Chapter 39 – Beau
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Beau
Everyone around me keeps talking. Their voices fill the room as they try to speak over each other. Everything is too loud. Too close. Too much.
“Has he seen a specialist yet?”
“What’s the next step? Surgery? Treatment?”
“Beau, what does this mean for the season?”
Questions ricochet off the walls, each one hitting too hard and fast. Momma’s voice blends into Kyle’s, Ramona’s edges with fear, and Cooper’s cuts low and steady, but it all blurs into static.
The only thing sharp is Alise’s hand wrapped around mine, her thumb tracing steady circles like she can stitch me together with touch alone.
She doesn’t say a word, but I don’t need her to.
I can feel her eyes on me, close enough that the weight of them holds me steady when everything else is tilting sideways.
None of it sticks because none of it matters. All I can hear is the doctor from earlier: If the diagnosis is confirmed… never. It loops again and again in my mind. He isn’t saying not until next season, until I’m cleared, or until I’ve fought my way back again. He said never.
It’s not just hockey this time. It’s me.
My body, the joints that lock up without warning.
The fire that burns under my skin that flares higher every time I think I’ve got it under control.
The way the fatigue blindsides me, no matter how much I’ve trained.
If he’s right about this affecting my heart, this means forever.
The thought cinches around my chest like a strap being pulled tighter with every breath. The air won’t go down right—too shallow and fast—and my fingers tingle where they’re knotted with Alise’s.
“And if it’s his heart, he’ll—” someone begins, but I lose the rest.
“Could it be something else? Maybe they’re wrong.”
“Kyle, don’t crowd him,” Momma murmurs, but he’s already talking over her.
Suddenly, the room tilts. I blink hard, but the edges blur anyway, streaks of light ghosting across my vision.
The heart monitor beeps too fast, every chirp like a hammer to my skull.
The voices overlap until words dissolve into static.
The static swells until it’s pressing against the inside of my ribs.
Every joint feels like it’s being wound too tight.
My skin is hot and clammy all at once. I can’t tell if my heart’s racing because of panic or because my body’s already starting the next flare.
I can’t get ahead of it. I can’t get enough air.
“No, I’m asking because—”
“We need to know—”
“They have to run more tests—”
My knee bounces under the blanket. My free hand curls into a fist as my pulse pounds in my ears, drowning out everything else except the faintest sound of my voice.
“Make it stop,” I whisper, my lips barely moving, my voice so soft I’m not sure anyone else can hear me. “Please… make it stop.”
Alise squeezes my hand hard as her gaze locks with mine. There’s no question, no hesitation, just understanding, and then she moves.
“Enough.” Alise’s voice slices through the noise like a blade, sharp and final. “Everybody out.”
The room goes still, but the tension spikes.
“What?” Kyle stares at her like she’s lost her mind.
“You heard me,” she says, already on her feet. “Out. All of you.”
“But—” Ramona starts.
“No.” Alise doesn’t raise her voice, but the steel in it leaves no room for argument. “He doesn’t need an audience right now.”
Momma hesitates, her gaze flicking to me. I can’t meet it, afraid she’ll see everything I’ve been holding back.
“Auntie Mel,” Alise says, softer but still firm. “Please give him some space.”
For a second, I think she’ll argue. But she just nods, stands, and walks out with the others.
The door shuts. The silence slams into me. And I fall apart.
The air I’ve been forcing down bursts out in a raw, guttural sound I don’t recognize, ripped straight from somewhere deep. My hand tears free from hers, clamping over my mouth like I can shove it back in. But it’s too late. Another comes. And then another.
Her arms are around me before the next breath, pulling me in like she’s been waiting for me to break.
One hand cups the back of my neck; the other fists in the thin hospital gown at my shoulder.
She doesn’t say it’s okay or tell me to calm down.
She just holds on to me, and I grip her like my life depends on it.
The fight drains out of me all at once, leaving only the shaking.
My breath saws in and out, still too quick and shallow, but she stays steady, grounding me.
My forehead drops to her shoulder. I don’t care that I’m trembling hard enough to make her sway.
I don’t care that my face is wet. I don’t care that I can’t breathe right.
For the first time since I heard the word never, I’m not pretending I can handle it.
And I hate how much I need her here to keep from drowning.
But even as the sobs slow, the ache in my body sharpens.
