Chapter 26
twenty-six
MAINE
The locker room door swings shut behind me with a dull thud that might as well be the sound of my career ending.
Nobody looks at me. That’s how I know it’s bad. Because when you fuck up a little, the guys chirp, give you shit, and try to lighten the mood to tell you they’ve got your back. But when you fuck up catastrophically, single-handedly tanking a game in front of thousands of people, they give you this.
The careful avoidance.
The studied interest in their gear.
The silence that screams louder than any amount of yelling could.
The air reeks of defeat. It’s in the sour smell of sweat-soaked gear, the metallic tang of blood from my split lip, and the acrid stench of failure that seems to be pouring off me in waves. My legs barely hold me as I make it to my stall, dropping onto the bench like my bones have turned to water.
I bury my face in my hands, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes hard enough to see stars. But even that can’t erase the image burned into my brain—Maya watching me fail, watching me get benched, watching me finally buckle under the pressure.
It’s like being at my funeral, except I’m still alive.
“Dude…” Rook’s voice cuts through the silence as he pulls off his chest protector. “She got you wrapped around her little finger, or what?”
The words are meant to be a joke, a classic Rook attempt to break the tension with crude humor. But they land like an accusation because they’re so fucking true it hurts. Maya doesn’t just have me wrapped around her finger, she’s got me completely dismantled, rewired, and turned inside-out.
The guy who sat on that bench tonight wasn’t the Maine Hamilton who’s been playing hockey since he could walk. That was someone else entirely. Someone who couldn’t focus because all he could think about was how much he cares about the woman in the stands and the lie he’s living.
The lie that will devastate her if she finds out.
And make him broke in the process.
Mike’s hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and meant to be comforting. “Don’t sweat it too much, man,” he says. “It happens.”
I just shrug.
“Besides,” Mike continues, and I can hear him trying to force lightness into his tone, “you’ve still got time to win the cash.”
The bet.
The fucking bet.
He thinks I’m off my game because I’m broke and worried about losing.
And, well, he’s not totally wrong.
Bile rises in my throat, hot and acidic. They think I’m playing some stupid game of conquest, but have no idea that last night I held her while she trembled against me, that we made love—not fucked, not hooked up, but made actual love—with her eyes locked on mine like I was something precious.
They don’t know she whispered those three words into the darkness of my room, or that I wanted so desperately to say them back that I had to bite my tongue until it bled. Because of the bet—the fucking bet—that feels like desecration now, like I’ve taken something sacred and smeared it with shit.
I stand abruptly, the bench scraping against the floor. “I need a shower.”
But even under the scalding spray, I can’t wash away the truth.
I’m trapped in a cage of my own making.
If I tell the guys the bet is off, I have to pay up—money I don’t have.
And if I tell Maya about the bet?
Jesus Christ, I can’t even think about it. She just torched her relationship with her entire family and at the same time decided I was worth choosing… worth investing in. And all this time, I’ve been lying to her face, using her trust as currency in a locker room wager I never should have made.
I stay under the water until it runs cold, then I finally shut it off.
I wrap a towel around my waist and walk back to my stall, where my phone lights up like a live grenade.
I know I should check it, because there might be a Chloe update, but I also know that whatever’s waiting for me will likely make my day worse.
Still, like picking at a scab, I can’t help myself.
There’s one new message. From Maya. My thumb hovers over it for a long moment.
Part of me wants to delete it without reading, to spare myself whatever disappointment or disgust she’s about to express.
But the masochistic part of me—the part that thinks I deserve every bit of pain coming my way—opens it.
Thinking of you. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
The words blur as I stare at them. I read them again. Then again.
There’s no anger. No disappointment. No questions about what the fuck happened out there.
Just… support. Pure, uncomplicated kindness.
And that heart emoji—casual but significant, a little red declaration that she’s on my side even when I just proved to everyone watching that I’m a complete failure.
The phone trembles in my hand.
She saw everything, and her first instinct was to comfort me.
The contrast between what she’s offering and what I deserve makes me feel physically sick.
Here’s this incredible woman, someone who fed me when I was too broke and proud to feed myself, who sees through every performance I put on, and who’s willing to support me every day and especially after a day like this…
And I’m lying to her face every single day.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. I could text back. I could go home and fall into her arms and pretend for one more night that I’m not the disaster I know I am, that there’s not a bomb under our relationship that I created. I could let her keep looking at me like I’m worth saving.
But that’s the thing about being the easy kid, the one who never adds to the burden—you learn early that love means not becoming someone else’s problem. And that’s exactly what I am.
A problem.
A walking disaster of debt and lies and family crises.
A man who made a bet on her heart.
The absolute last thing someone like Maya needs, because she’s brilliant and strong, and because she deserves someone who can match her, not drag her down into the cesspool of his failures. Someone with a hell of a lot more good going on than me.
The guys are still talking around me, their voices a distant buzz. Someone mentions grabbing beers. Someone else suggests we find some puck bunnies to help us forget. Normally I’d be leading the charge, but tonight the Maine Show is on hiatus.
“You coming out with us?” Mike asks, still trying to salvage something from this wreckage of a night. “We’re going to hit O’Neil’s, decompress a little.”
The thought of sitting at O’Neil’s, pretending everything’s fine, performing the role of Maine Hamilton while my phone burns with Maya’s unanswered message—I’d rather take another shift on that ice and let the opposing team use me for target practice.
But the alternative is going home. Going home to her.
Seeing her sympathy, feeling her comfort, accepting her care when I know what I really am: a liar who’s been playing her for money, who’s caught between forfeiting the bet he can’t afford to lose and destroying her trust with a bet he doesn’t want to win.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say, the word scraping out of my throat. “I’ll come.”
Rook claps me on the back, some of his energy returning now we’re talking about drinking instead of that disaster. “That’s my boy! First round is on me.”
It’s meant to be a gesture to show me he’s got my back, but it just reminds me that these guys—my friends, my teammates—have money riding on me breaking Maya’s heart. They don’t know that’s what they’re betting on, but I do. I know exactly what I’m doing, or what I was doing.
What I can’t keep doing.
The decision crystallizes in my mind with the clarity of ice forming on water.
I have to end this. Not the bet—I can’t afford to lose that money, literally cannot afford it—but whatever’s real between Maya and me.
I have to kill it before it grows any bigger, before I hurt her any worse than I already will.
She deserves someone who isn’t lying to her. Someone who isn’t broke, exhausted, and shackled to family obligations that will never end. Someone who can accept her heart emoji without feeling like he’s swallowing glass, and send one back to her without it being a toxic mirage.
My phone weighs a thousand pounds as I shove it deep into my bag, her message still glowing on the screen, still unanswered. I stand, my body moving on autopilot. My legs feel disconnected from my brain, carrying me toward the exit when every cell in my body wants to run home to Maya.
To confess everything.
To beg for forgiveness I don’t deserve.
But instead I fall into step with Rook and Mike, choosing the cold comfort of beer and bullshit over the warm reality of the woman who’s waiting for me.
The woman who watched me fail spectacularly and still sent me a heart, who told me I had her heart last night and got nothing but silence in return.
I’m poison, and the kindest thing I can do is stop letting her drink me in.