Chapter 35
thirty-five
MAINE
The locker room smells wrong.
That’s my first thought as I stand here, waiting for everyone to file in. It still reeks of the usual suspects—stale sweat, that menthol muscle cream Schmidt uses by the gallon, the faint undertone of mildew that no amount of industrial cleaning can ever quite eliminate—but there’s no energy to it.
No life.
Usually this place vibrates with barely contained chaos, but right now it’s as dead as my hockey career feels.
And it’s my fault, because inadvertently, my absence from the team and the aftereffects of the bet have thrown a bomb into the middle of the team, and are threatening to derail both the season and careers.
So I sent the group text message an hour ago:
Team meeting. One hour. Locker room. Important.
No jokes. No emojis. Just those words that felt like swallowing glass to type.
I’ve done a lot of soul-searching over the few days since Mike confronted me in his living room, forcing me to open up about what’s been going on, and make a plan for fighting my way back. Because, while it’s OK not to be OK, he’s right that it only matters if you work out of it.
But the guys have heeded the call.
Now they’re all here.
Looking at me.
Waiting.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I shove them deep into the pockets of my sweats, but that just makes the trembling move up my arms. My whole body feels like it’s vibrating at the wrong frequency, like I’m a guitar string that’s been tuned too tight and is about to snap.
Mike leans against his locker, arms crossed, his captain face on—the one that says he’s ready to handle whatever crisis is about to land in his lap.
Leo Cooper sits perfectly still, those steady hazel eyes of his taking everything in.
Ben Kellerman keeps fidgeting with his phone, probably wishing he was anywhere else.
Erik Schmidt looks like he’s mentally calculating how much this meeting is going to delay his evening video call with his girlfriend.
And Rook… fuck… Rook, who normally can’t enter a room without announcing his presence like he’s walking onto a late-night talk show… just looks sullen.
He’s blaming himself for my fall, when it’s not his fault at all.
They’re all waiting for me to explain why I’ve been a ghost of myself. Why I haven’t shown up to practice or the last two games, both losses. Why I look like I haven’t slept in days. And why a stupid bet has blown everything with me and the other senior guys on this team sky-high.
Just fucking say it, my mind screams at me.
But my throat has closed up completely. The words are there, but they’re stuck behind a wall of shame so thick I can barely breathe around it.
This is what I’ve been running from my whole life—this moment where I have to stand here without my armor, without my jokes, without the Maine Show to hide behind.
Just me.
Just the truth.
“A few months ago,” I finally manage, my voice sounding like someone scraped it raw with sandpaper. “Some of you were giving me shit.”
I force myself to look at them—really look at them.
Mike’s face has gone carefully neutral.
Rook just looks uncomfortable.
“About Maya.” Her name hurts coming out. Actually physically hurts. “Saying she was in my head.”
She was.
She is.
She probably always will be.
“You proposed a bet, and I went along with it like a fucking idiot,” I say, the words hang heavy in the air.
“But when I started to fall for Maya, and I wanted to back out of the bet, I couldn’t afford to.
I’d owe half a dozen guys on this team a hundred bucks each, which is cash I just don’t have. ”
Rook leans forward. “Maine, I?—“
“No, Rook, this is on me.” I cut him off, swallowing hard.
“I should have been a man about it, backing out of it and writing some hefty IOUs. Instead, I kept my struggles a secret from you all, because I love being the showman and the show has to go on, even though that decision has cost me the woman I love.”
The admission burns on the way out, but there’s something almost relieving about it.
It’s like lancing an infected wound; it hurts like hell, but the poison has to come out.
And the guys, for their part, are still deadly silent.
No jokes about being whipped, no remarks about being a hundred bucks richer…
“Maya found out, as most of you know.” My voice is steadier now, finding its footing in the truth. “That’s on me, because I should have dealt with it sooner.”
A phrase that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
A life without her.
“But that’s not all,” I say, my voice wavering. “My sister is ill, as most of you know, but only Mike knows how bad it is. In short, I think she’s going to die soon.”
The words come out cracked, broken. I have to stop, take a breath that sounds more like a sob, and force myself to continue.
And the irony isn’t lost on me that this episode of the Maine Show has twenty-five early-twenties hockey players captivated, so focused and quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
“She’s…”
Fuck.
I can’t.
My eyes are burning.
But then I think about Chloe, and the shame of my tears seems insignificant.
