29. FINN
Chapter twenty-nine
FINN
Idon’t sleep much after leaving Bailey’s house, which isn’t a surprise.
I get home, take off my shoes, sit on the edge of my bed, and stare at the floor like the answer might be buried somewhere in the carpet. The only thing waiting there is the silence after a woman tells you she needs space because you keep disappearing behind every way you’ve learned to survive.
I read her text four times before I finally set my phone facedown on the nightstand.
Bailey: I know.
Two words.
Not angry. Not soft either.
Just Bailey, giving me the only answer she’s got.
I don’t blame her, and that’s the worst part. I want to be able to blame confusion, timing, pregnancy hormones, or one bad conversation that spiraled too fast. I want to tell myself I was doing my best, and she made it sound like my best wasn’t enough.
But alone in my room, with no one to perform for, I know that isn’t the whole truth.
My best lately has been a lot of movement. A lot of research. A lot of showing up with full hands and nowhere to put the fear.
By the time I drag myself to the rink for the foster youth clinic the next afternoon, I feel like I’m carrying my whole body wrong. Too tight in my shoulders. Too aware of my phone in my pocket. Too aware of the message I sent Bailey this morning.
Me: I’m still here. I’ll give you the space you asked for.
She answered an hour later.
Bailey: Thank you.
The clinic is already loud when I walk in.
Skates stomping across rubber mats. Kids laughing.
Someone is complaining about a helmet smelling weird.
Gavin is near the goalie net, crouched in front of a kid half his size, helping him adjust pads that make him look like a turtle trying to stand upright.
Willa is on the ice before she’s supposed to be, pushing herself forward with both knees bent and arms out like she’s preparing for flight.
“Willa,” I call. “You waiting for the rest of us today?”
She grins through her cage. “I’m practicing.”
“You’re not supposed to be out there without an adult.”
“I’m gliding.”
“You’re heading toward the boards.”
“I know.”
Carter catches her by the sleeve before she bumps into anything, his expression flat and unimpressed.
“You don’t know how to stop,” he says.
Willa beams at him. “Not yet.”
He lets go of her sleeve like he regrets helping, but he stays close enough to keep her from getting hurt. He’s all sharp elbows and guarded eyes, with the kind of slouch that says don’t look at me while silently checking to see if you did.
He’s been coming for weeks now, but today, he’s different. Angrier and quieter than usual. He doesn’t line up with the other older kids when Gavin starts the first drill. He hangs back by the boards, stick blade tapping the ice hard enough to make a sharp little rhythm.
I skate over slowly.
No rush. No big entrance.
I’ve learned that with Carter, anything that feels too much like attention makes him want to bolt.
“You skating today?” I ask.
He shrugs.
A month ago, I would’ve pushed. Made some crack about saving his energy for his future professional career. Tried to charm him into softening by half an inch so I could feel like I’d done something useful.
Today, I can’t.
Maybe because I can still hear Bailey saying, I don’t need a performance, Finn. I need you.
Maybe because I’m starting to understand that kids like Carter don’t need performance either.
They can smell it a mile away.
I lean one shoulder against the glass and watch the younger kids start weaving through cones with varying levels of success. “Rough day?”
Carter taps the blade of his stick against the ice.
“No.”
“Okay.”
His jaw shifts. “You always ask questions you don’t want the answer to?”
That almost pulls a smile out of me. Not because it’s funny. Because I know that tone. I used to wear it like armor.
“I want the answer,” I say. “I’m not going to chase you for it.”
He looks away.
On the ice, Willa misses a cone completely and throws both arms up like she meant to start a new route. Gavin calmly redirects her while Milo spins in a full circle and announces he has invented a tornado stop.
Carter watches them for a second.
“They’re annoying,” he says.
“They are.”
“They fall every two seconds.”
“Also true.”
“They don’t even care.”
I look at him then. “No, they don’t.”
His mouth tightens. “Must be nice.”
The words come out low, but I hear them. I hear everything underneath, too. Must be nice to mess up without waiting to see if someone is going to decide you’re too much trouble. To be annoying and loud and unsteady on your feet, and still assume someone will help you back up.
My throat gets tight, and I look out at the rink because looking straight at him might give away too much.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “It is.”
Carter’s stick starts tapping again, slower now.
“You ever get tired of acting like you care?” he asks.
There is the door.
I feel it open.
My first instinct is to make it easier on both of us. Say something quick. Shift the weight off the question before it gets too close to either one of us. I can feel the old reflex rise, polished and ready, the part of me that knows how to turn discomfort into something people can laugh at.
But Carter isn’t asking for funny. And maybe Bailey wasn’t either.
“I don’t act,” I say.
He snorts. “Everyone acts.”
“Yeah. A lot of people do.”
“You’re saying you don’t?”
“I’m saying I know what it feels like when people act like they care because they’re supposed to. This isn’t that.”
His eyes cut to me. I take a breath, slow enough that he won’t hear it shake.
“I grew up in foster care,” I say.
His stick goes still again.
Across the ice, a puck knocks into the boards, and one of the little kids laughs too loudly. Everything else keeps moving like I haven’t just said something I almost never say out loud.
Carter looks away first. “So?”
“So I know it’s hard to trust attention when you’re waiting for it to disappear.”
He doesn’t answer.
I keep going, careful, because this isn’t a speech. It can’t be. If I turn it into one, I’ll lose him.
