Chapter 36
T he high from the lesson lasted him a good couple of days, which he spent in a happy haze of exercise, a Scrabble tournament with Levy, and some outstanding wanks.
Since life wasn’t that kind to him, that Wednesday he got a call from the therapist who’d cancelled on him. She felt terrible about missing their very first session, claiming she knew it was hard to get the courage to make that first call.
Kallen’s stomach fell, but faced with the task he’d been putting off, he agreed to reschedule it.
SOMEHOW OR OTHER, DOCTOR Meira also convinced him to drive over to her office. It was true that it wasn’t far from his parents’ house, but walking into the well-lit reception area, he was already regretting it.
There was nothing objectively wrong with the place, though, and he had to do this if he wanted a psychologist who could testify at court on his behalf.
Magli Meira was tall for a woman, it was the first thing he noticed. She was maybe a little younger than his mother, but he saw something in her honey brown eyes that reminded him of the way his mum had looked in Mr Evans’ office. Steel in a very fine silk sheath.
He swallowed and offered a hand to shake. Her grip was firm, softened only by her slight smile. “Thank you for coming.”
It made no sense, he was the one who’d asked to come. At least as far as she knew. “Sure.”
“I read your referral,” she mentioned when all he’d managed to tell her was that he’d played for the White Cats for close to a year, that it had always been his dream and even started on about the effects of the heat pill.
His jaw clenched, pure reflex. He nodded, eyes on the smooth wooden surface of the table between them.
It couldn’t say much, Kakar had been the one to write it and Kallen hadn’t told him much.
“Wait, I—” He got to his feet to get his phone from his coat pocket, scrolling through his email. “Here,” he said, nearly dropping the phone on her lap before she took it. “Sorry, I... Could you read that? Please?”
Doctor Meira vacillated, but her eyes fell to the screen and Kallen saw them widen as she realised it was a police report. Her face smoothed out as if by magic and she didn’t look up as she read on.
It couldn’t have been five minutes, even though the report was both long and handwritten; but it felt like roughly an hour. He alternated between looking at her face and his own hands, clenched on his lap.
“Kallen,” she said at last, and he met her eyes on instinct before cutting his gaze to the side. “You did the right thing.”
The words shocked him into looking her in the face. “Coming here, I mean,” Doctor Meira explained. “Do you want to tell me what’s happening with this first?” She tapped the screen.
“Oh, yeah!” he said a little too enthusiastically. He’d expected her to want to dig into what had happened to him in the locker room, in comparison the court case was a much easier topic. “I got a lawyer. He’s really good, he got the police to—” He wavered. “This is all confidential, right?”
She nodded. “We signed something akin to an NDA, I can only report on you if you are a danger to yourself or others.”
He took a moment to process that. “Okay, so my lawyer got the police to investigate a different case and they got evidence for what happened in the locker room while they did that. So...” He shifted on his seat, huffing impatiently.
“Take your time.”
“Yeah, I just, I have talked about this, you know? Shouldn’t it get easier?”
Doctor Meira shrugged. “There is no shoulds here. We will work on it, so it gets easier, but how long that takes depends on a lot of factors.”
“But isn’t there like, an average?”
Her lips pressed together in a way he’d come to recognise as her thinking face. “Not that I have noticed. But I can tell you the first few sessions seem to be the hardest.”
He snorted out a laugh. “Great.”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You worked hard all your life for hockey, didn’t you?”
“Yeah...”
“Well, this will be hard work too. For you.”
SHE’D MEANT IT. AFTER the session, Kallen had left her office and crossed the road to sit down for a cup of coffee he’d let grow cold as he looked out the window, not really thinking about much. Too exhausted to think, all he’d wanted was a bit of silence.
He hadn’t been planning on it, but the next morning when his dad spotted him while he lifted, he actually had to catch the barbell before Kallen broke his own nose with it.
“Fuck,” he panted as he sat up, shaken.
His dad’s hand landed heavy on his shoulder. “Breathe through it,” he instructed. Kallen did, and his dad actually had the decency to wait until he’d calmed down before saying, “Your head’s not in the game.”
The temptation to snap that there wasn’t a game was nearly irresistible. “No.”
