10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Tate
I don’t usually wake up before my alarm.
The hockey house is rarely quiet. Someone's always stomping down the hallway, slamming a cabinet, blasting music too early, but this morning, there’s this strange stillness.
Pale early winter light filters through the curtains, striping the walls in dull gray.
The air smells faintly like last night’s pizza and whatever cologne Parker bathes in.
But I’m awake before any of that starts.
Not because of practice.
Because I dreamed about a Dexcom alarm.
A sharp, imagined beeping that cut through sleep and left my chest tight.
I stare at the ceiling, tracing the small crack above my bed, flashbacks of the other night racing through my mind.
40 with a slight down arrow. The way her body raced the second she saw it. Like someone flipped a switch. One second soft and breathless under me. The next, focused. Alert. Mother.
She didn’t apologize.
Didn’t hesitate.
Because that’s what moms do. That's what my mom was like, always putting me before her and I don't think I've really appreciate it till this moment watching Celeste.
I roll onto my side and grab my phone from the nightstand. The screen lights up my dark room, too bright against morning eyes.
Type 1 diabetes nighttime lows. Is what I type into the search engine bar.
The internet is an unforgiving place at six in the morning.
Articles load one after another. Medical journals. Parent forums. Stories that start with “We thought everything was fine…” and end in worst-case scenarios.
Seizures. Severe hypoglycemia. Emergency glucagon kits. Parents sleeping with baby monitors long after their kids are toddlers.
My jaw tightens.
She does this alone.
Every night.
While I’m here, complaining about conditioning drills and bad ice.
There’s a chart about carb ratios. Insulin units per gram of carbohydrate.
There’s a breakdown about how exercise affects blood sugar.
There’s an article about athletes with Type 1 who have to test between periods, and I notice one of the names.
Jeremy Sanders plays with Chiral, Liam, and Nix on the Boston Knights.
I read all of it.
Not because I think I can fix anything.
But because I refuse to be the guy who nods and smiles and doesn’t actually understand what he’s stepping into.
If I’m in this, then I’m in this all the way.
A knock hits my door, sharp against the quiet.
“Alive?” Preston calls before pushing it open.
He stands in the doorway, arms crossed, hoodie half-zipped, His dark hair still damp from a shower. The hallway light spills in from behind him.
“You look like hell,” he adds, his face not changing in the slightest. Preston is grumpy, but loves in his own way.
“Thanks.”
He steps inside, eyeing the glow of my phone. “You doom-scrolling before practice? That’s new, you’re normally about your hippy dippity morning Zen shit.”
I hesitate.
Then I sit up fully, back against the headboard. “What do you know about Type 1 diabetes?”
He blinks. Actually blinks. “Like… medically? Nothing. Why?”
I lock my screen and set the phone on my thigh. “Celeste has a son.” I look up at him as I drop this information on him. His face doesn’t change. “And he has Type 1 diabetes… he’s five. And Brett Silas is the father.” Again, nothing in his face changes.
Preston studies me for a long moment. Longer than usual. Like he’s recalibrating.
“Oh,” he says slowly. “You’re in deep.”
I don’t even try to deny it.
The words sit heavy in my chest, but not in a bad way.
“I just don’t want to screw it up, but am I really ready to have responsibilities like this? I want to be, but fuck what if I mess this up?” I admit quietly. “She already handles so much.”
Preston pushes off the wall and sits on the edge of my desk.
“You don’t Google medical conditions at six A.M. for someone you’re not serious about.
But it is a lot for someone our age to handle, so I would think long and hard if this is something you want.
Coming from a kid who was in too many people's lives who didn’t want me there, you can’t half-ass this. ”
He’s right.
“And if you hurt her,” he adds casually, though his tone isn’t joking, “I will personally make your life miserable, because The Retro Rooster is the only place I can get a good burger close to Campus.”
I snort. “Good to know.”
After Preston leaves, the house slowly comes alive around me, pipes groaning in the walls, heavy footsteps thudding overhead, someone down the hall swearing about missing socks. The place is never quiet for long.
Mr. Hall, Chiral’s dad, owns the house. He bought it when Chiral committed here, originally just a place for him and his buddies to live off-campus.
But over the years, as players graduated and new ones rotated in, the house sort of became legend.
So Mr. Hall is doing what billionaires do: making plans to renovate the entire place.
Top to bottom. Turning it into the official hockey house, and will donate it to the university like it was nothing more than a generous afterthought.
I come from money. Real money. Both of my parents are high-powered attorneys representing some of the most elite clientele in California.
But Mr. Hall?
He’s on a different level entirely.
For him, remodeling this place and donating it, that’s pocket change.
But I sit there a minute longer with my phone in my hand. Thinking of Celeste, how she works herself to death. Between school, internship, Rowen, and work. How the fuck does she do it all?
I pull up Celeste’s contact in my phone:
Me: Morning. How were his numbers overnight?
I don’t add anything else. No emoji. No flirting.
The typing bubble appears almost immediately.
Celeste: Stable. 124 when he woke up. Thank you for asking.
Something about that “thank you” twists in my chest.
Like she didn’t expect me to care.
I stare at the screen before typing again.
Me: I’ve got practice till noon. Want coffee after? Just us.
There’s a longer pause this time.
I imagine her reading it. Re-reading it. Overthinking it.
Then.
Celeste: Yeah. I’d like that. I’ll be interning again later this week at your practices as well. Just thought you would want to know.
Me: That’s great. I’ll always take any chance I can to see you, especially if it means I get to have you tape up my knee again *winking face*
And for the first time since waking up.
I breathe easier.
Celeste
I shouldn’t have let him kiss me like that or become involved with Rowen.
That’s what I tell myself as I stand barefoot in my kitchen, pouring cereal into a plastic Spider-Man bowl with slightly chipped edges.
