Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KATE
Rain follows us across the city, streaking against the windscreen while the wipers move in slow, steady sweeps that do nothing to calm the noise inside my head. Every traffic light feels too long. Every silence too heavy.
Beside me, Hudson sits curled up in the passenger seat, one knee bouncing faintly beneath his hoodie. He’s staring out of the window, but I know he isn’t really looking at anything.
He’s thinking. Processing. Trying to work out whether tonight changes anything important. God, that thought alone makes my heart ache.
I tighten my hands around the steering wheel and focus on driving because if I let myself spiral properly right now, I’m not sure I’ll recover from it.
Lukas’ face keeps flashing through my mind. The shock on his face. The confusion. The way he looked at that little boy as though the entire world had tilted beneath him.
None of it felt fake, and that’s the problem.
If he’d looked guilty, evasive, or defensive, maybe this would feel simpler. Easier to categorise and to protect myself from. But he looked blindsided. Completely devastated.
“Mum?” Hudson’s voice breaks through the sound of rain.
I glance toward him quickly. “Yeah?”
He hesitates for a second before he asks, “Are you okay?”
The question hits me so strongly that I almost laugh. Not because it’s amusing, but because, naturally, he worries about me first. Always me.
I force myself to smile as I stop at another red light, turning slightly toward him. “I’m okay. Promise.” It’s only half true.
Hudson studies me carefully in the dim glow from the dashboard lights, unconvinced. “That looked bad.”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. “It looked complicated,” I correct.
“Same thing.”
God, he sounds so much older lately.
I look back at the road as the light changes to green again. “We don’t know what’s going on yet. There could be a very simple explanation.”
“But you think the kid’s his.” Straight to the point.
I grip the wheel tighter for a second before forcing myself to loosen my hands again. “Maybe.”
Hudson goes quiet. The silence stretches long enough for me to know he’s building towards something else. Finally, he says, “You really like him.”
It’s not a question this time, it’s a fact. I swallow hard against the ache rising into my throat. “Yeah, I really like him,” I admit. The honesty hurts. Because saying it out loud makes this real in a way it wasn’t before.
I like him too much already. Enough that tonight feels as if somebody reached into my chest and squeezed my fragile heart.
Hudson stares out at the rain again. “That’s unlucky.”
I let out a soft, helpless laugh at that, emotion catching painfully behind it. “You’re not wrong.”
He shifts in his seat before speaking again, quieter this time. “You don’t know it’s bad yet, though.” I glance at him, surprised. He shrugs awkwardly under the attention. “Lukas looked confused.”
“He did.”
“And he didn’t chase after them.”
The observation catches me off guard slightly because he’s right. Lukas stayed exactly where he was until we left. As if part of him had still been with us.
My chest twists painfully again.
I pull into our street a few minutes later, tiredness settling heavily over me now that we’re home and there’s nothing left to distract me from my thoughts.
The house feels cold and dark when we step inside.
Hudson kicks off his trainers by the door while I lock it behind us, both of us lingering in the hallway for a second as though neither of us really knows what to do next.
Normal. I need normal desperately right now.
“You want hot chocolate?” I ask finally.
Hudson blinks at me. “It’s almost ten thirty.”
“Exactly. I’m feeling rebellious.”
That earns me the smallest smile from him, thank God. “Okay.”
We move around each other quietly in the kitchen, slipping automatically into familiar routines that soothe the rawness inside of me.
I fill the kettle while Hudson pulls mugs from the cupboard, both of us pretending this is just another ordinary night.
But I can feel the tension in him still. The uncertainty.
And I understand with painful clarity why tonight scared me so much. Because it isn’t really about me. Not entirely. It’s about him. About the terrified little part of me that remembers what it looked like when Hudson waited for a man who stopped coming home.
I cannot survive watching him go through that kind of disappointment again. Even the possibility of it makes me feel sick.
Hudson climbs onto one of the kitchen stools while I stir cocoa powder into mugs with shaking hands, hoping he doesn’t notice.
After a minute, he says, “You know you don’t have to pretend you’re not upset, right?”
The spoon stills in my hand. I turn slowly, leaning back against the counter as I look at him. “I’m not pretending.”
“Yes, you are.” There’s no accusation in it, just honesty.