The bench wobbled worryingly as his father took a seat next to him. “So where is it at?”
“Just... You know what I told you? About my captain?”
His father did not speak or move, but the air grew sharp around him, as if lightning was about to strike. “Yes,” the word was low and constrained, his dad was making a real effort there.
Kallen still couldn’t look at him. “He’ll go to prison. Or it’s likely, my lawyer says we have good evidence.” He paused, forcing himself not to run away from the idea of the tape.
His parents weren’t going to see it, he decided right then and there.
He’d screamed his head off last time in his anger and despair. His dad had not only failed to protect him but had pushed him to put himself in danger. But he didn’t want to subject someone he loved to that. Someone who loved him, because he knew his father loved him, as well as his own limitations allowed him to.
“That’s good,” his dad told him, voice still tight. He was angry, which was both good and pointless.
Kallen shook himself. “It doesn’t feel like enough. Like, he gets put away, that’s good. But what about the team? They just get away with everything? Then nothing’s changed. I just—” He lifted a hand, fisting it. “I need to do something.”
“How can I help?” his dad asked, and Kallen’s head whipped towards him without his conscious control. His father looked startled. “Or not. But I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
“Really?” Kallen asked and had to cover his mouth, curling up as his eyes filled with tears, shock and grief and sheer disbelief mixing up inside him until he thought he’d throw up.
He stumbled to his feet, turning away as the tears spilled down his cheeks. He didn’t think he could bear it if his dad told him...
“Kallen,” his father’s voice was soft behind him. Kallen stopped cold. As a child, his father hadn’t exactly welcomed tears, trying to make a joke of whatever situation had caused it or even ordering the pain away. And now, alone as they were in the basement, half of him wanted to turn around and check the words were in fact coming out of his father’s mouth. “I’m here. I swear. I—”
He twisted around, swallowing around the lump in his throat, and suddenly he wasn’t falling to pieces anymore, he was cracking instead, shattering.
“You swear ?” he demanded, shrill and cutting. Fists clenched so hard they hurt. “When I— When I told you they’d called me a come dump, you told me it didn’t matter . You— You told me none of it mattered, nothing but fucking hockey !”
His father’s face was stony, unmoving, and his eyes were lost somewhere in the distance behind Kallen. “I’m sorry. It shouldn’t matter. None of it should—”
“What?” His voice came out so thin he thought it would snap.
It was only his father’s raised palms that stopped him, his brown eyes were wide and scared and meeting Kallen’s own. He couldn’t remember ever seeing his father scared before, it was strange to discover he was capable of it at all. That what was scaring him wasn’t the terrifying world out there, but Kallen .
“Not your suffering,” his dad explained, almost tripping over his own words. “Or what they did to you. Of course that matters, but not the... the requirements! Those are absurd and have nothing to do with good hockey. They are just excuses to hold you back. And I thought... No, I told myself that if you just didn’t believe in them, then they couldn’t hold you back.” He looked to the side, as if he couldn’t even bear to see Kallen out of the corner of his eye while he asked, “How could you have been given such talent if you weren’t meant to use it?”
That was a question he’d often asked himself in these last few months. What was the point of all the work he’d done and all he could do on the ice if he wasn’t going to be allowed to use it? If he had to choose between the joy he got from playing and living a life outside the rink that he wasn’t profoundly ashamed of?
He swallowed, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve, the fight going out of him so quickly he felt a little woozy. He didn’t want to fight with his dad. Maybe once upon a time he could have blamed it all on him pushing his own dream on Kallen, but it had always been Kallen’s own dream, too. And he’d clung to it with tooth and nail despite every betrayal, pretending away the very real danger he’d been in from the alphas in the team even after several of them had proven willing to openly hurt him and the rest had kept quiet about it. His father had led him to slaughter, but Kallen had stayed still for the falling sword, hadn’t he?
It made no sense to try to blame it on someone else. Or he could, but then he’d always be stuck because it meant they’d had the power, and he hadn’t.
And it just wasn’t true. He’d had the power to walk away and he’d stayed, and now he had to admit that he’d been complicit in his own abuse. That was the part he couldn’t get over, shame much worse than the humiliations he’d been subjected to.
