Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
MURPHY
The rink’s empty when I get there.
No puck smacks. No shouts. Just the soft hum of the overhead lights and the echo of my skates as I take a slow lap around the boards.
It’s early. Earlier than I need to be. But sleep’s still hit-or-miss, and I figure if I’m going to lie awake going mad, I might as well do it with a stick in my hands and sweat on my back.
Jonno’s not due for another hour, but I know he’ll clock I’ve been here. He always does. Probably thinks I’m trying to impress him or earn back gold stars or whatever. But it’s not that.
It’s Sophie.
It’s always Sophie.
I think about her first thing when I wake up and last thing before I pass out again. And every hour in between. Her voice. Her face. The way she looked at me through that cracked door with her heart already halfway packed.
I’ve lost girls before. Left them, been left, ghosted and ghosted back. But this? This feels as though I’m bleeding from the inside out.
I fucked it.
No excuses. No spin. No cheeky joke to soften the blow. I saw the pain in her eyes and I put it there.
I stop mid-lap and lean my forehead against the plexiglass, breathing hard. I’m skating harder lately. Lifting heavier. Listening more in drills. Not because I want a pat on the back, but because it’s the only place I don’t feel like I’m drowning.
The rest of the team start filing in around seven-thirty, bleary-eyed and yawning. Ollie trips over the threshold, spills his coffee, and swears like a teenager pretending to be tough. Jacko laughs and offers him one of those weird protein banana muffins he bakes with actual affection.
Coach and Jonno roll in five minutes later with clipboards and the kind of expressions that mean no one’s going to be walking tomorrow.
“Hope you like pain, lads,” Coach says. “We’re starting with suicides and finishing with hell.”
He wasn’t kidding.
An hour later, we’re dripping and gasping through alternating circuits of suicides, sled pushes, and those stupid resistance bands that make you feel like you’ve wet yourself. My lungs are screaming. My legs feel like they’re on fire. And still, I push harder.
“Murph, you trying to win the bloody Olympics?” Ollie pants beside me as we collapse in a heap after the final sprint.
“Trying not to think,” I mutter, wiping sweat off my brow.
“Think about what?” he asks, deadpan.
I shoot him a look. He knows. They all know.
But no one says her name. Not unless I do.
We hit the showers groaning and limping, and by the time we’re out, Coach’s mood has mellowed. A little.
“Good work today,” he says. “Game’s gonna be brutal. I want your heads in it.”
Mine already is. It’s just also stuck somewhere in the hallway outside Sophie’s flat, where she looked at me like I was a stranger.
We end up at the pub that night.
Team tradition. Post-training decompression with too many wings and half the table still wearing compression socks under their jeans. I slide into the booth next to Jacko, who’s already got a plate of triple-cooked chips and is midway through explaining his latest Bake-Off-inspired disaster.
“I tried to do that mirror glaze thing,” he says, tearing open a packet of ketchup. “Ended up with something that resembled a melted jellyfish.”
“That’s hot,” I say.
Ollie grins. “You bake like you fight, messy but entertaining.”
“Say that again and I’ll ice your laces together,” Jacko mutters, but there’s no heat to it. Just the usual rhythm of our back-and-forth.
Mia slides into the booth across from me, already sipping something with a lemon wedge. She raises an eyebrow. “You look like you’ve been hit by a truck.”
“Coach’s idea of fun,” I say. “That, or karma.”
She hums. Doesn’t disagree. That’s Mia for you. No bullshit. No sympathy unless you earn it.
Dylan shows up fifteen minutes later, hoodie up, hat low, carrying the weight of someone who’s spent a lot of time lately inside his own head. He nods at the table, then drops into the seat beside Mia, who gives him a quiet smile.
The conversation shifts. Someone starts a debate over who has the worst taste in music. Ollie gets roasted for his love of early 2000s emo. Jacko admits to crying over Adele once. And I laugh, properly laugh, for the first time in what feels like a month.
But when the banter dies down and the others peel off to the bar or the loo, Dylan stays put. His drink untouched. His gaze fixed on me.
“You alright?” he asks eventually.
I blink. “Yeah. Why?”
He shrugs. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one I had after I told Mia to stay away from me once because I didn’t know how to deal with my own shit.”
I scoff, but it’s hollow.
“You miss her?” he asks, softer now.
I swallow. “Every minute.”
He nods. “Then don’t waste it. Don’t wait for the perfect time to fix it, Murph. Just start. Even if it’s messy.”
“I have started. I’ve texted. Called. Sent voice notes.”
“But what have you changed?”
That lands like a gut punch.
I look down at my hands. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out.”
He leans forward, elbows on the table. “Then start small. Don’t just say you’re sorry. Show her. Prove it. Be the man she thought you were before those pictures.”
I nod, slow. “You think she’ll even give me the time of day?”
“She’s Sophie,” he says. “Which means you’ve got about a ten percent chance, and it’ll hurt like hell, but it’s not zero.”
I laugh, short and sharp. “Inspiring, mate.”
“You screwed up,” he adds. “But I believe you didn’t cheat. And I don’t think she’s the kind of girl you give up on.”
That quiet faith in his voice? It matters more than I want to admit.
He claps a hand to my shoulder before heading off toward Mia, who’s already raising an eyebrow like she knows he’s about to say something vaguely romantic.
I finish my pint and nurse the silence for a second before Mia slides back into the booth across from me.
“You alright?” she says, echoing Dylan’s earlier question.
“No one’s alright,” I mutter. “We’re all walking trauma in compression shorts.”
She snorts. “Fair.”
Then her expression softens. “He’s right, you know. Dylan. About proving it.”
I glance at her. “Think she’ll even listen?”
“She might,” Mia says. “Eventually. But only if she sees something worth listening to. Not just regret. Change.”
I nod, absorbing it. “Got any tips?”
“Start by not being a dick,” she says sweetly. “Then keep going.”
“Noted.”
She reaches for her coat. “And maybe don’t try to win her back with memes and sad-boy Spotify playlists.”
“I only sent one.”
“Sure you did.”
There’s no malice in it. Only honest truth. And I need that now more than ever.
As the rest of the table settles back in with another round of drinks and a plate of Jacko’s weirdly good brownies, I sit back, watching them all laugh, chirp, tease. It hits me how much these people have become home.
And how empty it feels without her.
But maybe this is what growing up actually looks like. Not some romcom monologue in the rain. Just quiet, steady work. Humility. Earning your way back into someone’s heart instead of demanding it.
And that’s what I’m going to do.
No shortcuts. No spin.
Just me, putting the pieces back together, one by one.