Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
KIERAN
They went straight from the rink to the hospital, where Matthieu’s mom was awake and, according to the nurse on duty, in good spirits.
It didn’t hit Kieran until he stepped into the room that this was the first time he was meeting Matthieu’s mother.
She was propped up in her hospital bed—robe on, blankets tucked up to her chest, hands folded over a worn paperback sitting in her lap.
Kieran moved to introduce himself, but Matthieu stopped him with a slight shake of his head, as if to say Wait a moment.
“Hello, dears,” she said, a kind smile spreading across her face. She looked small. Tired and dainty in her jumble of blankets, with wires snaking out from under them, leading to relentlessly beeping machines. “Can I help you?”
She said this directly to Kieran. He suddenly felt out of place, like he should’ve stayed in the lobby. How was he supposed to explain what he was to Matthieu when they hadn’t even defined it themselves?
Matthieu would probably want him to say he was a friend. That was safest. Kieran wasn’t sure he could get those words out even if he were forced. He was certain hearing Matthieu describe him that way would feel like a skate to the chest.
But then Matthieu reached out a stiff hand for his mother to shake. He introduced himself by his first name, nudging Kieran forward to do the same, saying, “How is your Christmas going so far, Ms. Bouchard? We heard you could use some company.”
She answered without missing a beat, “That’s so nice of you. My family couldn’t make it.” Then added, “Please call me Sylvie. Take a seat, take a seat.”
They both sat down. Kieran wasn’t sure if he could touch Matthieu right now, but he desperately needed the contact.
He reached out, his fingertips grazing Matthieu’s as they drummed an anxious rhythm against his thigh.
Matthieu turned his palm up and let Kieran slot their hands together. Everything instantly felt better.
“What did you say your name was, dear?”
“Matthieu,” he said again. “And this is Kieran.”
“Oh, yes, yes. That’s right.”
Kieran turned to study the side of Matthieu’s face, expecting hurt, but saw only—relief?
So Kieran sat and listened while Sylvie told stories about her children, like one of them wasn’t sitting right in front of her.
Matthieu participated in the conversation as if he weren’t the topic of it.
Kieran could tell from Matthieu’s face he didn’t remember the stories quite the same way she did.
Still, he was patient, asking thoughtful questions, never hurrying her when she got lost mid-thought.
“Oh, I don’t know why I can’t remember their names.” She looked embarrassed. “My mind isn’t as young as it once was. I have a daughter. She is so beautiful, with long black hair. And a boy. Older. Serious. Always thinking intensely about something, that one.”
It took serious self-control not to laugh, especially when Kieran caught the smirk curling at the corners of Matthieu’s mouth and the glint in his eyes as he glanced sideways at Kieran.
Sylvie drifted off to sleep mid-sentence not long after, the excitement of visitors finally catching up with her.
“We should go,” Matthieu whispered, his hand still clasped tightly around Kieran’s.
They bundled back up to brave the cold and wished the hospital staff a Merry Christmas as they left.
Kieran expected that familiar silence to fall over Matthieu, the kind he got when thinking intensely about something.
Instead, a smile was plastered across his face.
A real one this time, not the practiced version from the hospital room.
“Today was a good day,” Matthieu said firmly, like if he said it confidently enough, it would make it true.
“Is that hard for you?” It sounded like a stupid question once Kieran said it aloud. He hadn’t been able to read the emotion, or lack of it, on Matthieu’s face as he sat by his mother’s side. “When she doesn’t remember, I mean?”
Matthieu turned to him in the middle of the parking lot, empty but still exposed for all to see, and pressed a kiss to Kieran’s cheek.
“It’s harder when she does remember me,” he confessed. “When I’m a stranger, I get a glimpse of what things might’ve been like if they were different. She gets to be happy, and I get to have a mother.”
Kieran wasn’t sure what to do with that. He brushed a finger over Matthieu’s lower lip. “Thank you for letting me come.”
“Well, she’s a big part of my life. Now you are too. So…”
Damn if that didn’t make Kieran’s heart swell.
Matthieu stood in the kitchen, eyeing the absurd amount of groceries Novak’s wife had stuffed into the fridge, formulating a plan for tackling the mammoth task of Christmas dinner.
