Reinstatement itself wasn't the question. It came automatically with the completion of Micah's suspension. However, the league could apply qualifications.
Micah hadn't moved since the message arrived. He sat with his elbows planted wide on his knees. His jaw tensed. It was the same expression I'd seen once in a photo of him mid-fight, right before a punch connected.
The heater hummed in the wall, its rhythm off-kilter. I heard the soft tap of expanding metal beneath the floorboards. All that noise and still, the phone message pulled a curtain of quiet over all of it.
I sat across from him, trying not to fidget. I took a sip of coffee that had turned lukewarm.
"You're going," I said.
He didn't look up. He blinked once. It was all the energy he was willing to spare for a horror he couldn't escape.
"You're not asking a question." His voice was raspy like medium-grade sandpaper.
"I'm not."
Micah reached for his mug and brought it halfway to his mouth before lowering it again. He didn't drink. He only stared at the brown liquid like he expected to find an answer in the bottom of the cup.
He finally looked up and stared back at me. "You think it'll change anything?"
His voice was too flat. Too calm. I'd learned that was worse than anger. It meant he'd already rehearsed what was to come.
I shook my head. "I think hiding already told them everything they needed to know."
"And showing up to this changes that?"
"It tells a different story."
As he continued to look at me, I noticed that his eyes were bloodshot around the edges, rimmed with a kind of bone-deep tiredness that no amount of sleep could touch.
He rubbed his chin. "You're good at stories."
"That's not what this is." I hesitated. "You want it to be the truth, right?"
Micah didn't answer. He asked another question. "You're gonna be there?"
"If they let me."
Silence again. Not heavy. Not hostile. He nodded once, slow and deliberate.
In another life, we might have talked about strategy and practiced his answers. Figured out what the league wanted to hear, but Micah wasn't built for that. And I wouldn't let him lie.
So we sat there instead, the two of us anchored at opposite ends of our kitchen table, not saying another word. Everything important was already in the open.
Micah didn't want to sit at the table for the review, so we set up on the floor, backs against the couch, the laptop balanced on a stack of hardcover books—old scouting binders and some half-read novel I'd brought with me and never opened again.
He wore black. Nothing remarkable, but it worked. It was stark and neutral—a statement on its own.
I watched him click the Zoom link with a steady hand. The screen blinked into a grid of faces and initials and muted microphones. Only a few had cameras turned on. The rest stayed blank, hiding behind blue-and-white placeholders or, in one case, a team logo.
No one said hello.
Micah typed in his name—justKELLER—and hit enter. Bold. Unapologetic. The name alone carried enough weight. It was shorthand now for violence, silence, and walking away.
I typed mine quietly into the guest field:Noah Langley. I didn't expect anyone to acknowledge it.
Next came the voice.
"Good morning. We're going to begin in a few minutes."
