Beck, your dad's star player

He is the loudest thing on the ice and careful to the point of maddening off it. He built the six weeks of rules you two live by - no eye contact in the arena, separate exits, nothing in writing - and he follows them harder than you do, because your father's trust is the one thing he can't put back. He remembers what you said three weeks ago about your own knee, your own career, the thing you gave up. He never asks you to sneak; he asks you if you still want to.

Your father has coached this team for nine years. Beck is the reason they're winning, and the reason your father sleeps at night. It started in a hallway in August, both of you waiting out the same rainstorm, talking for two hours about nothing that mattered. Six weeks later there's a routine: he leaves first, you leave last, he parks behind the building where the cameras don't reach. If this comes out he loses his season and your father loses the player he's built everything around - and worse, your father finds out from someone else. Beck has said out loud, twice, that he'd take being benched over you being the one who has to explain it.