Chapter 28
twenty-eight
MAINE
The silence in our apartment has texture now. It’s thick and suffocating, like trying to breathe through wet wool or trying to swim fully clothed. Three days since the game, and we’ve become experts at existing in the same space without actually sharing it.
I pour coffee and quickly eat breakfast while she brushes her teeth. She grabs her keys from the bowl in the hallway while I’m in the shower. We orbit each other like binary stars that have lost their gravitational pull—close enough to feel the absence, far enough to pretend it doesn’t hurt.
Except it fucking hurts.
Right now, she’s in the kitchen making breakfast, and I can hear every movement through my closed bedroom door.
The clink of a spoon on her bowl. The soft pad of her bare feet on linoleum.
Each sound is a reminder of what I’ve destroyed, what I’m still destroying with every minute I maintain this distance.
Just walk out there. Tell her the truth and you’re sorry. Tell her you need her.
But I can’t. The bet sits in my chest like a tumor, malignant and spreading. Every time I think about coming clean, I imagine her face when she finds out. The betrayal. The disgust. The confirmation that I’m just another person who saw her vulnerability and used it against her.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. A message from Mike:
You coming to practice or what?
I check the time. Shit. I’m already twenty minutes late. I reply:
On my way.
It’s a lie. I’m sitting on my bed in yesterday’s sweats, and the thought of facing the team—of facing their questions about the bet, about Maya, about my spectacular failure on the ice—makes me want to throw my phone through the window.
And I’m also trapped in here until she goes.
Thankfully, a few minutes later, the apartment door clicks shut, Maya leaving for her clinical placement shift. I wait until I hear her footsteps fade down the hallway before I emerge from my room like some kind of pathetic vampire afraid of the light.
The kitchen still smells like her. Her coffee mug sits in the sink, lipstick print on the rim. Red today. The angry red she’s been wearing since I shut her out. I’ve caught myself looking—at her lips, at her ass, at all of her—since I shut her out, like a kid outside a candy store.
I know what I want, but I can’t have it.
I should go to practice. I should at least pretend I give a shit about hockey, about school, about anything other than the growing void in my chest. Instead, I grab a beer from the fridge—the breakfast of champions—and retreat to the couch.
The apartment feels wrong without her energy filling it. Even when we were at war over territory and passive-aggressive sticky notes, there was life here. Now it’s just empty space and the ghost of what we almost had, before I fucked it all up.
Some fucking mess you’ve made, Hamilton.
I drain the beer and grab another. It’s not even noon, but who’s counting?
The second beer goes down easier than the first, dulling the edges of my self-hatred just enough to function. So, when I finally drag myself to my room to change for practice, there’s some chance I might be able to get through the day without putting a fist through a wall.
My hockey bag sits in the corner, equipment spilling out like the guts of something dead. The sight of it makes my stomach turn. Hockey used to be my escape, the one thing I was genuinely good at. Now it’s just another reminder of my public humiliation, another arena where I’m failing.
As I pull on a semi-clean t-shirt, I catch my reflection in the mirror.
I look like shit.
Get your shit together, my mind shouts at me. Chloe needs you functional. The team needs you functional.
But functional feels impossible when every cell in my body wants to beg Maya to forgive me. To tell her everything about the bet, the money problems, the bone-deep fear that I’m not worth her time, that I don’t want to burden her with my shit because she’s got enough of her own.
To let her see all of it and pray she doesn’t run.
Except she would run.
Of course she would. She cut her own family out, for fuck’s sake.
Wouldn’t she do the same to me?
So no, none of that, for now.
I’m avoiding her, because I’ve got no better solution.
I finally make it to practice an hour late. Coach barely looks at me as I slouch onto the bench to lace up my skates. And, when I hit the ice, my legs feel like lead, my stick foreign in my hands. Every drill is a struggle, every play a reminder that I’m falling apart in every area of my life.
During a water break, Mike skates over. “You look like death.”
“Thanks.” I sigh. “Really helpful.”
“What’s going on with you and Maya?”
The question hits like a check into the boards. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” He snorts. “Sophie says Maya’s been going out every night.”
The thought of Maya out at bars, finding comfort in other guys because I’m too much of a coward to give it to her, makes me want to break my stick over my knee. But I’m the one who pushed her away, so what right do I have to feel jealous?
“Not my business,” I mutter.
Mike shakes his head and skates off before I can respond.
I’m about to rejoin the next drill when I see my phone light up on the bench, right where I left it. I should leave it, focus on my game, but I’m already neck-deep in a river of shit so why not find out what’s going on?
I lean my stick against the boards, skate over, and snatch it up. I answer without checking the caller ID. “Hello?” I say.
“Maine?” My mother’s voice cracks like thin ice. “It’s Chloe.”
The rink tilts sideways. “What happened?”
“They’re admitting her. Her oxygen levels dropped, and she’s been coughing up blood. Your father’s trying to get there, but the traffic—“ A sob cuts through her words. “I’m scared, Maine. I think it might be really bad this time, and I need you here.”
Everything else evaporates. The bet, the team, Maya—gone. My baby sister might be dying, and my mother’s terror confirms this isn’t another routine flare-up. Time to armor up and be the son who shows up without questions, without needs of his own.
“Which hospital?” The words come automatically.
“Mercy General. Pulmonary ward.”
“I’m on my way.”
I’m already yanking off my skates, not bothering to unlace them properly. Mike starts toward me, but I wave him off. Can’t explain. Can’t stop. Chloe needs me. The other guys—and even Coach—seem to catch my vibe, because none of them question me as I leave the ice.
Or maybe they just think I’m done.
When I rush outside, the parking lot air hits like a slap. I throw my gear in the trunk, still wearing my practice jersey, and slide behind the wheel. My hands shake as I grip the steering wheel, trying to process everything my mom had said: Chloe hospitalized, coughing blood, oxygen failing.
My first instinct—immediate, overwhelming—is Maya. This medical terminology suddenly carries weight that could crush me, and she’d translate the jargon into something comprehensible. She’d know if this is manageable or if I should be planning a funeral. She’d be the anchor I desperately need.
But as I start the car and drive out of the parking lot I realize that, more than medical knowledge, I just want her. Her hand in mine walking into that sterile nightmare. Her steady presence when my family’s panic threatens to pull us all under.
I need her.
The urge is so powerful I actually turn toward campus before reality crashes back. The bet sits between us like shattered glass. How can I beg for comfort while actively deceiving her? How can I lean on her when she doesn’t know why I’ve been pulling away?
No.
The point is, I’m a walking disaster zone. Even beyond the bet, nobody should deal with this, especially not Maya with her own family trauma, her own battles. This is exactly why I pushed her away. To shield her from the endless crisis that is my life, the deception, the mess of my own making.
You fucked up, now live with it. Alone, like you always do.