Chapter 5
KEEGAN
The front door slams hard enough to reach me through the floor. I open my eyes against the hardwood and get one bright strip of noon across my face. My mouth tastes like acid and old liquor. Every pulse drives a blunt edge behind my eyes. When I try to lift my head, the kitchen shifts sideways.
“Don't,” Jake says from somewhere above me. “Unless you want to meet the floor twice.”
Jake steps over the mess but not around the truth.
His boots stop beside the broken pieces of Evie's coffee cup. He takes in the cabinet splashed with vomit, the bottle under the table, and the petition fanned against the island. His gaze stops on the ring and keys where Evie left them. Nothing in his face changes, which is worse than disgust.
“Evie?” My throat strips the name raw.
“No.” Jake crouches far enough away that I would have to move to reach him. “The team called me because you stopped answering. I used the code. You're welcome.”
I plant one palm and push. My elbow folds before I get halfway upright. Jake watches me hit the cabinet and does not offer a hand.
“Help me up.”
“You got yourself down there.” He picks up the petition, squares the pages against his thigh, and reads the title. His mouth sets. “You can do the first part yourself.”
Anger gives me more leverage than muscle. I drag a knee beneath me, catch the edge of the island, and stand in sections. Sweat breaks cold across my back. Jake remains beside me without touching, close enough to stop my skull from meeting hardwood and stubborn enough to make me earn the distance.
“She filed,” I say.
“I can read.” He lifts the first page. “Can you?”
“Give me that.” I reach for it. The motion turns my stomach over, and I grip the island until the black at the edges of my vision clears.
Jake holds the packet out of range. “Sink first.”
“Don't order me around in my house.”
His eyes cut to the ring beside my hand. “Your house is making a pretty strong argument about how well your orders work.”
The hit lands clean. I turn on the tap because punching my best friend would require balance I do not have. Water runs over my fingers, painfully cold. I rinse my mouth, drink from my cupped hand, and spit until the taste dulls.
Jake sets the petition on the far end of the island, away from the wet. “Where is she?”
“She won't answer.” I shut off the tap. The quiet after the water is too large. “Four suitcases are gone.”
“Where?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you.”
“You'd be standing outside her door making this worse.” Jake folds his arms across his chest. He is built wide enough to make the kitchen feel smaller, but he has never needed my permission to occupy space. “Tell me what happened before the picture.”
“You saw the picture?”
“I saw a photograph of my unconscious friend and a woman that is not his wife looking at a camera. I'm asking why your wife had a lawyer ready before you got home.”
“Because she misunderstands the situation with Chloe. She thinks I slept with her.”
Jake's stare goes flat. “Try again.”
Pressure gathers behind my ribs, searching for somewhere to go. I bend to collect the larger pieces of Evie's cup. Jake catches my wrist before my fingers close around a sharp edge.
“Shower,” he says. “Then shoes. You're bleeding enough already.”
I look down. A thin red line runs across the heel of my hand where the ceramic caught me. I did not feel it. Jake releases my wrist and points toward the stairs.
“I'm not leaving the petition with you.”
“I have no interest in divorcing you.” He picks up a dish towel and folds it over the broken pieces. “Go make yourself less likely to contaminate the entire county.” The insult is ordinary. Almost kind. It gets me to the stairs.
Upstairs, I keep my eyes off the spaces in the closet and take the shower Jake ordered.
Hot water strikes the back of my neck and carries the smell of last night toward the drain.
I brace both hands against the tile. Evie's bottles are gone from the narrow drawer.
The room holds every expensive thing I bought and none of what made it ours.
I put on sweats, a clean shirt, and shoes. By the time I make it downstairs, Jake has opened the windows. Cold air cuts through the kitchen. The broken cup is wrapped in the towel beside the sink, but the cabinet remains dirty and the bottle remains under the table.
“You didn't clean it,” I say.
Jake leans against the island with the petition closed beneath one hand. “I don't do puke. You know this.”
“You could have picked up the bottle.”
“You could have stopped before it hit the floor.” His voice loses the edge of humor. “Tell me why she left.”
I unwrap the broken cup and drop the pieces into the trash.
The cabinet takes longer. I wet the dish towel, lower myself to one knee, and scrub away what dried there overnight.
Jake does not help. He also does not look away.
By the time I stand, the towel is ruined and my stomach is fighting every breath, but the kitchen no longer carries visible proof of what I did to it.
I take a glass from the cabinet and fill it with water. My hand shakes hard enough to tap the rim against the faucet. “Chloe and I talked.”
“You and I talk. Evie didn't file over me.”
“Not like this.” The admission feels like swallowing something with corners. I drink until the glass is empty. “Texts. Drinks after games. Things at home.”
Jake straightens. “What things at home?”
“Arguments. Pressure. The guest room.”
His jaw works once. “You told team PR you were sleeping in the guest room?”
“She was there. She understood what the schedule was doing to me.”
“And Evie?”
“What about her?”