It was precisely what Suri had said. What he didn’t want anyone else to know or see about him: that he’d been so desperate to play, that he’d given up his self-respect for it.
Betrayed himself in the worst way imaginable.
That he didn’t even trust himself not to do it again. So how could he ask for justice? And the only answer he could come up with was that it wasn’t just him, and he could do something for those young omega kids who loved sports and were going to be herded into a path that would chew them up and spit up whatever was left, merciless to the end.
“Do you think it’s my responsibility to tell people what happened to me?”
His father didn’t answer for long enough that Kallen risked a glance.
“Responsibility?” he asked at long last. “Who do you think you are responsible for, son?”
He shrugged a little, stepping to the side until he could take hold of the barbell for support. “Dunno, omega kids?”
“All omega kids?” His father shook his head. “That’s... I mean, as a society, we should look out for them, for sure. But why would you be responsible for them?”
“Because I... I can tell. It happened to me, so...”
The huff made him flinch a little, but then he felt his dad’s hand on his elbow. “Let’s go up, get you a cuppa,” he instructed as he turned Kallen towards the stairs. “You look like you need it.”
HE WASN’T SO SURE HE’D needed the amount of honey his father had put in his tea, but it made him smile a little anyway. Levy would have told him honey had antioxidants and that made it healthy despite all the glucose.
“Let’s get back to basics,” his father said. He’d taken the sofa next to Kallen’s armchair, as if he’d remembered Kallen’s preference. “Do you want to tell the press what happened to you?”
Kallen couldn’t speak for a moment, then he took a long gulp of his tea, taking even longer to swallow. It felt a bit like a miracle that his dad didn’t push. “Not really, but—”
“Stop,” his father cut in. “You don’t want to. That’s what I asked, and that’s what matters.”
“It’s not all that matters, is it? I have to do plenty of shit I don’t want to do. Like, remember when I didn’t want to brush my teeth?”
His father snorted. “Yes, took us ages to figure out it was the new toothpaste. So why don’t you want to, this time?”
He drank some more, trying to think. Why didn’t he want everyone to know he’d been raped?
Because even in his head it was too much. He hadn’t been able to tell his therapist , for God’s sake.
“I don’t know if I— I don’t know if I can .”
“Then don’t.”
Kallen glared at him. “Just like that?”
“Lad,” his father said pointedly. “Weren’t you saying how I pushed you to keep going when I shouldn’t have? If—” His teeth clicked together. He’d gone stiff all over. “If I was in your shoes, I don’t know I could have gone to the cops.”
“What?”
“You think I didn’t see your face after you walked out?” his father demanded. “If that didn’t take more guts than I got...” He cut his gaze to the side, but Kallen could have sworn his eyes were damp.
It had taken nearly more courage than Kallen had. He might not have done it at all if Mr Evans hadn’t told him it was the only way to move forward with the case.
But he had done it.
Only if he stopped, it wouldn’t be enough. “But if I don’t talk about it, then nothing will change, right? And then—”
“Some ego there,” his dad cut him off at the pass. “You gonna win the game all by yourself, are you, lad?”
“No, but...” He licked his lips. “I guess, I gotta do my part, right?”
His father was already nodding. “You have, Kallen. More than anyone has any right to ask you for. And I get what you are saying, I remember being off the ice. And for me, it was no one’s fault, but I remember feeling like there was no reason to get up in the morning.”
Kallen stared at him. His father had injured himself not long after marrying his mum, practically in another lifetime as far as Kallen was concerned. He’d told Kallen and his brothers about previous lesions to teach them patience with their own, but he never spoke of the one that had ended it all.
His dad sought out his eyes. “Not saying it’s the same. To think you could be out there. Hell, that the bloody White Cats could still be in the running for the Cup if they hadn’t treated you like dirt...” He shook his head, and Kallen didn’t try to correct his generous assumption. Or maybe not so generous, he’d never won a game on his own, of course, but he’d made a difference to his team, he knew he had.
And if his dad thought he might have this time, too... Well, he was entitled to his fatherly pride and Kallen would take the implied compliment.
He might as well. He didn’t have much else left when it came to hockey, did he?
