Chapter 2
Two
Mac
The Millbrook Inn looks exactly the same as it did ten years ago, down to the peeling white paint on the wraparound porch and the creaky third step that Mom always warned us about tripping on.
I stand in the gravel driveway, duffel bag slung over my good shoulder, and wonder what the hell I'm doing here.
My phone buzzes against my thigh. Another notification I don't want to read. The sports blogs have been relentless since the team announced my medical leave.
Sullivan's selfishness costs Howlers their shot.
Forward's reckless driving ends season before it starts.
The comments are worse.
I should have gone somewhere tropical. Anonymous. But when my agent suggested I disappear for a few weeks while the heat of the season starting without me dies down, this was the only place that came to mind. The place where Lily was happiest.
"Mac Sullivan, as I live and breathe!"
Mrs. Chen emerges from the inn's front door, wiping her hands on a floral apron. She's rounder than I remember, her black hair now streaked with silver, but her smile is the same warm one that greeted our family every June for ten years.
We always spent a few nights at the inn before moving to our usual rental cabin.
It started one year when we arrived and the cabin wasn't ready.
Mom and Dad scrambled to find something, and Mrs. Chen was kind enough to open one of her personal rooms to us.
From there, we made it a tradition to rent her biggest rooms for a few nights every June.
We could have bought our own cabin up the road and avoided the townspeople altogether, but Dad never wanted to invest in it.
It wasn't necessarily a requirement this time, but I had my publicist schedule a few nights here for old time's sake. That's feeling more and more like a mistake as the memories come flooding in.
"Mrs. Chen." I force a smile that feels rusty from disuse. "Good to see you."
"Oh, honey." Her expression shifts to sympathy as she takes in what I must look like—hollow-eyed, twenty pounds lighter than my playing weight, moving like an old man thanks to the shoulder that still screams every time I lift my arm wrong. "I was so sorry to hear about Lily."
The familiar punch to the gut. Four months later, and her name still knocks the wind out of me.
"Thank you." The words scrape my throat raw.
Mrs. Chen doesn't push, thankfully. She just nods toward the inn. "Come on, let's get you settled. I put you in the same room you always had as a boy. Thought you might like the familiarity."
The blue room on the second floor, overlooking the garden where Lily used to chase butterflies while I sulked about being dragged away from my friends for another boring summer in the middle of nowhere. Christ, what I wouldn't give for one more boring summer with her.
Mrs. Chen chatters as she leads me upstairs, filling the silence with updates about town gossip I don't care about. The Hammonds got divorced. The hardware store changed hands. My ‘big author event’ at the bookshop this week has everyone excited.
"Here we are." She pushes open the familiar door. Same navy bedspread, same distant view of Main Street through lace curtains. Same window Lily used to lean out of to wave at passing locals like she was royalty.
My phone buzzes again. This time I look, and immediately wish I hadn't.
Mac Sullivan spotted outside his Boston penthouse. Sources say he's fled Boston in shame after destroying the team's championship hopes.
The photo is grainy but unmistakable. Me in dark sunglasses and a baseball cap, looking exactly like someone trying not to be recognized. The comments are already piling up.
“Good riddance.”
“Should have been him instead of his sister.”
“Hope he never comes back.”
That last one hits different because part of me agrees. The rational part knows the drunk driver who ran the red light killed Lily, not me. But rationality is a luxury I can't afford anymore.
The facts are simple: I was driving. She was supposed to be home safe with her asshat fiancé. When she called in a sobbing panic, I rushed over to her place. Now she's dead and I'm here hiding in a childhood bedroom, too broken to even play the sport that defined my entire adult life.
Mrs. Chen must notice my expression because she gently takes the phone from my hands and sets it on the dresser. "Whatever that says, it's not the truth of who you are."
"You don't know what I've done."
"I know the boy who spent the start of every summer helping me in the garden because he was too kind to tell me he was bored.
I know the teenager who taught the local kids hockey moves at the rink behind the church.
I know the young man who called every Christmas to check on this old lady.
" Her voice is firm. "That's who you are, Mac Sullivan. The rest is just noise."
If only it were that simple.
After she leaves, I unpack mechanically, my mind miles away.
I'm not sure why I bother. I'll be moving in a few days, but there's nothing else to do.
Three weeks worth of clothes, printouts of the physical therapy exercises Dr. Pleiness insists I keep doing, and the bottle of prescription sleep aids I pretend I don't rely on lay in stacks on the long dresser.
At the bottom of my bag, wrapped in one of my old jerseys, is the framed photo I can't seem to leave behind.
Lily at her college graduation, arms thrown around me and Mom, laughing at something Dad said behind the camera. She's wearing the diamond earrings I bought her with my first NHL signing bonus, the ones that were still in her ears when the paramedics pulled her from the wreckage.
I set the frame on the nightstand, angled so I can see it from the bed but not so prominently that Mrs. Chen will ask questions when she brings fresh towels.
My phone screen lights up with another notification. This time it's my agent, Rebecca.
TMZ picked up the airport photo. I got a last-minute booking for you on SportsTalk podcast tonight to control the narrative. Don't fuck this up.
A calendar invite pops up in my email immediately after.
I stare at the message until the screen goes dark again. A year ago, I would have been pissed about having my privacy invaded. I'd refuse the interview on principle. Now I'm just tired. Tired of the scrutiny, the speculation, the constant reminder that I'm the villain in everyone else's story.
The window creaks as I push it open, letting in the crisp early November air.
Main Street stretches below me, quaint and unchanged.
A few people wander between shops, probably weekend visitors drawn by the fall foliage.