The idea had come to Kieran a few days earlier.
Sitting in a hotel room in Raleigh, he’d been suddenly overwhelmed by the need to make the three days Matthieu promised to share with him as special as possible.
He’d knocked on Novak’s hotel room door—probably too early—and demanded Lori’s number.
Lori was the stand-in head of the WAPs (Wives and Partners), since Jasper had little interest in the title.
She’d been only too happy to help, and Kieran returned home to a house dripping in Christmas spirit and a note on the counter in perfect cursive: I hope you both have the best Christmas, xo.
He hadn’t told her who he’d be spending the day with, but since the locker room had quickly latched onto the fact that someone new and shiny was in Kieran’s life, her assumption wasn’t exactly off base. Kieran was sure he’d get mercilessly mocked for it later.
“All of this will feed you for a week,” Matthieu said, dropping an armful of ingredients onto the countertop. “You’re sure you want all the trimmings?”
“Hell yeah,” Kieran said, joining him on the other side of the island. “Do you know how many chances I get to eat like a complete pig during the season? I want it all.”
“Oh, really?” Matthieu shot him a flirty little smile that had Kieran batting him away.
“None of that, or I’ll never get fed.”
“I’ll feed you something, alright.”
Kieran tugged Matthieu close, a pleased hum rumbling from his throat. Maybe his stomach could wait. They’d be too full for messing around later anyway.
“Where do you want me?” Kieran whispered in Matthieu’s ear.
Matthieu rolled his eyes and shoved him away. “All the way over there, peeling potatoes.”
The next few hours played out much the same—Matthieu bossing Kieran around in his own kitchen, broken up by sneaky ass grabs and stolen kisses.
They were good, though—aside from the blowjob Kieran gave Matthieu while he tried to grate cheese—and before Kieran knew it, his counter was covered with some of the most delicious-looking food he’d ever seen.
Matthieu could cook. Like, really cook. Not just reheating or tossing things in a pan; he was confident about it, too. It was unbelievably sexy.
“How’d you learn to cook like this?” Kieran asked as they sat at his small dining table. He hadn’t eaten here once since moving in five months ago.
“Out of necessity. A lot of Googling. A lot of YouTube videos. That first year I had custody of Julie, I was terrified CPS would show up and take her away. So I did my best to make sure she was well fed with balanced meals, even if I only had food stamps to work with.” He took a big bite, chewing slowly.
“I got good at making something out of nothing. Having a fully stocked kitchen—that’s a dream. ”
Kieran considered that for a moment, glancing around a house that always felt too big and empty when Matthieu wasn’t in it.
It was smaller than most of his teammates’ places, yet three bedrooms were two too many.
He hadn’t thought twice about the cost—just signed where Cole told him to.
Left the lights on for days while he was out of town.
Had a fucking maid, and some food service he paid—he wasn’t even sure how much—to keep things in order and his fridge fully stocked.
He usually ended up throwing away half of it.
“Would you tell me what happened back then? With your mom and Julie. Why did you leave so fast?”
Kieran wasn’t even sure why he was asking, prodding at an old wound that had only just started to heal.
But he wanted to know—desperately. To burrow into Matthieu’s mind and feel everything he had all those years ago.
He’d been robbed of that back then—robbed of the chance to carry some of Matthieu’s pain.
To soothe it. To hold him close when the days were hard and the nights harder.
Instead, Matthieu had been alone, and Kieran couldn’t stomach the thought.
Matthieu pushed mashed potatoes around his plate, not avoiding Kieran’s gaze but not quite meeting it either.
Finally, he sighed. “The signs had been there for a while. We were just reading them wrong. Julie and I thought she was bipolar—the outbursts, the mood swings, the way she’d go from furious to numb in seconds.
It all fit. The doctors thought so too. They gave her meds, therapy referrals, nutrition plans—”
Matthieu trailed off, stabbing a Brussels sprout.
“I was so damn angry. She had every tool she needed and refused to use them. I blamed her for choosing to stay sick. Then, not long after I left for Michigan, the confusion started. Small stuff at first. Julie said she kept forgetting appointments or leaving groceries in the car, swearing she’d already put them away. She’d get angrier if you brought it up.