“Was she somewhere without access to this advanced concept called your schedule?” Jake pushes away from the island. “Your wife lived it. You went looking for a woman who would admire you for surviving it. How was Evie yesterday when all this dropped?”
I don't answer fast enough.
“Keegan.”
“She asked me to stay.” My grip tightens around the glass. “I had mandatory practice.”
“And now you have a mandatory petition.” He taps the packet once. “You keep blaming the photograph because a hotel room is easier to fault than yourself. How long were you handing Chloe the parts of your marriage you didn't want to carry home?”
I set the glass down before it breaks. “Six months.” The words pull Jake's arms loose from his chest. He stares at me as if the number changed the language we have been speaking.
“It wasn't physical.”
“Did Evie ask you to stop?”
The answer sits between my hands on the island. “Yes.” My cut palm leaves a diluted red crescent beside the water glass.
“What did you tell her?” Jake asks.
“That she was reading into it. That Chloe understood the job.”
His nostrils flare as he looks past me at the empty sections of the house Evie took with her.
“So your wife identified the problem, told you it was hurting her, and you explained why she was wrong.
Now ‘it wasn't physical’ is your best defense?” His voice drops.
“Why did you allow the photo? Or were you so drunk you don't even know what happened to your own body?”
“I went into that room alone.”
“Then how did Chloe get in?”
“I don't know.” The answer scrapes harder now than it did yesterday. “I lost my key. I asked her to get me another one. She handed it to me by the elevator, and I went in alone.”
“Who took the photograph?”
“She won't tell me.”
“And after you called her?”
“I told her to stay away from me and Evie.”
Jake studies my face. “Six months, and you found a boundary the day your wife left. Great timing.”
I want to tell him to get out. The order reaches my mouth and stops against the sight of Evie's ring on the island. I ordered her to calm down. I ordered Chloe away. One woman left anyway. The other told me I did not mean it.
Jake lifts the petition and presses it into my chest. “Read what your wife did. Then decide whether you're pouring another drink or pouring out the rest.”
The paper bends beneath my fingers. “I already drank the one I wanted.”
“That's the problem, Keeg. You always drink the one you want.”
He walks to the bar cart and takes down the first bottle. The seal is intact. He puts it in my hand without opening it.
“I'm not doing this for you,” he says. “And if you're shaking because you need more than water and a shower, we call the physician before you touch anything. No hero shit.”
The bottle is heavy, dark glass cut to announce its price. I bought it after a playoff win and forgot it before the charge cleared. The cap turns beneath my palm.
I carry it to the sink.
The first pour hits stainless steel with a hard amber splash. The smell climbs immediately, sweet and medicinal, and my throat contracts around the memory of relief. Jake stays close enough to see my hand tighten but keeps his own hands at his sides.
“Keep going,” he says.
I empty the bottle. Then the next. Whiskey, vodka, gifts from donors, bottles saved for wins important enough to deserve them.
Liquor runs through the drain while the kitchen fills with the expensive stink Evie hated.
Jake opens the cabinet above the refrigerator and finds two more I had forgotten. I take them from him one at a time.
When the last bottle is empty, the bar cart is nothing but glass and dust rings. My hands are steady enough to hold the phone.
“Physician first,” Jake says.
I call the team physician and tell him exactly how much I drank yesterday, how often I have been using alcohol after games, and that I want help stopping.
The questions are blunt. Am I alone? No.
Am I confused, shaking badly, seeing anything that is not there?
No. Can Jake drive me in for an evaluation?
Jake takes my keys off the hook before I answer.
“Yes,” I say.
The physician gives me instructions, an appointment, and a recovery contact who expects my call today. I write both on the back page of the petition because it is the only paper in reach. Jake watches the pen move without telling me the irony is obvious.
When I hang up, he nods at the number beneath my handwriting. “Call.”
“I said I would.”
“Yesterday you said you loved your wife and left her alone when she asked you to stay.”
I call.
The conversation is not dramatic. A voice asks what I need, and I say I need to stop drinking before the next bad night becomes the last one.
We arrange a meeting after the physician clears me.
I give permission for Jake to stay involved.
The words feel less like a vow than a schedule, which is something I know how to obey.
Jake takes the empty glass from my hand when the call ends and refills it with water. “Now the photograph.”
I scroll past missed calls from the team, Chloe, and numbers I do not recognize.
Buried beneath them is the contact my agent once sent when a teammate needed a private problem handled without a public trail.
I call the investigator and give him the hotel, the night, the photograph, and the statement.
I tell him I need security footage, lock records, the original image, and the person who took it.
“Start with access,” the investigator says. “Who issued your key?”
“The hotel issued it to team staff.” I look at Jake. He has gone very still beside the empty bar cart.
“Which staff member brought it to you?”
The replacement key flashes in my hand outside the elevator. Chloe's fingers folded the paper sleeve shut before she gave it to me. I saw one key. I never asked how many she requested.
“Chloe,” I say.