I stare at my son for a second and realise how much he’s grown up without me noticing. When did he become this perceptive? This careful with other people’s feelings?
Probably around the same time that I stopped letting myself fall apart in front of him. “I’m upset,” I admit quietly. Hudson nods like all he wanted was the truth. “But,” I continue carefully, “that doesn’t mean the world is ending.”
His expression shifts at that, some of the tension easing from his shoulders.
“We don’t know what’s happening yet,” I tell him gently. “So there’s no point deciding it’s terrible before we actually know anything. Lukas said he’d call later, so we wait to see what’s going on.”
He considers it, then nods. “Okay.”
Relief moves through me at the sight of him accepting that explanation.
I hand him his mug and ruffle his hair lightly as I pass him. “Take that up to bed with you. It’s late.”
He pauses halfway towards the doorway. “You’ll tell me if something changes?”
“Always,” I promise him.
He studies me one final time before disappearing upstairs. The second I hear his bedroom door close, I crack. Gripping the edge of the kitchen counter hard enough that my knuckles ache, I take a deep breath in once. Twice. Then I grab my phone.
Emma answers before the first ring fully ends. “Well?” she says immediately. “How did dinner with Hockey Ken go?”
The sound that leaves me is so broken that she falls silent instantly.
“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Kate?”
And that’s it. That’s all it takes. The tears arrive so fiercely, I have to sit down before my legs give out beneath me.
Emma’s voice sharpens immediately through the phone. “What happened?”
I try to answer, but the words tangle somewhere between my chest and throat painfully.
“There was a woman,” I manage finally. “Outside the rink.”
There’s silence, and then carefully she says, “Okay…”
“She had a little boy with her.”
Another silence.
“She looked at Lukas like she knew him.” My voice cracks again. “And the child… Emma, he looked exactly like him.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I press trembling fingers against my forehead. “I don’t even know why I’m this upset. We’re not really even dating. We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks.”
“You’re upset because you care about him, you let your guard down.”
The simple honesty of it makes fresh tears burn behind my eyes.
“I can’t do this to Hudson,” I whisper. “I can’t let another man walk into his life if there’s even a chance it ends badly.”
Emma exhales slowly. “I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to, it’s late.”
“I absolutely do.”
She ends the call before I can argue further.
True to form, fifteen minutes later, there’s a knock at the door followed by Emma marching into my kitchen carrying wine and enough emotional intensity to power a small country.
One look at my face and her entire body softens. “Oh, sweetheart.”
That starts me crying all over again. She pulls me into a hug immediately, wine bottles clinking awkwardly between us while I laugh weakly through tears against her shoulder.
“This is so humiliating,” I mutter.
“No, it isn’t.”
“We weren’t even officially together.”
Emma pulls back enough to look at me properly. “Kate. You are allowed to be heartbroken by confusing, emotionally devastating hockey men.”
A startled laugh escapes me despite everything. “That should be embroidered on a cushion.”
“It should.”
She guides me toward the sofa with the kind of efficiency only lifelong best friends possess, opening wine while I curl beneath a blanket, feeling wrung out emotionally.
For a while, I just talked about the rink, about Félix, and about the way Lukas looked completely blindsided.
Emma listens quietly through all of it, only interrupting occasionally to refill my wine glass.
Emma reaches over, squeezing my hand gently. “Maybe you should let him explain.”
“I don’t know how.” And that’s the honest part.
Because I genuinely don’t know what happens now.
I don’t know how to protect Hudson while also looking after my own heart.
I don’t know where Lukas fits into this suddenly complicated picture anymore.
All I know is that I miss him already, despite how much tonight hurt. That thought terrifies me.
Much later, after Emma finally convinces me to get into bed, I lie awake, staring into the darkness as rain taps against the windows outside. Sleep never really comes, only fragments of it. Restless and uneasy.
At some point in the early hours, my phone buzzes against the bedside table. I blink awake immediately, disoriented for half a second before reaching for it.
Lukas.
My chest tightens the moment I see his name.
Lukas: I didn’t know.
Three words. That’s all. But they hurt more than anything else tonight.
Because I can hear him in them so clearly.
Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Honest. I stare at the screen for a long time, thumb hovering uselessly over the keyboard.
But I don’t reply. Not that I want to punish him, I genuinely don’t know what to say.