Chapter 33
thirty-three
MIKE
Pine Hill Lookout spreads below us in darkness, the Pine Barren town lights fragile against the vast black beyond.
I discovered this spot during my photography phase—another brilliant “try new things” failure that at least yielded one success, finding the perfect place to escape when the world gets loud.
But tonight, Sophie needs the quiet more than I do.
She hasn’t said more than ten words since we left the hospital. Her knuckles are white around her phone, thumb jabbing the power button every thirty seconds to check for messages that aren’t there. And each time the screen stays empty, her shoulders tighten another fraction.
Coach Pearson’s face burns behind my eyes, that raw, naked relief when he saw me steering Sophie toward the door. This was a father drowning in his own helplessness, grateful someone else could throw his daughter a lifeline when his own hands were full.
I kill the engine. The sudden silence makes her flinch.
“They’ll call if anything changes,” I say.
“I know.” She checks the phone again anyway, tilting it toward her face.
“Come on,” I say. “Fresh air beats hospital recycling.”
The night chill bites through my shirt the moment I step out.
Sophie follows, and when I drape my jacket over her shoulders, she burrows into it immediately, pulling the collar up to her nose.
The sight of her drowning in my jacket—face barely visible, hands lost in the sleeves—creates a sharp ache in my chest.
The wooden bench groans under our weight. Sophie curls against me instantly, pressing her face into my neck. Her breath comes in shaky puffs against my skin, not quite crying but nowhere near steady. I wrap both arms around her and rest my chin on her head.
“You haven’t eaten in hours,” I murmur into her hair.
She shakes her head, the movement tiny against my collarbone. “No big deal.”
I fish the crumpled protein bars from my pocket—peanut butter chocolate-chip, the ones she pretends she doesn’t love but always steals bites of mine. “Well, good news. The hospital vending machine was having a sale on disappointment, so I got you two.”
She takes one but just holds it, turning the wrapper over in her hands. The crinkling fills the silence between us. But then she’s opening one of them and eating it, chewing more than necessary, as if working her jaw will slow her mind down a little.
“It’s just like last time,” she finally whispers, in between bites. “The exhaustion she couldn’t shake. The infection. I should have seen it coming.”
There it is. The guilt that’s been eating her alive since this afternoon, probably longer. The same guilt that had her pacing that hospital corridor, trying to walk back time. And, when that failed, the guilt that had her attacking the doctor like she was prey.
“Sophie—”
“I know what you’re going to say.” She pulls back, eyes full of unshed tears. “It’s not my fault. MS relapses happen. There’s nothing I could have done.”
“Actually, I was going to ask if you’d developed psychic powers recently. Because that’s the only way you could have predicted this.”
Her laugh is more exhale than sound. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. When did you become clairvoyant?” I grin. “And why didn’t you use these powers to help me with my biomechanics exam?”
“Mike,” she says, but the corner of her mouth twitches.
I cup her face in my hands. Her skin is cold and damp from the tears she’s fighting. “Listen to me. You could watch your mom every second of every day, follow her around with a medical scanner, hire a team of neurologists to trail her, and MS would still do what it wants.”
“But I’m supposed to notice?—”
“Notice what?” I let a hint of bluntness creep into my voice. “The symptoms her own doctor said could be anything from stress to a cold to sleeping wrong?”
Tears spill over then, hot against my thumbs. I pull her back against my chest, and this time she doesn’t hold back. Her shoulders shake—not the dramatic sobs you see in movies, but the quiet, exhausted tears of someone who’s been holding too much for too long.
I hold her a while before speaking again. “You know what my therapist told me about guilt, Soph?”
She makes a sound that might be interest or might be resignation.
“She said guilt is like picking at a scab. It hurts, but at least it’s a pain you control. It’s easier than accepting that sometimes terrible things just happen.”
Sophie goes still against me. Then, she speaks so quietly I almost miss it. “When did you get so wise?”
“Tuesday. There was a workshop. I have a certificate and everything.”
She actually laughs—small but real.
“I keep thinking about Hazel,” she continues. “Finding Mom on the soccer field. Seeing her today, hooked up to all those machines…”
“Hazel who brought her bug encyclopedia to read to your mom? Who spent twenty minutes explaining the mating habits of praying mantises?”
“That doesn’t mean she’s not traumatized.”
