Chapter 30
The Fight is On
JONAH
Driving to my lawyer’s office to prep for the upcoming hearing in eleven days, my hands are cold and my blood’s hot.
I grip the wheel tighter. Every stoplight is a fight to not punch the horn. Every turn, I cycle through the lines I want to say, the ones that’ll help her help me. The court needs to know I’m not just another father chasing a headline then quitting when it gets ugly.
Not a fuckup.
I run them in my head—stories of Eli, stories of staying, stories of the fight. Run them so hard my jaw aches. It’s not nerves. Not even fear, not really. It’s that playoff edge, the one you get before your body knows what’s coming. Hunger and terror.
I’m halfway to the door—literally, I’ve got one foot on the brake, the lot in sight—when my phone goes off.
Buzz, buzz.
I glance down, ready to hate whatever’s on the screen. ESPN alert? Some team shit? More tabloids chewing me up?
No.
It’s him.
The text is so simple it hurts worse than skates on bone:
Eli: I miss you. I want to come home.
Five words. That’s it.
The whole world, boiled down to five words.
I read it once, twice, fifty times in three seconds. I can’t even breathe. The ache behind my ribs is so fucking real I have to press my hand to my chest just to make sure my heart hasn’t stopped.
I screenshot it, thumb fumbling, because I know if I ever lose this, my brain will rewrite history and pretend it never happened. I tuck the phone away, screen down.
I’m not supposed to contact him without supervision.
Just get through the meeting, Holt. One shift at a time.
The office is clean, mean, and not for show. Frosted-glass door, nameplate so crisp you could shave with it. No plants, no photos. Just a desk, some black chairs, and Olivia Gardner already at work, eyes on a legal pad.
She doesn’t look up.
Not at first.
I feel like a middle-schooler called to the principal’s office. My hand is still on my phone, the text burning through my pocket. I don’t fidget. I don’t clear my throat. I just stand, waiting to be noticed, because Gardner’s time is high-dollar and she wants you to feel it.
She finally looks up. Sizing me, not with suspicion—she’s past that—but with the flat, hard evaluation of someone who’s been lied to by hundreds of men exactly like me.
That’s what it is. It’s not even personal. It’s just: prove to me you’re doing the work. Prove to me you’re not going to bail now that this got hard.
She puts her pen down. Leans back—doesn’t offer a seat, doesn’t smile, just waits for me to say the first word.
Fuck it. I can play this game.
I drop into the chair across from her, plant my elbows on my knees, meet her gaze head-on.
“Let’s get started,” I say. Voice low, not angry. Just—set.
She tilts her head. “You ready to do what it actually takes, Jonah?”
I know what she means. Not the version that’s easy. Not the one that fits around hockey, or my pride, or some half-assed rehab plan. She’s talking blood, sweat, humiliation. She’s talking the shit guys like me hate most: change.
I don’t flinch. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
Her face doesn’t move. She lets the words hang.
She likes honest. Fine. I can do honest, if that’s what gets me Eli home.
“Where are you with anger management?”
“Started two nights ago. Doing the exercises and meetings.”
“Good. This has to be real work. Not a checkbox at the Y, not an online certificate. Documented, ongoing. The kind that holds up in front of a judge when Fitch plays that Ring camera moment over and over and calls you a threat.”
She lets that land. Lets me choke on it, if I’m going to.
I nod. “Got it.”
“We need two character witnesses. Not fluff. I want your parents, your teammates, the nanny, his therapist, the social worker, if she’ll go on record. People who saw you with Eli and can tell me something specific. I need details.”
She shuffles a file—probably my file—fine print and tabs and a thousand words about all the ways I’m already fucked.
“Think you can get people to speak up?” She hits me with, “Not just show up, but say things that are real?”
“My parents would die for him,” I say. The words are raw coming out. “My coach will do it. Sydney, too—my sister. Hell, Zoe, the nanny—she knows every inch of what I did for that kid, and she’s in Seattle, but we can ask.”
God, Zoe. Without her, I’m missing a piece of myself. I’m waiting for that to go away, but so far, it hasn’t.
Gardner raises an eyebrow. “She willing to go on record? Even if she’s on your payroll?”
“She’s not scared of the witness stand. And she doesn’t work for me anymore.”
“Even better.”
She makes a note. “Last thing. The timeline. Eleven days left. You don’t slip. You don’t give them an opening.”
Her eyes flick up, ice-cold. “And you haven’t contacted Eli outside scheduled, supervised visits?”
“No.”
“Good. Keep it up. Not a text, not a call. Not a drive-by. Not even an emoji if he reaches out. If Gwen’s lawyer gets a whiff of you violating that order, he’ll drag this out another sixty days, maybe get it permanent. You get me?”
I freeze because my heart just fucking stops.
Not even text him back? Not even if the kid begs?
“It’ll break him,” I say, quiet. “He just wrote me. Not answering will break me.”
She doesn’t blink. “It’ll break your case if you slip. If you want him home, you do every single thing exactly right. I’ll fight for you, Jonah, but you don’t give the other team a single opening.”
She’s not cruel, but she doesn’t bend, either.
That’s how she wins.
I sit, the ache in my chest ratcheting up with every second. The text from Eli is burning a hole in me.
But she’s right.
This is how you win.
I nod, slow. The kind of nod that costs you something.
“Okay,” I say, voice like gravel. “No contact. Not unless it’s scheduled.”
Gardner’s pen moves, like I just passed the first loyalty test. “Good. Continue the anger management. I want the names of every witness in my inbox before the weekend. Ms. Hernandez will coordinate with the court on visitation. Don’t show up early. Don’t linger after.”
She stands. Just like that, meeting over.
“You’re not out of the game,” she says, dead even. “Not even close. But don’t fuck this up with heroics.”
I stand too, and my knees nearly buckle.
I look her in the eye. “Thank you.”
She nods and turns back to her notes. Dismissed.
Outside, the sky’s partly cloudy and windy—classic mid-April in Idaho. Gritty. Nothing to romanticize. I step into the wind, which snaps my brain clear.
Visitation schedule in hand. Ten days until the hearing.
The text from Eli is still open on my phone, like a wound that didn’t even have time to heal before someone decided to salt it.
I make it to the car, slide into the seat, and just—sit.
I don’t cry. I don’t punch the dash. I just breathe.
I stare at the message—five words, eight bullet holes.
I let the ache build, then file it where I keep every other bruise and break.
But not one more fuckup.
So I let the cold and the silence wrap around me until my head clears, until the next step clicks into place.
Rink time.
I start the engine and head for the one place I can still outskate my own bullshit. The one place nobody can take away from me, no matter how many times I fall apart.
Tonight, I’m going to skate until my lungs give out, until my legs don’t remember a thing about pride or pain or failure. I’m going to skate until eleven days becomes zero day.
I pull out of the lot, every muscle in me made new by anger, by hope, by the burn of knowing I might actually win this if I keep my damn head.
I’m going to do every single thing she told me to do.
I’m not giving Gwen Anders a single goddamn inch.
I’m bringing Eli home.