“I don’t know what to do now,” he admitted. That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter why he couldn’t play, just that he couldn’t and without it, his life felt empty.
“Can’t tell you that,” his dad told him. “But what if your part isn’t something you hate doing, huh? Could be your part is, I don’t know, talking to young omega kids about what a bad idea it was or whatever.”
Kallen straightened, his father was still talking, the grandfather clock on the wall was still ticking, but there was a sudden sharp silence in his head.
“It’s only an idea,” his dad was saying when he tuned back in. Had his mum even told him about Fair Sport ? Kallen hadn’t said anything about it since the first meeting.
“No, it’s... There is something I can do. Something I don’t think I’ll mind doing,” he said and this time when he reached for the tea, he savoured the first sip and then the second, holding the sweetness in his mouth and the sweetness of the moment in his mind. “And I think I have a talent for it, too.”
HE HALF WANTED TO SHOUT it from the rooftops, but he didn’t tell his dad right then, excusing himself to shower off the workout. It wasn’t like he had a plan, really.
He had no idea if it was even possible. Sure, evidence pointed to him having an innate facility for using lure, but he’d taught one person and who said Taylor wasn’t a particularly clever student? Or simply someone who got Kallen’s style. In school, he’d hated presentations, he remembered, and as much as he loved hockey, the idea of helping kids with it had made him want to hide.
Not that it would need to be kids. If the omegas at Fair Sport were representative of the general population, it probably shouldn’t be kids. Not that they didn’t need to learn, but adults surely needed it much more urgently. They were the ones dealing with heat, for one thing.
And God, this probably meant he was going to have to take Taylor up on his request to teach the rest of the group. Unless a real expert showed up and Kallen could learn from them. That would have been better, safer, really. If he was just a talented amateur and there was an expert to tell him if he messed up.
So he knew nothing, except that the idea had him more excited than he remembered being in a long time. He recognised the feeling; it was how hockey used to make him feel.
He couldn’t say when he’d lost it, when the ice had become a place he went to escape from the rest of his life instead of the place where he went to shine.
There was no point in telling anyone else yet, even if they’d be supportive—and he was pretty sure all his friends would be—it would all be an illusion.
Texting Levy that afternoon after he got home from a run to play Scrabble was just a good distraction. There was nothing wrong with goofing about with a friend when you were on holiday.
He didn’t mean to mention his dad. But Levy had video called halfway through the game, even though it meant they’d had to restart the app on their tablets.
“Wow, that’s huge,” Levy said wonderingly, he was slumped on his sofa, so relaxed it made Kallen want to curl up against him.
“Yeah, I didn’t think he’d apologise. Like, my mum said he was sorry, but...” He shrugged a little, eyes cutting away from the camera.
“Well, I’m impressed,” Levy told him.
Kallen swallowed, then admitted, “I might have screamed at him first. For not... I don’t know, for pushing me to keep playing or not stopping me. Which is not even fair, really, because obviously I wanted to play, but...”
“Of course it’s fair!” Levy actually straightened at that. “He is your dad, it’s his job to protect you. And he didn’t do that very well, did he? In fact, he did the opposite, so—” He stopped, maybe noticing that Kallen was staring at him. “I mean, he is your dad, I don’t want to diss him. But you have every right to be angry, or disappointed.”
“Okay.”
Levy looked up, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Sorry. Got a bit carried away, I guess. I just... You should get angry when people aren’t treating you right, that’s how it works, you get pissed and they get they fucked up.”
Kallen blinked at him. Was Levy actually explaining how anger worked? “I get angry.”
Levy didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I know you get angry,” he said. “But you don’t normally scream at people about it.”
“Oh.” It was true, of course. Yet another thing he’d signed away without realising.
“It’s not a criticism!” Levy was saying, earnestly. “I meant that you are doing better and— Well, that’s good. I’m glad you are.”
Kallen nodded, then tried for a joke. “Even if I get angry at you?”
“Get angry all you want,” Levy said at once, way too serious. “I’ll take you angry, and sad, and, well, happy, for a preference. But I’ll take you any way.”
His throat felt too thick to speak and he couldn’t quite look away.
It was Levy who cut through the thick tension between them. “You wanna finish the game?”