his water bottle. "There's nothing to talk about."
"The petition said otherwise."
His jaw tightened. "The petition was stupid."
"Yeah it was." I kept my voice even. "But the feeling behind it wasn't. You're angry. You think I quit. And you've been letting that poison the room for three months."
"You did quit." The words came out flat. Not cruel though, just… honest. "You were one of the best right wings in the league and you just... stopped."
"I retired."
"At thirty-one."
"Yeah." I didn't flinch from it. "At thirty-one."
Tyler set down his water bottle and finally turned to face me properly. He was twenty-three, all sharp edges and unspent fire. I recognized the look. I'd worn it for years.
"I don't get it," he said. "You had years left. Good years. And you just walked away."
"I walked toward something."
"Your family." He said it like it was a punchline. Like choosing Rose and Harper over hockey was a joke he hadn't figured out yet.
"My sobriety," I said. "My daughter. My wife. My life." I held his gaze. "Tyler, I played through three years of oxycodone addiction because I thought hockey was the only thing that mattered. I almost died on a ballroom floor because I couldn't imagine a version of myself that wasn't a hockey player. And when I finally got clean and built something worth living for… I made a choice. I chose to keep it."
The weight room went quiet except for the hum of the ventilation system.
"That's not quitting," I said. "That's the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than any game. Any hit. Any playoff run."
Tyler looked at his hands.
"The guys respect you," he said finally. Quiet. Some of the edge gone. "Most of them. It's just–" He stopped.
"Just what?"
"It's hard to take coaching advice from someone who walked away from the thing you're still bleeding for."
There it was. The real thing underneath all the noise.
"I know," I said. "And I'm not going to tell you that'll change overnight. But Tyler–I didn't stop loving hockey when I retired. I stopped letting it be the only reason I stayed alive." I stood up. "There's a difference. And one day, hopefully not the way I learned it, you'll understand that."
I headed for the door.
"Lawson."
I stopped.
"The petition." Tyler's voice was rough. "I'm shutting it down today."
I nodded once. Didn't make a big deal of it.
"Film review at nine," I said. "Don't be late."
I walked out before either of us could make it weird.
……
In the hallway, I leaned against the wall for a second and exhaled.
Twenty-nine months sober and I still had moments where I felt the old pull — not for pills, but for the simpler version of myself. The one who only had to be good at hockey.
Then my phone buzzed.
Harper: Rose just tried to feed the dog her entire breakfast. We don’t have a dog.
Apparently… we have a very hungry wall. Hahaha.
A photo followed. Rose in her high chair, arm outstretched toward the kitchen wall, completely
serious about it.
I laughed out loud in an empty hallway at 6 AM.
Yeah. I chose right.