My wrists throb from how long I’d kept them rigid.
My right hip screams from being locked in place.
The heat in my lower back pulses with every beat of my heart, and there’s a bone-deep fatigue rolling in now that the adrenaline has slipped away.
The silence feels fragile, like if anyone breathes too loudly, it’ll shatter.
Alise’s fingers stay laced with mine, her grip firm but not demanding.
When she finally speaks, it’s quiet enough that it barely stirs the air between us.
“I’m here.”
No promise that she can fix it or lie that it’s going to be okay. Just here. It’s the only thing in the room that doesn’t feel temporary. And underneath it all is the truth I can’t shake: Lupus isn’t walking out with them. It’s still here, crawling under my skin and waiting for the next hit.
The room might be quiet now, but my body hasn’t stopped screaming, and neither has my head.
The quiet isn’t peaceful; it’s a vise tightening with every beat of the monitor.
Without the voices, there’s no static to hide behind, no noise to muffle the thought that’s been gnawing at me since the doctor said never.
Alise is close enough that the faint scent of her shampoo cuts through the sharp tang of the hospital air.
I feel the brush of her knee against the side of the bed when she shifts; a part of me wants to pull her into my arms and never let her go.
But the closer she is, the easier it is to picture her leaving, and I know she will once she sees what I’ve become and what I’m not anymore.
The thought sticks like a splinter I can’t cough out.
“You should go with them,” I say finally, my voice low and raw, clawing at my throat on the way out. “Get some air. You’ve had a day.”
Her fingers tighten around mine, firm and grounding. “So have you. And I’m not leaving.”
The refusal twists in my gut, not comfort or relief but cold and suffocating panic.
If she stays, she’ll see everything. The cracks.
The weakness. The parts I’ve been barely holding together with both hands.
She’ll see me, the real me, and then she’ll go.
And if she’s going to leave, I’d rather it be now, on my terms, before I’m left choking on the pieces.
I force down a swallow that sticks halfway, my mouth dry, my tongue thick and heavy like it’s fighting me. Every beat of my heart feels like a countdown. I can’t let her get close enough to see what’s rotting underneath.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I manage, the words tasting like defeat before they’re even out of my mouth.
Her gaze searches mine like she’s trying to find the thread that will unravel me, and she will if I let her keep looking.
“You don’t have to have all the words, just… tell me the truth.”
The words land between us like a dare and a lifeline at the same time.
My chest locks up, my next breath stuttering as if my body already knows that once I say it, there’s no taking it back.
My eyes close for half a second, and I think I can keep it in if I just stay quiet.
But it’s pressing too hard against my ribs, clawing for a way out, crushing the air from my lungs until my head swims. When I open them again, it’s there in my voice, the sound of something breaking in real time.
“I thought… if I kept it to myself, I could control it and play through it. That if I just pushed harder, it wouldn’t catch me. And now—” I swallow, but it catches halfway, sticking like it knows how much I need it gone. “Now it’s taken everything.”
“It hasn’t taken everything,” she says, voice steady but strained. “You’re still here. You’re still you.”
“Am I?” What slips out is thin and jagged, a cracked sound that doesn’t even resemble laughter. “Hockey’s all I’ve ever been, Alise. The only thing that made sense, and now—” I gesture weakly at the IV, the monitor, and the hospital bed that feels like a cage I can’t escape. “Now I’m this.”
“You are not just a game you play. You’re more than that. You always have been,” she whispers, leaning in, her palm cupping my cheek and grounding me in a way that makes my chest hurt worse.
It should help, but it doesn’t. Instead, it just makes the fear coil tighter as my jaw locks until my teeth ache. “I’m scared.”
“I know, and it’s okay to be scared.” Her voice catches, soft but breaking. “But you’re not alone in this. Not anymore.”
I press my forehead to hers, holding her hand like it’s the last rope keeping me from going under. For a few beats, we breathe together, the monitor syncing with us, her scent and warmth the only real things in the room. But the thought keeps clawing at me: she’s only here until she’s not.
“You mad at me?”
“I’m not mad.” She exhales, and it’s almost a sigh, the kind that comes from deep fatigue. “I’m exhausted from loving people who don’t trust me to stay.”
Her words rip me open, and I can feel the blood drain from my face.