“When I was your age, I thought the trick was being easy. Funny if people wanted funny. Quiet if they wanted quiet. Helpful before anyone had to ask. I thought if I got it right, maybe nobody would decide I was too much work.”
His face is unreadable, but he doesn’t skate away, and that’s a start.
“I got really good at trying to be whatever kept me around,” I say. “It didn’t always work.”
The words take more out of me than I expect.
Carter stares at the ice between his skates. “People get sick of me and send me away.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
There it is.
The old belief, spoken in his voice.
“Yeah,” I say, because lying would be useless. “Sometimes they do.”
His shoulders curl inward like he expected the answer and hates being right.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to be perfect to deserve to stay,” I say. “You don’t have to skate great every time. You don’t have to pretend you don’t care. You don’t have to push everyone back before they can get close.”
His jaw works.
“You don’t have to earn every single minute,” I add, quieter now.
I don’t know who I’m talking to anymore.
Carter.
Me.
The kid with the trash bag.
The man who stood in Bailey’s living room with a phone in his hand and no idea who he was if he wasn’t useful.
Carter looks at me then, really looks, and his eyes are not soft. They’re too guarded for that. But something has shifted.
“You done?” he asks.
I huff a quiet breath. “Yeah.”
“Can I skate now?”
“Yeah.”
He pushes off without another word.
But he joins the drill.
Not all happy smiles. But he joins.
I stay by the boards for a moment, hands on the top of my stick, trying to breathe like I didn’t just crack myself open in the middle of a youth hockey clinic.
“You okay?”
Knox’s voice comes from behind me.
I glance over. “You always lurking?”
“I was getting cones.”
I look at his empty hands.
He looks down, then back at me. “I forgot the cones.”
That almost makes me laugh.
I look back at the ice. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
I nod.
There is no point pretending.
Knox leans beside me, shoulder near mine, watching Carter skate through the drill with his head down and his hands too tight on his stick.
“You did good with him,” he says.
“I don’t know if I did.”
“You did.”
I swallow hard, still watching Carter. “Bailey asked for space.”
Knox stays quiet.
“I keep trying to fix everything,” I say. “I thought that was the right thing. Show up. Be useful. Be ready. Don’t make her carry my fear on top of hers.”
“That sounds like you.”
I let out a humorless breath. “Not a compliment?”
“Not an insult either.”
I look at him.
Knox shrugs. “It’s what you know.”
The words settle into me slowly.
It’s what you know.
Not an excuse. Not a free pass. Just a door opening.
I stare at the ice, at the kids falling and getting up, at Carter pretending not to care while staying close enough to help Willa when she loses balance again.
“I used to keep my stuff in trash bags,” I say.
Knox doesn’t move.
“I hated the sound of them. Still do, sometimes. That plastic crinkle.” I rub a hand over the back of my neck.
“People think the hard part is leaving. New house, new room, new rules. That was hard, yeah. But worse were the days before. When you could feel it coming. When adults got quieter. Stopped meeting your eyes as much. Started saying things like it’s not your fault, which always meant it was already decided. ”
My chest tightens around the old memory.
“I learned to watch people,” I say. “Figure out what they needed before they knew they needed it. If someone looked tired, I got out of the way. If they liked jokes, I made them laugh. If they wanted help, I became helpful. Useful kids were more likely to stay.”
Knox’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I know Bailey isn’t asking me to earn my place,” I say. “I know that’s in my head. But every time she looks scared, something in me starts packing a bag.”
That’s the thing underneath all of it. Not the lists, not the car seats, not the questions. The bag. The part of me that still believes permanence is something you don’t trust. Something you prepare to lose before anyone can take it from you.
Knox is quiet for a long time.
Then he says, “She doesn’t need the version of you that’s ready to be sent away.”
My throat burns.
“She needs the version that stays even when he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.”
I look over at him.
He doesn’t soften it. Knox rarely softens anything.
But his eyes are steady.
“You told that kid he doesn’t have to be perfect to deserve someone showing up,” he says. “Maybe listen to yourself.”
The rink noise seems to fade around me.
Carter’s voice.
Bailey’s voice.
My own, saying words I apparently didn’t understand until someone threw them back at me.
You don’t have to earn every single minute.
I close my eyes and breathe.
For the first time in two days, I know what I have to do.
Not because I have a plan. Because I don’t, and that’s the point.
After clinic, I help Gavin collect pucks. I tell Carter I’ll see him next week, and he gives me a shrug with slightly less hostility than usual. From Carter, that might as well be a hug.
I shower at the rink because I need ten minutes alone under hot water to pull myself together. My phone sits untouched in my locker. No baby articles. No apology drafts. No notes. No list titled Things to Say to Bailey so I Don’t Ruin My Life, even though my brain absolutely tries to create one.
I don’t let it.
I get dressed in jeans and a clean Henley. I run a hand through my damp hair, look at myself in the mirror above the sink, and barely recognize the man staring back at me.
He looks tired and scared.
In the parking lot, I sit in my truck for thirty seconds with both hands on the wheel.
Then I drive to Bailey’s house.
The whole way there, I resist the urge to stop for flowers. Or soup. Or tea. Or anything that might let me arrive with proof that I’m trying.
I don’t need proof.
Tonight, I need truth.
When I pull up, her porch light is on.
For a second, I just sit there, looking at the warm square of light by her front door.
I think about turning my phone over, checking the time, rereading her last text, giving myself one more minute to become someone who knows exactly what to say.
Instead, I get out, walk up the porch steps, and knock.