Chapter 163 Retired Life

Chapter 163 Retired Life
Carter's house looked strange without a hockey bag by the door, the front hall clear for what Tyler suspected was the first July in nine years, and Carter himself answered wearing shorts and an old T-shirt instead of the tailored suits Tyler had gotten used to seeing him in during every offseason media obligation.

"You look like a regular person," Tyler said, stepping inside.

"I am a regular person now. Terrifying concept. Took me a week to figure out what to do with my mornings." Carter led him through to the kitchen, where a half-finished crossword sat on the counter beside two mugs of coffee already poured. "Turns out the answer is crosswords and entirely too much coffee."

"Sounds like a rough transition."

"It's not rough. It's just different. Good different, mostly." Carter handed him a mug and leaned against the counter. "I keep waiting to miss it and mostly just don't. Maybe that comes later. Right now I'm just enjoying not having anywhere I need to be at six in the morning."

They talked for a while about nothing important, the crossword, a fishing trip Carter was planning, the ridiculous amount of mail still arriving addressed to a career that no longer technically existed. Tyler found himself relaxing into it, the easy rhythm of a friendship that had never really needed hockey as its excuse even though hockey was how it had started.

"I'm starting something this summer," Tyler said eventually. "A camp. For kids who've had a rough go of it. Been talking to the league about funding, talking to Avery about how to structure it so it actually helps instead of just being a photo op."

Carter's eyebrows went up, real interest replacing the easy small talk. "What kind of rough go?"

"Kids who've lost someone. Kids who've done something they regret and can't find their way back. The stuff I went through, basically, except I want to catch them younger than I got caught." Tyler turned his mug slowly, working through how much to say. "I keep thinking about what would have happened if someone had reached me at fourteen instead of letting me spiral until I was twenty-four and swinging a stick at another player's head. I can not go back and fix that. Figured I could at least try to be that for somebody else."

"That's a hell of a thing to build." Carter studied him with real pride, the kind that didn't need many words to land fully. "You want help? I've got nothing but time now, and I know how to run a practice."

"I was hoping you'd offer. Wasn't sure how to ask a retired legend to volunteer his summer."

"You didn't need to ask carefully. Just needed to ask." Carter clapped him on the shoulder, the gesture that had followed Tyler through four years now, familiar as breathing. "Count me in. Whatever it needs. I meant what I said in that press conference, about wanting to spend whatever I've got left being useful to people who need it."

They spent the next hour sketching rough plans on the back of Carter's abandoned crossword: structure and staffing and which local rink might donate ice time. Tyler felt something settle into place that had been circling loosely in his head for months, finally finding its actual shape now that someone else believed in it enough to help build it.

"Sofia knows about this yet?" Carter asked.

"She's known since the idea first started. She's the one who suggested talking to Avery about the structure instead of just winging it based on my own experience alone." Tyler smiled, thinking of her at the kitchen table two weeks ago, sketching out ideas with the same careful precision she brought to lesson plans, treating his camp idea with the same seriousness she gave everything that mattered. "She's better at building things than she gives herself credit for."

"Takes one to know one." Carter poured them both more coffee. "How's the baby thing going, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Not yet. First month didn't take." Tyler found he could say it plainly now, without the old flinch he might once have carried into a sentence like that. "We're okay with it. Taking it as information, not failure."

"That's the right way to hold it. Took my sister three years before her first came along. Worth every bit of the wait, she says now, though I imagine it didn't feel that way every single month in between."

"No, I imagine it doesn't." Tyler looked out at Carter's backyard through the kitchen window, a garden clearly still finding its shape, half-planted beds and a scattering of tools left out from some recent project. "You planting something?"

"Vegetables. Turns out I've got the time for that now too." Carter grinned, easy, entirely at peace with the strange new shape of his days. "Nine years of being told exactly where to be and when. Now I get to decide everything myself, one tomato plant at a time."

Tyler laughed, and they spent the rest of the visit outside, Carter showing off his half-finished garden with the same careful pride he'd once brought to breaking down game film. Tyler thought, driving home later, that retirement suited Carter exactly the way winning always had, quietly, completely, without a single wasted motion.

He called Sofia from the car before pulling out of Carter's driveway, unable to wait until he got home to tell her.

"Carter's in," he said, before she'd even finished saying hello. "For the camp. Wants to help run drills, whatever we need."

"Tyler, that's wonderful." Her voice carried real warmth through the phone, the particular delight she reserved for things that mattered to him specifically. "Kids are going to lose their minds having an actual champion showing them how to hold a stick."

"That's not really the point of it."

"I know. But it doesn't hurt, either. Sometimes the door that gets a kid through it is smaller than the thing that keeps them there once they're inside." She paused. "I'm proud of you. This whole idea. I hope you know that."

"I know." He pulled out onto the street, sunlight breaking warm through the windshield, the whole summer stretching out ahead of him, full of plans finally taking real shape. "Wouldn't be building any of it without you asking the right questions first."

"We built it together. That's how this whole family seems to work now." She laughed, soft, easy. "Come home. Emma wants to show you something Sir Reginald apparently did today, though I suspect the shell mostly just sat there."

"On my way."