“No.” It comes out sharper than I mean, but I can’t reel it back.
My chest feels too tight, my pulse climbing in my ears.
“I can’t—” My breath stutters, a harsh, broken sound.
“I can’t give you what you want. You said you wanted me when I was whole.
When I didn’t need someone holding me up.
That’s never going to happen. I’ll always be sick. This is me now.”
Her brows knit, confusion flashing there before something deeper flickers through.
“Don’t you get it?” My voice cracks, low but shaking, my ribs going molten with panic.
“If you stay, you’ll see me for what I am, and you’ll go. And I—” I break off, my throat locking around the rest. “I can’t survive that.
“So, go now,” I whisper, almost pleading, pulling my hand from hers.
I force my hand to pull free from hers, the movement slow like I’m peeling away the last warm thing I’ll ever touch.
My skin aches with the loss, already missing the heat of her fingers wrapped around mine. “While it’s still easy.”
But she doesn’t flinch or blink. Her eyes hold mine, unshaken, cutting through every wall I’ve been stacking between us. “So, what, you just decided for me?”
“I decided not to give you the chance to run before we even began,” I rasp. The words scrape out of me, rough with the fear I can’t hide. “If I kept this buried, then for a little while, you wouldn’t see how broken I really am.”
“You think hiding something like this isn’t handing me a reason?” she scoffs. Her laugh is short, humorless, and cuts deep.
“I thought—” My voice breaks on the word, my chest seizing. “I thought if you knew too soon, you’d look at me differently. You’d start planning your exit, and I couldn’t…”
Her eyes shine, but there’s no softness in them now, only hurt. “You’ve been the one telling me I’ve always seen you. But the second things get ugly, you decide I’m too fragile to handle the truth?”
“It wasn’t about you being fragile—”
“Yes, it was.” Her voice shakes, fury and hurt tangled tight.
“You didn’t want me to know because you were scared I might stay.
Because if I did, you’d have to face the truth that someone could still choose you, still love you, even with this hanging over you.
And you can’t stand the thought of that, can you? ”
The hit lands like a slap, leaving me raw and exposed. I flinch. “I was trying to protect you.”
“No, Beau. You were protecting yourself.” Her voice is low but deadly certain. “You don’t get to decide I can’t handle it just because you don’t believe you’re worth staying for.”
“I’m not worth staying for, not like this. I didn’t want—” My knuckles ache from gripping the blanket, my nails digging in. The words splinter in my throat and tear their way out. “I didn’t want you to feel trapped. I didn’t want you to wake up one day and resent me for everything I can’t be.”
“You already decided that for me,” she says as she stands, the shift in her weight making the bed feel colder. “You don’t get to tell me I’m going to leave. You don’t get to hide pieces of your life because you’ve convinced yourself I won’t love the whole thing.”
“Alise—”
“I can’t do this right now.” Her voice breaks, cracking on every other word, tearing me to shreds. “I can’t fight you into trusting me.”
She turns for the curtain, and panic detonates in my chest, sharp and all-consuming.
“Alise—wait.” It comes out too loud, too desperate, but the second word fractures. “Please. Please don’t walk out.”
She stops, but doesn’t look back.
“I’m begging you,” I choke out, my voice nothing but splinters now.
“Don’t leave me like this. You think I didn’t want to tell you?
That I didn’t rehearse the words over and over, trying to find a way that wouldn’t make you walk away?
I was going to tell you. I just needed you to believe… to believe in us first.”
The silence between us is crushing, filling every inch of me with dread, and then she takes a step toward the door.
“Alise—” The sound rips out of me, half plea, half sob. I reach for her, but my hand closes on nothing.
The door clicks shut, louder than any slammed one, the sound final in a way that makes my stomach drop.
I fold forward, burying my face in my hands as the first sob tears loose.
Then another. And another. My chest heaves so violently the monitor spikes with me, its frantic beeping filling the space she just left behind.
The sound is unbearable, but I can’t shut it out.
By the time the worst of it wrings me out, I’m shaking so hard I can barely sit upright. My throat is raw, my face is wet, and my body is aching from the force of it. My palms sting where my nails bite into them, the pain just enough to remind me I’m still here.
She was the only thing holding the pieces together, and now she’s gone. The heavy, endless silence is swallowing me whole, and I know I’ve just lost the only thing that ever really mattered.