Chapter 20 Matthieu
TWENTY
MATTHIEU
Matthieu was surprised, and maybe a little giddy, to find Kieran in almost the same spot he’d left him hours ago.
Curled up in a stiff plastic chair, knees drawn to his chest, completely absorbed in a paperback he’d seemingly conjured out of thin air.
Knowing Kieran, he’d probably charmed it out of an unsuspecting patient or sweet-talked a nurse into digging something up to entertain him.
Matthieu had never seen Kieran so still.
He hovered for a moment, feeling awkward. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t allowed himself to hope for it. But there Kieran was, blonde hair scruffy and rumpled, brow furrowed, lost between pages.
Matthieu wondered if Kieran read often, or if this was a new hobby born from boredom and desperation.
Did he curl up with a novel at the end of the day?
Read on all those long flights? Or did he prefer video games with his teammates?
Maybe he napped. Matthieu hated not knowing the answers.
He wanted to know all the ins and outs of what made Kieran… Kieran.
“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” Matthieu muttered, weaving through the haphazard sprawl of the waiting room and stopping in front of him.
Kieran looked up, folding the page corner to mark his place. “I promised I’d stay.”
You promised me a lot of things, Matthieu thought. A bitter echo he couldn’t voice, not now, not when Kieran looked at him with soft eyes and an expression that resembled genuine care. He didn’t have to be here. Matthieu swallowed the ill-placed resentment.
“Thanks,” he said instead. “For staying.”
Kieran unfolded from the chair, stretching stiff limbs as he stood.
“You ready to head home?” Home. The word rolled off Kieran’s tongue like it was somewhere they shared.
Matthieu hesitated long enough for Kieran to notice.
“I mean, back to mine. To get your car,” he added quickly.
“Hopefully you didn’t get a ticket. I should’ve had you move it into the garage, but I didn’t think… ”
“Oh.” Matthieu cut him off, cheeks warming. “Actually, uh… my car’s at my place. Can you drop me off on the way?”
Kieran blinked. “At your place?”
“Yeah. I… might’ve walked to yours last night.”
“Walked?”
“It’s not that far,” Matthieu lied, too casually, like Kieran wouldn’t notice it was at least six miles when he dropped him off.
“Yeah. Okay,” Kieran said eventually. “Whatever you need.”
They started walking toward the exit together. Matthieu didn’t know what to do with the way Kieran matched his pace so naturally, moving in rhythm.
“Have you eaten?” Kieran asked as they stepped into the late afternoon. “We can stop somewhere on the way. My treat?”
Matthieu knew what this was. Kieran was trying to take care of him in the gentlest way he knew how, slipping comfort into casual suggestions so it wouldn’t feel like pity.
Part of Matthieu wanted to resist it, to fight Kieran’s interference like always.
He wanted to push Kieran away because it was routine, because it was safe, because it was what Kieran expected.
But Matthieu was too tired, too wrung out to keep pretending he didn’t want someone to hold him up for once.
He let out a long breath. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Okay. That sounds… good.”
Kieran glanced at him, maybe expecting a caveat, maybe even a fight—the familiar push and pull, the tug of war that had become their norm.
Kieran offering his hand. Matthieu slapping it away.
Kieran didn’t question it. He just gave a slight nod and unlocked the Jeep.
Matthieu climbed in, trying not to think too hard about the fact that, for the first time in a long time, it felt like maybe he wasn’t entirely alone.
Suzy’s Diner was a Newark staple. For as long as Matthieu could remember, it had sat on the corner a few blocks from his childhood home.
Try as he might, he couldn’t recall a single time it had ever been closed.
Rain or shine, under feet of snow, the little OPEN light had been a permanent fixture beside the stainless steel doors.
He’d spent countless nights in high school crammed into a booth, working on schoolwork, avoiding home.
Suzy herself would serve him extra slices of pie.
It’ll have to be tossed anyway, she’d say whenever he protested.
She knew why he haunted the place. He knew she knew.
But she never said a word—just kept his drink filled, casually pointing out mistakes in his math homework as she bussed tables around him.
Suzy had passed away years ago, and the little diner was inherited by a son who never set foot inside. Still, the loyal workers who’d once served under Suzy had kept it much the same.
Kieran, of course, had no idea what this place meant to Matthieu when he pulled into the parking lot and muttered, “Does this place look okay?” as if he hadn’t stumbled into Matthieu’s refuge during the most challenging years of his life.
“Yeah. Looks good.”
They slipped into a booth along the back wall.
The server who’d greeted them dropped off plastic menus before disappearing to grab waters.
It was quiet at this time of day—a lull between the lunch and dinner crowds.
Matthieu was grateful for the peace, grateful Kieran didn’t seem in a rush to break it.
Matthieu pretended to study the menu, flipping the laminated sheet front to back before setting it on the scratched tabletop.
Kieran mirrored him, draping his arm along the back of the booth as he gazed out at the street beyond the smudged window.
It wouldn’t be long before the snow started falling again.
The mid-afternoon sky had turned that pale, vast gray that always foreshadowed bitter cold.
The world felt still for a moment: just the quiet chatter from the only other occupied table a few booths over, and the soft, steady breaths drifting from Kieran’s plump lips.
Matthieu wanted to reach across the table and take Kieran’s hand, his fingertips curled over the edge like an offering.
It would be so easy, Matthieu thought—so easy to slip their fingers together.
