Chapter 28
Carrie
The cursor blinked at the end of the document. Eight hundred words about the man I loved, and every one of them was a lie designed to look like the truth.
I'd done exactly what Kyle asked. Written a piece about Matt's behavior during the game.
His inability to keep the team in check.
His brother's addiction as a contributing factor to his declining leadership.
I'd raised questions without making accusations, planted doubt without leaving fingerprints, built a scaffold of fake compassion around a demolition charge the way I'd been trained to build them.
It was good. That was the part that made me want to throw up.
The writing was tight. The arguments were logical.
The concern felt genuine. I'd used everything I knew about Matt's private life, every vulnerable detail he'd trusted me with, and turned it into ammunition calibrated to end his captaincy.
All I had to do was hit send.
My finger hovered over the button. One click and Kyle gets his weapon. One click and I get the promotion. One click and Matt's redemption story dies under a headline I wrote with hands that had been on his body two weeks ago.
One click and I become Kyle. Permanently. No more "she didn't know." This time I'd know exactly what I was doing and I'd do it anyway and there would be no coming back from that.
I couldn't do it.
I'd been sitting here for three hours. The apartment was dark except for the laptop screen. No food. No music. Just me and the document and the cursor blinking like a heartbeat I was being asked to stop.
I closed the laptop. The screen went dark and I sat in the sudden black and breathed.
Then I stood up. Grabbed my jacket. My keys. Didn't change out of my pajamas, just threw the jacket over my tank top and sweats. I needed air. Needed to walk until my head was clear or my legs gave out, whichever came first.
I opened my apartment door.
Matt was standing in the hallway.
Five feet away. Hand raised like he'd been about to knock. And the sight of him hit me so hard my body forgot how breathing worked.
He looked terrible. Dark circles deep enough to hold shadows. Hair standing up in every direction. Stubble past the point of intentional. Bruins hoodie, jeans, the look of a man who'd gotten in his car and driven here without checking a mirror or making a plan.
But he was here. After a week of silence. After ignoring every call and text and voicemail I'd sent into the void. After the game, and the stands, and the look on his face when he'd found me in the wrong section.
He was here.
My mouth went dry. My hands started shaking. My heart was doing something that couldn't possibly be healthy.
"Hi," I managed.
"Hi."
The hallway hummed with fluorescent light and the weight of everything we hadn't said.
I couldn't read his expression. Not angry.
Not cold. Not the shut-down version of Matt I'd been facing for a week.
This was different. Rawer. Like something had cracked open and he hadn't decided whether to let it heal or let it bleed.
He took a step forward. Then another. Close enough now that I could see the blue of his eyes, vivid even in the hallway light, and the exhaustion underneath, and the thing behind the exhaustion that looked like it had been there all week and he'd just stopped trying to hide it.
"Why?" he asked.
"What?"
"Why?"
"I don't understand what you're—"
"Why are you in love with me?"
The question knocked the floor out from under me. Of everything I'd prepared for — accusations, demands, the final goodbye I'd been rehearsing since Wednesday — I hadn't prepared for this. A man standing in my hallway past midnight asking to be told why he was worth loving.
"Matt—"
"I need to know. I need to understand why you'd love someone who ignored you for a week. Who walked right past you when you told him how you felt. Who looked up at you after the biggest win of his career and saw the wrong thing and decided that was your fault."
His voice was rough. Not angry. Something rawer than anger. The sound of a man who'd been having a conversation with his brother and had lost.
"I'm asking because I need to know if it's real," he continued.
"If what you said in my doorway was real.
Because I walked past it, Carrie. You gave me the one thing I'd been waiting to hear and I walked past you like you hadn't spoken, and I've been living with that for a week and I need to know if I destroyed it.
If I took too long. If there's still something there or if I killed it. "
My throat closed around something enormous and hot and terrifying.
"Your beard," I said.
He stopped. Blinked. "What?"
"Your beard. The ginger. I just can't resist ginger beards. It's a documented weakness. There's probably a clinical term for it."
For a second he just stared at me. The confusion landing, processing. And then the corner of his mouth. Moving up. Fighting it and losing.
"My beard."
"Very rugged. Very attractive. Honestly, the whole situation is your beard's fault."
He laughed. That real laugh, the one that came from somewhere deep, the one I'd been missing like a phantom limb.
I laughed too, and the sound of both of us laughing in a fluorescent hallway past midnight while everything was falling apart and somehow coming together was the most honest thing I'd heard in weeks.
The laughter faded. The question stayed.
"Do you really want to know?" I asked.
"I really want to know."
"It might take a minute."
"I've got all night."
I breathed. Organized. Not a presentation. Not a draft. Just the truth, in whatever order it wanted to come.
"I love you because I've seen who you are when you're not performing.
When the jersey is off and the press conference is over and it's just you on the couch with a dog in your lap talking to him like he understands you.
And maybe he does. I love the way you play with Bob like he's not a pet but a person.
Like his opinion matters. Like loving something that much doesn't embarrass you. "
Matt's jaw tightened. I could see the emotion working through him, the effort of holding still while someone described him to himself.