In a few weeks, when the leaves finish turning and the first snow falls, they'll disappear entirely. Just like we used to.
Except this time, I'm not leaving when tourist season ends. This time, I have nowhere else to go.
My shoulder throbs as I reach for my phone again, scrolling through the team group chat I've been ignoring for days. The guys are in the thick of the start of the season I won't be part of. Jake Morrison, my defense partner and closest friend on the team, has been texting daily.
Doc cleared me for contact. Wish you were here to knock me on my ass in practice.
Saw the airport thing. You good?
Stop being a hermit and answer your damn phone.
I type and delete a dozen responses before settling on:
I'm fine. Focus on the season.
It's not exactly a lie. I'm fine in the way that furniture is fine—functional enough for basic purposes.
The church bells chime six o'clock, the same deep, resonant sound that used to drive teenage me crazy because it meant dinner at the inn's communal table with whatever other guests were staying. Tonight, according to Mrs. Chen, it's just me and an elderly couple from Connecticut.
I should go downstairs. Be polite. Pretend I'm capable of normal human interaction.
Instead, I pull out my laptop and load up the interview requests Rebecca keeps forwarding.
Twenty-three different sports shows want to discuss my "situation.
" They're much more bold about their requests now that I've spent the past few weeks in the public eye for my book tour.
Half want to crucify me for being reckless.
The other half wants to psychoanalyze my grief.
None of them gives a shit about the truth.
Rebecca thought the autobiography release would distract from the chaos of my career, but it has only added more attention.
The SportsTalk booking stares back at me for tonight.
Eight PM. They must be desperate to get the first inside scoop about me if they took the interview on such short notice.
But I know these guys. I've been on the show multiple times.
They won't push for details I don't want to give, which is exactly why Rebecca chose them.
I close the laptop and lean back against the headboard, studying Lily's photo in the lamplight. She always said I thought too much, that I should trust my gut instead of overthinking every decision to death.
My gut says I should cancel the signing and disappear deeper. Find a cabin in Alaska where no one knows my name or my story. But my contract says I have to do press, and my bank account says I can't afford to breach it.
Besides, Lily would have told me to face the music instead of hiding.
Not that I'm ready to listen to advice from my dead sister, even one who was usually right about everything.
My stomach growls, but the thought of making small talk with strangers over dinner makes my skin crawl.
I've gotten good at avoiding people since the accident.
Grocery shopping at six AM. Ordering takeout instead of eating out at restaurants.
Screening calls from everyone except doctors and team management.
Even with the podcast, I can take it right from my room.
The isolation felt necessary at first. Now it just feels pathetic.
In two days, I'll have to be Mac Sullivan, professional athlete, in front of whatever crowd shows up to this book signing.
I'll smile and sign copies of the autobiography I wrote when I still believed in all the happy horseshit I had my ghostwriters put in there.
Back when my biggest worry was whether or not we'd make the playoffs. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I can summon the media training I’ve had long enough to make it through without my agent ripping into me about ruining my image again.
Rebecca has already threatened to drop me multiple times since the drunk driving allegations were raised, and the team supervisors decided to cut ties with me in the form of a medical leave—end date TBD.
The book feels like it was written by someone else. Someone who thought he had everything figured out. Someone who didn't know that everything could change in the space between a green light and a drunk driver running a red.
But tonight, I'm just a guy hiding in my childhood vacation bedroom, trying to figure out how to be human again.
Two hours later, I'm sitting in my bed when my phone buzzes on the desk with the podcast producer's call.
Mrs. Chen brought me a plate of pot roast an hour ago, forcing me to accept it despite my protests.
I would have been happy with a protein bar and an energy drink, but the home-cooked meal was better than I could have imagined.
Now, the plate sits empty beside my computer, and my nerves are so bad, the roast threatens to come back up.
The interview is supposed to be easy—softball questions about my book, my recovery, my plans for next season that don't exist yet.
It’s going great.
Until it isn’t.
When he goes off the carefully constructed script Rebecca sent him and asks about Lily, about whether I believe in the kind of love she had for her fiancé—an odd question from a sports podcaster—something inside me snaps.
"She lived in a fantasy world," I hear myself saying. "I mean you and me, we’re grounded. We’re here, in reality.
Romance novels, fairy tale weddings, believing love conquers everything, none of that is real.
Look where believing in all of that bullshit got Lily.
Dead at twenty-four because she trusted someone with her heart.
Now we're talking about a wedding that never happened. "
The words pour out like blood from a wound, angry and bitter and true. "Love is just brain chemistry that tricks people into making stupid decisions.”
“And what about the rise of these romance books everyone is talking about on TikTok? Seems like more people than just Lily have fallen for it,” he prods.
“Romance novels are dangerous bullshit that give people false hope. My sister died believing in happily ever after, and where did that get her?"
He laughs it off, unsure how to reply. Probably realizing far quicker than I do that I’ve wandered into uncharted territory.
I quickly end the interview there, curtly letting him know he can direct any further questions to Rebecca, then hang up before they can respond.
But I know the damage is done. The interview will go live tomorrow, and everything I just said will follow me forever.
My phone buzzes once more. This time it's a text from an unknown local number.
Welcome back to Millbrook Falls, Mac. Looking forward to the signing. - Delaney
I stare at the message for a long time, allowing myself to remember the girl who used to trail after Lily like a loyal puppy. I can recall her wild hair and big eyes, always watching from the edges of whatever adventure my sister was planning.
She remembers me too, apparently. The question is whether that's going to make this easier or infinitely more complicated.