Ready to Rise: Locker Room Confessions, #19

Being called up from Portland's farm team to the Seattle Thunderbirds should feel like a dream, but for Miles Ferreira, it feels a lot more like a countdown clock. As the third-string goalie, he barely leaves the bench, and that suits him fine. Miles has spent his whole career learning how to be invisible: quiet, guarded, and allergic to small talk. The kind of guy who answers in nods and grunts and prefers it that way.

The one person who refuses to get the memo is Seattle's breakout star defenseman, Theo Marchetti.

Theo greets Miles like they've been friends for years, even though their history amounts to one chaotic team dinner and a shared elevator ride. He's loud where Miles is silent, magnetic where Miles is closed off, and somehow never seems to notice that Miles is trying to disappear. They have nothing in common except the ice, but Miles needs somewhere to live that isn't a Marriott, and Theo just bought a ridiculous lakeside house he's rattling around in alone.

So they become roommates. Theo treats Miles's silence like a puzzle worth solving, not a wall to respect, and slowly, infuriatingly, it works. Miles starts noticing things he shouldn't, the way Theo laughs with his whole body, the low rasp in his voice after a hard practice, the warm brown eyes that seem to see straight through every defense Miles has built. Roommates becomes something else entirely somewhere between Thanksgiving takeout and a blizzard that strands them together for four days straight.

But Miles's call-up was never permanent. When the trade deadline looms and his return to Portland gets floated as a real possibility, he has to decide whether to keep playing it safe, alone, or risk everything on a guy who's never once let him hide.