“She’s in the ICU. Has been for over a week now. They’re talking about experimental treatments that might buy her more time, but we can’t…” Another breath… another battle against the sob trying to claw its way up my throat. “We can’t afford it, because our insurance won’t cover it.”
I risk a glance up.
Every face in this room has gone pale.
“So there it is,” I say. “All on the table, the reason I’m struggling right now, the reason I’ve been shit on the ice, and the reason I need to forfeit the bet.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. I can hear my heartbeat, rapid and thready. I can hear someone’s phone vibrating in their bag. I can hear the drip of a leaky faucet in the showers that’s probably been there for years, but nobody has ever noticed because it’s never quiet in here.
Then Rook makes a sound like someone punched him in the gut.
“Dude…”
His voice is small. Rook’s voice is never small. He’s the loudest guy in any room on Earth, but right now he’s looking at me like I just told him I have three weeks to live. He stands up, and for once in his life, James Fitzgerald looks completely serious.
“I was just giving you shit,” he says. “I didn’t… Christ, Maine, I’m so sorry.”
Mike steps forward, his hand landing on my shoulder with the weight of an anchor. He doesn’t say anything—Mike’s always been better with actions than words—but the grip is firm, steadying. It says everything his voice won’t: I see you. I’ve got you. You’re not alone.
“Keep your money,” Schmidt says quietly. “Use it for your sister.”
“Yeah, man.” Kellerman’s voice cracks. “Nobody wants your money.”
One by one, they all refuse.
“The team takes care of its own,” Mike says simply. “Always has. Always will.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. The team takes care of its own. But I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of everyone else. That’s my job. That’s who I am. The easy kid. The performer. The one who never needs help and never fucking asks for it.
“Hey.” Mike’s grip on my shoulder tightens. “Maine. Look at me.”
I do, though my vision is blurry now, and I’m pretty sure everyone can see that I’m about five seconds from completely losing it. The first crack appears in the dam I’ve built around everything I’m feeling. Then another. Then another. And then a sob escapes.
“You should have told us,” he says. “Not about the bet. Fuck the bet. About your sister. About the money. About all of it.”
“I couldn’t?—“
“I know.” His voice is gentle in a way that Mike’s voice rarely is. “I know you couldn’t, but you should have.”
“We would have helped,” Rook says, and he sounds personally offended that we didn’t get the chance. “We would have done something.”
“That’s not…”
I start to say that’s not your problem , but the words die in my throat because isn’t that exactly the thinking that got me here? That got me benched and Maya hating me? This belief that my issues are mine alone to carry and that asking for help is the same as being a burden?
“Maya knew, didn’t she?” Rook asks quietly. “About your sister?”
I nod, unable to trust my voice.
She did. And in her quiet, fierce, unflinching way, she was holding me up when I didn’t even realize I was falling. She saw through every performance, every joke, every deflection, and instead of running from the mess underneath, she sat down beside it, beside me, and told me she needed me.
And I repaid that gift by being exactly the lying asshole she always feared I was.
“You love her,” Rook says.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Yeah, I do.”
“Then fix it,” Schmidt says, practical as always. “Whatever it takes.”
I want to laugh, but it would definitely come out as a sob. Fix it. Like it’s that simple. Like I can just walk up to Maya and say “sorry I made a bet about making you fall in love with me while I was actually falling in love with you” and she’ll just… what?
Forgive me?
Take me back?
Look at me with something apart from the cold disgust I deserve?
“I don’t think it can be fixed,” I admit.
Then the room shifts.
It’s subtle at first—just Rook pushing himself to his feet. Then Mike. Then Cooper, Schmidt, Kellerman, and Martinez. The others. One by one, they close in around me, and before I can process what’s happening, I’m being pulled into the center of twenty-something sweaty hockey players.
It’s a team hug.
A fucking team hug .
Arms wrap around me from every direction.
It’s a giant wall of brotherhood that’s somehow decided I’m worth protecting.
My throat closes up completely, because this is what I’ve been denying myself. This is what I thought I didn’t deserve. And when they finally pull back, Mike’s hand stays on my shoulder, his grip firm and grounding. He looks as tough as fucking nails and as soft as a marshmallow all at once.
“You’re back on the ice tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll talk to Coach.”
“Mike, I?—“
“No arguments.” His voice is captain-firm.
“Maya might be a lost cause right now, but you’ve still got hockey.
You’ve still got us, and we need you.” He looks around at the team, then back at me.
“And this team takes care of its own. Always has. Always will. It looked after me. And now it’s your turn. ”
And for the first time in my life, I let them.