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doing it for my sake. It was for Katie, just like my somehow finding the balls to ask her and then coming here to talk to Webs about it was for Katie.
    It was like Jim Sutter, our GM, was always saying: the Portland Storm wasn’t just a team and a business. We were a family, and we took care of our own. It was my turn to do some of that taking care of our own bit.
    “I don’t give a fuck what you asked her,” Webs growled at me. “She’s my little girl, and you’re going to stay the fuck away from her and keep your hands to yourself.”
    “No, he’s not. Not this time, Dave.”
    I would know Laura Weber’s voice anywhere. It was so much like Katie’s, smooth and warm, but a little older and more careworn. I turned my head to see her marching straight for us, looking more determined than I’d seen her look about anything since Katie’s diagnosis. She’d always been a force to be reckoned with, as long as I’d known her, but it was like she’d forgotten all of that when Katie had gotten sick. They’d all been losing a bit of their fight lately, the whole Weber family.
    “She’s still in high school,” Webs shot back at her. “I’m not letting one of my fucking teammates, who’s a grown-ass man, anywhere near my little girl.”
    “And she’s got cancer.” Laura didn’t stop until she was standing between me and Webs, like she could somehow stop him from killing me just by standing between us. She planted her hands on her hips and stared at her husband while I tried to maneuver myself around her. There was no chance in hell I was going to let Katie’s mom be a shield for me. She glanced at me but then returned her focus to her husband. “Cancer trumps your illogical need to keep her under lock and key until she’s past her child-bearing years.”
    “The fact that she’s sick is one more reason she’s not going. She needs to stay home. She needs rest.”
    “All she does is rest!” Laura practically shouted at him. “She can rest the whole day leading up to prom so she’s got the energy to go. But she’s going. And Babs is taking her. And that’s all there is to it because what she needs to do more than anything else is live —really live and not just survive like she’s been doing the last few months.”
    It was almost as though she’d kicked me right in the nuts with that one. There was something in the way she’d said it, something that made it seem possible that if Katie didn’t really start living again, then maybe she wouldn’t survive it at all.
    That’s the thing with cancer, in my limited experience. It doesn’t matter what the doctors say about your chances. If you give it the finger and keep going with your life, you have a hell of a better likelihood of kicking its ass than if you just give everything up and count on drugs and therapies and all that bullshit to fight it for you. At least it had always seemed that way to me, but I’d never had cancer before. I’d only watched my aunt go through it a few years ago—and I’d watched her lose. She’d shut herself off like Katie had once they’d started pumping the drugs into her, and it had eaten all the life out of her eyes until one day there’d been nothing left. She’d given up, and it had taken her away from my uncle and my cousins and my mom.
    I couldn’t handle seeing that happen to Katie. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
    It seemed like Laura’s words had hit Webs just like they’d hit me. He looked as nauseated as I felt.
    She moved a few steps closer to his bench and sat down next to him. “She has to remember that she’s still alive. She has to remember what she’s living for or we’re going to lose her. This whole ordeal has just proven that, no matter how much we may want to, we can’t protect her from life.”
    “I don’t want to protect her from life,” Webs grumbled. “I want to protect her from dipshits like him—”
    “He’s not going to hurt her, Dave, and you’re seriously deluding