The apartment smells like coffee and cinnamon toast. The heater hums softly, fighting against the early winter cold seeping through the windows. Morning light spills across the small dining table, catching dust in the air.
Rowen sits in his booster seat, curls creating a wild halo around his head, pajamas twisted from sleep. He’s humming something off-key, kicking his feet lightly against the chair.
His Dexcom reads 126.
Steady arrow.
I exhale slowly.
But my chest still feels tight.
Because I kissed someone. Not just someone, Tate.
The hockey player. The guy who shows up at my job as often as he can, most of the time with flowers.
Who knows that I have a child now, and he didn’t run.
But also Tate, the known playboy, the hotshot on campus. The guy who all the girls chase after.
And yet, he kissed me in my apartment, which doesn’t have much.
In the living room where I’ve cried over insurance phone calls. Where I’ve fallen asleep sitting upright during late-night lows. Where I told myself I don’t need anyone.
And now. There’s a warmth under my ribs that feels suspiciously like hope.
Which is dangerous.
Rowen looks up at me suddenly. His green eyes blinking curiously.
“Momma?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Are you happy?” His head tilts to the side a little bit, like a cute, curious puppy
The spoon stills in my hand.
I kneel beside him, brushing milk from his chin. “Why would you ask that?”
He shrugs. “You smile more lately.”
My throat tightens.
“I am,” I say softly. “I’m happy.” And I mean it.
That’s what scares me.
After I drop him off at Suzie’s, I walk down the stairs of my apartment building, heading out into the cold. I walk a bit before waiting at the bus stop on my way to my class.
I stare at my phone.
Then I do something I haven’t done in months.
I call Maddie.
She answers on the third ring, wind audible on her end. “Well, this is new. Are you dying?”
“Probably,” I mutter.
She gasps dramatically. “Did you finally snap and murder Brett?”
“I wish.” Rolling my eyes at her words.
“Okay, good. I don’t look good in orange, and that would’ve made me an accomplice.”
Despite everything, I laugh.
Maddie Lawson has known me since our freshman year of high school. She saw Brett charm teachers and manipulate coaches. Saw him slowly turn cold when things got complicated. She was there the night I found out I was pregnant, sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor while I cried into my hoodie.
She never said I told you so.
She just stayed.
“So,” she presses now, voice shifting. “What happened?”
I let out a deep breath.
“I kissed someone.”
Silence. Then.
“You WHAT?”
I wince. “Lower your voice.”
“I’m walking across campus, Celeste. WHO IS HE?”
“Tate Jackson.”
There’s a pause. Wind noise. A distant car horn.
“The hockey god?” she asks slowly.
“Oh my god.”
“Don’t oh my god me. You sent me a picture once last year. He looks illegal.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?” Her tone is smooth, not sharp, but always eager to push me outside of my boundaries.
My voice wobbles before I can stop it. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?” She knows exactly what I’m talking about, but she knows I need to talk out my thoughts.
“Let someone in. Around Rowen. Around my life.” My fingers tighten around the phone. “What if I’m being selfish?”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes, well, I think. We’ve known each other for a few years.
He started stopping by my job for coffee or dinner, and things just kind of moved on from there, but I mean, he’s painfully direct and honest. He reassured me at every moment, and when he found out about Rowen, he didn’t even flinch, just took it like a feather to the chest, and not the wrecking ball my life is. ” I whisper.
“Hmm, and does he know about Brett?”
“He knows Brett is Rowen’s dad, but not everything else.
” Tate doesn’t know that at every turn, Brett threatens to take Rowen from me.
That whenever I push back on his advances, it always ends with the whole “Remember that he’s my son, if I want to take him, I will” spiel.
But Brett doesn’t actually want custody of Rowen; he barely knows anything about our…
my son. He just wants to manipulate me and control me and I never understood why.
I've told him so many times to sign away his rights, to move on without us, but he won't… and that scares me more than anything.
“And he stayed?”
“Yes. He did, without a second thought.”
She goes quiet for a long moment.
“Cel,” she says gently, “you are allowed to want something, to want someone.”
Tears blur the road in front of me.
“I don’t even know who I am outside of being a mom anymore,” I admit.
“You’re still the girl who snuck into football games and screamed louder than the cheerleaders, you’re still the kick ass hockey player, you’re the girl who is so damn smart that you’re going to Ballad for free,” she replies.
“You’re still the girl who wanted more than what Brett was offering. You just have more to protect now.”
I swallow hard.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“Of him leaving?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Or of him staying?”
That one knocks the air from my lungs.
Because if he stays…
Then I have to trust that it won’t fall apart. “I think both. Maddie, he’s too perfect. He didn’t even flinch when he found out about Rowen or when Ro’s numbers dropped in the middle of the night. He was just there, wanting to help.”
“Cel, no one is perfect, but he could be the difference. You deserve to be happy; you deserve someone who will support you and help you with Rowen. And Rowen deserves to see his mom happy and to have a man in his life who isn’t going to run and pretend he doesn’t exist.”
The bus pulls up, and I know I don’t want others to hear this conversation. “I know. I miss you.”
“I miss you too. I’ll come visit soon. I need to see my boy. Love you, Celly, but next time we talk, you'd better have climbed that man like the tree he is.”
"Goodbye Maddison," I laugh before hanging up the phone.
After we hang up, my phone buzzes.
Tate: Morning. How were his numbers overnight?
My chest tightens in a completely different way.
He remembered.
He didn’t send a cheesy “good morning, beautiful” text.
He asked about my son.
I type back.
When he asks for coffee, I stare at the screen for a long moment.
Coffee is simple.
Safe.
Neutral ground.
But simple is how something real begins.
And maybe. Just maybe.
I’m ready to find out who I am outside of survival mode.