"I love that you raced back for me when I fell.
You'd driven away. You were done with me.
And you heard me scream and you turned around.
Took me to a hospital and sat in a plastic chair for hours because you needed to know I was okay, and when the nurse asked if you were my husband, you stammered like a teenager and it was the most endearing thing I'd ever seen a man do. "
His eyes were bright. Wet. Not falling. Holding.
"I love that you got drenched in the rain helping me with a dog that wasn't yours. That you snapped the chain off and carried him inside and never once acted like it was a big deal. I love that you bought him a leash with paw prints on it."
The leash. The small, specific detail that had undone me from the moment I'd held it in my hands. The fact that he'd chosen it. Not grabbed the cheapest option. Chosen one with paw prints because he gave a damn about a dog he hadn't asked for.
"And I love—" My voice broke. I let it break.
"I love the way you've given everything for Frank.
Your sleep. Your health. Your career. You collapsed on the ice because you'd been sitting up with him for five days and you still went back for more.
Even after what he did. Even after the PED test, the suspension, all of it.
You didn't give up on him because your mother asked you not to and you made a promise and you kept it. "
Matt's hand came up to his face. Covered his mouth. His eyes were red and the tears were there, right at the edge, and the sight of Matt Baker trying not to cry in a hallway while I listed the reasons he was worth loving was the most beautiful and devastating thing I'd ever witnessed.
"That's who you are," I said. "Under the hard shell and the captain's voice and the way you clamp down when anything gets close enough to matter. You're the man who helps. Who stays. Who shows up. Who loves so hard it terrifies you because the last person you loved that hard left you."
"Carrie—"
"And my heart couldn't resist that. My brain tried. My brain had an entire PowerPoint about why this was a terrible idea. But my heart looked at you rescuing a dog in the rain and decided it was done taking advice from management."
He almost smiled through the tears.
"I love you," I said. "Not falling. Not maybe. Not figuring it out. I love you. Present tense. Certain. And I'm sorry it took me so long to say it without flinching."
The hallway was very still.
Matt reached for me. Took my face in both hands.
His palms were warm and rough and shaking, and he was crying now, silently, the tears running down his face and he wasn't wiping them and he wasn't hiding and the fact that he'd stopped hiding from me, after everything, was the thing that broke my composure for good.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice wrecked. "For ignoring you. For walking past you when you told me in my doorway. For looking at you in the stands and seeing what I was afraid of instead of what was actually there."
"I was surrounded by—"
"I know. I know that now. Frank made me see it. You couldn't celebrate without risking your job, and I punished you for doing what you had to do to survive. That's not fair. That was never fair."
"And I should have told you I loved you when you said it first. That night with the movie. When you kissed my tears and gave me the three most honest words anyone's ever said to me. I should have said them back. Instead I panicked and started reviewing Nora Ephron's screenplay structure."
He laughed. Wet. Broken. Beautiful.
"Were you sure?" he asked. "That night. Were you sure about how you felt?"
"Yes. I was sure and I was terrified of being sure. Because every person who'd said those words to me before had used them as a tool, and you said them like you meant them, and meaning them meant I had something to lose."
"You're not going to lose me."
"You can't promise that."
"I can promise I'll stop running. I can promise I'll answer the phone. I can promise that the next time you tell me you love me, I won't walk past you to check on my brother without stopping to tell you I heard you."
"You heard me?"
"I heard you." His thumbs traced my cheekbones. Wiping tears I hadn't realized were falling. "I heard you, Carrie. Standing in my doorway, brave as hell, saying the thing I'd been waiting for. And I walked past you and I have regretted it every second of every day since."
"I thought you didn't care."
"I cared so much I couldn't function. I cared so much I collapsed on the ice three days later. I cared so much I've been sitting on my couch for a week trying to figure out how to deserve what you said."
"You don't have to deserve it. That's not how love works."
"How does it work?"
"You just show up. Imperfect. Terrified. With popcorn and a rom-com and no plan. And you let the other person see you and hope they don't leave."
He leaned his forehead against mine. We stood there breathing the same air in a fluorescent hallway, both crying, both shaking, both finally in the same moment at the same time for the first time since any of this started.
"I love you," he said. Simple. Clear. The same words as before but landing differently now, landing on ground I'd cleared, landing in a place I'd made ready for them.
"I love you too."
And the three words didn't feel small anymore. Didn't feel like a letter going nowhere. They felt like the first honest sentence in a story I was finally ready to write without a draft.
He started to say something else. Some follow-up. Some promise or question or plan.
I kissed him.
Not gently. Not the slow, emotional kiss from the movie night.
This was the kiss of a woman who'd spent a week in the dark and had just found the door.
My hands went into his hair and pulled. His arms came around me and crushed me against him, and I could feel his heart pounding through his hoodie, fast and hard, matching mine beat for beat.
He kissed me back with everything he had. A week of silence and fear and regret poured into the press of his mouth against mine, and I opened for him and let him in and tasted salt from both our tears.
When we pulled apart, foreheads still touching, both breathing ragged, I whispered against his lips.
"My body couldn't resist you either."