A small act they’d done a thousand times before: on tabletops and laps, under jackets on the team bus, between sheets in cheap hotel rooms. Hands always reaching, always finding each other.
Now, after all this time, it would mean everything. Change everything.
“What can I get you, boys?” Matthieu was grateful for the server’s well-timed return. He’d been moments away from doing something incredibly foolish.
“Can I get a double cheeseburger, medium? Extra bacon, if that’s possible, and a side of onion rings,” Kieran rattled off.
She pulled a pencil from her hair bun with a flourish, jotted down the order, and turned to Matthieu.
“A Cobb salad, please,” he said quietly.
“Sure thing, hun. Anything else to drink?”
“Do you have milkshakes?” Kieran asked, lighting up like an overexcited child.
“Vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, or peanut butter.”
“Peanut butter.”
She scribbled another note before whisking away with a breezy, “It’ll be right out.”
“You still eat like a rabbit, then?” The corners of Kieran’s mouth tugged into that cocksure grin that did insane, tumbly things to Matthieu’s insides.
“You still eat like shit?”
“I’m a professional athlete, fuck you very much. I need calories to burn.”
“I’m sure your team nutritionist would have a lot to say about what calories you should be consuming. I’m also fairly certain saturated fat, pumped full of sodium, isn’t on the list. I don’t know how you skate so fast with all that in your system.”
Kieran had always eaten that way. Before every game, at every team dinner, he’d find the most unhealthy item in the buffet and pile his plate high like he was daring the food to slow him down.
Kieran chuckled. They’d had this debate countless times before.
“Wait,” Matthieu said suddenly. “You were supposed to report for weight training today. You’ll get fined.”
Kieran waved a hand like it was no big deal. “I borrowed the hospital’s gym.”
“Their gym?”
“Well, one of the PTs let me use some of their equipment. I got it approved by the team to do it off-site. It wasn’t an issue.”
It was a big deal, though. Kieran had rearranged his entire day, things he was contractually obligated to do, to be there—to make sure he was still in that hospital lobby when Matthieu came back from seeing his mother.
That felt like too much. Matthieu didn’t have the capacity to process it right now.
Luckily, Kieran picked up on it and changed the subject. “Have you kept up with anyone from the old team?”
“Not really. I hear from Johnson from time to time. I officiated a few games for Milner and Orlov, but…” He trailed off. Matthieu had never been great at keeping in touch, but phones worked both ways, and no one else had made the effort either. No one ever did. “You?”
Kieran scoffed. It felt harsher than the moment called for. “Nah.” That was all he said. Barely a word, but it spoke volumes.
“How’s it playing with J?rgensen? Has he forgiven you for breaking his nose? I still can’t believe you did that.”
“He broke yours first,” Kieran said, like that was reason enough. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even remember. That guy’s taken one too many hits to the head.”
Matthieu let out a soft chuckle. That had always amused him about hockey: one moment, you were squaring off as rivals, and the next, a trade made you brothers.
He knew countless players who scrapped like cats during play, then grabbed a beer afterward, wearing the bruises the other left.
That duality was the part Matthieu always struggled with.
He saw the world in black and white too starkly to separate the two.
“You scored two goals that game,” Kieran added. Matthieu was surprised he even remembered.
“Would’ve been three if I hadn’t needed my nose reset.”
It was the closest Matthieu had ever come to a hat-trick.
He could feel it building all night: the weighty anticipation.
Kieran had felt it too, passing up easy shots to feed the puck to Matthieu’s blade, giving him every chance at that elusive third goal.
Coach had been furious—especially after the fight that got them both ejected.
“I remember thinking that night you’d make it. No way a farm team wouldn’t take notice and snatch you up.”
“I was never that good.”
“You were. You are. It felt like barely a day had passed playing with you at the youth center. You could’ve gone pro.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Matthieu heard it in Kieran’s tone anyway. What happened, Matthieu? Why’d you give it all up? Why’d you let it all go?
“I only ever played like that with you.” And if I didn’t have you, I didn’t want hockey at all.
Unsaid words hung heavy between them. Matthieu was probably imagining it, but he swore he heard Kieran’s wordless response to his silent confession. You could’ve had it all.
That was a lie. Everything he’d ever wanted had been ripped away in a single twenty-four-hour span—every dream, every hope, everything he’d been certain of only days before.
“Here you go.” The dull thud of their food hitting the table broke the standoff. God bless this woman and her impeccable timing.
They ate mostly in silence—not suffocating like it had been so many other times, but warm, companionable.
The kind that only existed between two people who knew each other’s souls.
Kieran, like always, inhaled his overflowing plate in fewer bites than should’ve been physically possible, then proceeded to slurp his milkshake like a porn star through the plastic straw.
Matthieu laughed, still stabbing at his uninspired salad until he finally let the waitress whisk the half-full plate away. He wished he’d ordered a milkshake too. He must’ve been eyeing it with lustful intent, because Kieran asked, “You want one to go?”
Matthieu shook his head.
“Jeez. Live a little, Matty.”
Matthieu didn’t bother scolding him over the pet name. Truth was, he liked the way it rolled off Kieran’s tongue. Liked it too much. Hadn’t that always been the problem?
Minutes later, Matthieu was back in the passenger seat of Kieran’s Jeep, directing him through the familiar streets he called home, a strawberry milkshake clenched in his palms and a feeling awfully close to contentment settling in his bones.