“I tried to fix what I could from hundreds of miles away, coaching Julie through how to handle her. I felt so fucking helpless, like every time the phone rang, something else had gone wrong.” He exhaled hard, like he could push the memories out on a breath, trying to relieve some of the pressure talking about this had stirred up.
“Then it got worse. She’d get lost walking the same neighborhood we’d always lived in.
She’d call Julie in a full panic, swearing someone had stolen her car, or leave the stove on for hours.
That’s when it stopped feeling like defiance and started feeling like something else entirely. ”
Kieran couldn’t imagine how hard it must’ve been, so far from home and unable to help his little sister navigate their mother’s unraveling.
“The school counselor tipped off CPS that something might be going on at home. They did a full investigation—doctor visits, cognitive assessments—and that’s when they finally realized she wasn’t bipolar.
“It’s called frontotemporal dementia. Basically, her brain’s deteriorating.
It affects the parts that control personality and behavior first. Bipolar disorder is a common misdiagnosis.
Then it moves to the temporal lobes—confusion, memory loss.
Right now, some days are better than others, but eventually she won’t even remember her own name.
She’ll lose the ability to speak, to care for herself. She’ll need round-the-clock care.”
Kieran reached across the table and took Matthieu’s hand. Neither of them ate anymore. He wished he had the words to say how sorry he was, how hard all of this must be, how if there was anything—absolutely anything—he could do to help or make this better, all Matthieu had to do was ask.
“Julie was legally too young to look after herself,” Matthieu continued. “It didn’t matter that she’d already been doing it for years. The option was foster care or me going home to petition for guardianship. I didn’t have to think twice.”
Of course he hadn’t. Matthieu had always been selfless.
When a teammate needed something, he was the first to step in.
When Kieran wanted to rant about a bad game or an unfair call, Matthieu always listened.
Kieran had seen him take countless calls from Julie back then, speaking in low, hushed, reassuring tones.
He put everyone—strangers included—before himself. That was who he’d always been. Even when it was hard. Even when it cost him too much of himself.
“You’re a good man,” Kieran croaked.
“I’m not so sure that’s true.” Shame flickered across his face, his hand trembling slightly in Kieran’s.
“When Julie called to tell me our mother had a heart attack, you know what I thought? I thought, God, I hope she didn’t make it.
I hope she finally put us all out of our misery so I don’t have to play this part anymore.
Who thinks like that, Kieran? What does that make me? ”
What must that feel like—the tug of war between being the son Matthieu was expected to be and the reality that the person he was supposed to care for had caused him so much pain? It wasn’t the black-and-white thing Matthieu was making it out to be.
“I think it makes you human,” he said finally.
“I think it makes me no better than her.” Matthieu let out a long sigh, his jaw tightening like he was fighting the urge to argue, to reject Kieran’s compassion outright. His eyes dropped to the table. “The worst part is it’s genetic.”
Kieran’s heart stuttered.
“There’s about a thirty to forty percent chance I could develop it.” He looked up slowly, eyes glassy. “That Julie could.”
“Is there a test or something?”
Matthieu shook his head. “No. All we can do is watch for and manage the symptoms: personality changes, trouble with emotional regulation, violent outbursts.” He listed each one like someone checking off symptoms they’d already seen in themself.
“I see my mother in me every day,” he whispered.
“It feels like there’s a guillotine hanging over my head.
I know it’s going to fall. I know it’s going to kill me, and I can’t do anything to stop it. ”
“You said you could manage the symptoms, right? If you’re concerned, you need to see a doctor. You need to get help now.”
Matthieu let out a bitter, humorless laugh. “What’s the point? The ending’s the same.”
Kieran leaned forward, not letting him pull away.
“You can’t seriously believe that. You can’t honestly tell me your childhood wouldn’t have been better if she’d accepted help—that her life, your life, Julie’s life wouldn’t have been different if someone had caught it early, if she’d actually tried. ”
Matthieu flinched.
“You’re not her, Matty. You still have time.” He didn’t look up, but he didn’t pull away either. Kieran gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “No matter what the future brings, I’m here. You’re not doing this alone anymore.”