“Or it means she knows her mom is sick but not broken. That loving someone with a chronic illness means accepting the bad days along with the good.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “Kids are resilient, especially kids with big sisters who show them how to cope with grace.”
“Grace?” She pulls back, eyebrow raised. “Did you see me reorganizing the nurses’ cart because their system was ‘inefficient’?”
“I saw you making sure your mom got the best care possible. Even if you did make that one nurse cry.”
“She was new. And she didn’t cry, her eyes just watered a little.”
“Sophie.”
“Fine. But she was using the wrong gauge needle.”
The protein bar wrapper crinkles again. She’s managed three small bites, which I’m counting as a victory.
Below us, Pine Barren University glows—the ice rink where I’ll play my last season, the nursing building where Sophie pulls all-nighters, the dorms where my sister is probably driving Em crazy right now.
“Can I tell you something?” My voice comes out rougher than intended.
She nods.
“After my injury, I spent months convinced that if I’d just been more careful, stretched better, trained differently—whatever—I could have prevented it.
The guilt was…” I pause, searching for words.
“It was easier than accepting I had no control. That sometimes bodies break no matter how careful you are.”
“It’s not the same?—”
“Isn’t it?” I catch her hand, lacing our fingers together. “You’re torturing yourself over something you can’t control. And it’s keeping you from seeing all the amazing things you actually do.”
“Like making nurses cry?”
“Like being the glue that holds your family together. Like getting stellar grades while basically co-parenting an eight-year-old. Like somehow finding time to put up with my ridiculous ass.”
Her thumb traces circles on my palm. “Your ass isn’t that ridiculous.”
“Now I know you’re delirious from hunger.”
Her face goes serious, and my stomach drops. “What happens when you leave?”
The question hangs between us.
“What?” I manage.
“The draft. Next year.” Her voice is carefully neutral, but her hand tightens around mine. “You’ll go to Chicago or Dallas or Vancouver. Start your real life. And I’ll still be here, checking my phone every ten seconds, pretending everything’s fine.”
My chest constricts. We’ve danced around this for weeks, pretending the future won’t touch us. But here it is, immediate as her tears. “Sophie?—”
“We haven’t talked about it.” She tries to pull her hand away, but I hold on. “But I think about it. How I’m letting myself need you when I know you’re temporary.”
“Temporary?” The word tastes wrong on my tongue.
“You’re Mike Altman. Pine Barren’s golden boy, heading for the NHL.” She looks away. “And I can’t leave for a weekend without panicking about my mom.”
“Stop.” I turn her face back to mine. “First of all, we don’t know what’ll happen with the draft?—”
Her look could melt steel.
“OK, yes, I’ll probably get picked up. But you think that means I just vanish? That everything we’re building disappears because of geography?”
“Geography and your career and my family and—” She sighs. “Mike, you’re not going to be here, and that’s okay!”
“We’ll figure it out.” I press my forehead to hers, close enough to feel her shaky exhale. “You think I’d choose hockey over you?”
“You’ve chosen hockey over everything else your whole life.”
The truth stings, but not how she thinks. “Yeah, I did. Past tense. Then I met this stubborn, brilliant girl who makes me want things beyond the ice.”
“Mike—”
“I’m not done.” I pull back to meet her eyes. “You make me laugh. You call me out when I’m being an idiot. You’re the first person I want to tell when something good happens. Or bad. Or boring. I want to tell you everything, Sophie. You think I’m walking away from that for a game?”
“It’s not just a game to you.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s not everything anymore either.
” I brush a strand of hair behind her ear, let my fingers linger against her neck.
“Whatever happens—whether I go to Chicago or Stockholm or the fucking moon—we’ll make it work.
Long distance, or you come with me, or I turn down offers. We’ll have options.”
“You can’t plan your career around?—”
“Around the woman I love?” I snort. “Watch me.”
She sucks in a breath, eyes wide. “You can’t make promises like that…”
“Sure I can.”
She kisses me. It’s salty and desperate and perfect, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer than physics allows. When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“This doesn’t fix everything,” she whispers.
“I know.” I thumb away a tear on her cheek. “But it’s a start.”
She studies my face, searching for cracks in my conviction. Whatever she finds must satisfy her because she nods once, then burrows back into my chest, like I’m the only thing that matters in the whole damn world.
I hold her tighter, pressing my face into her hair. She’s still tense, still worried, still carrying weight that isn’t hers to bear. But for the first time since we got that call this afternoon, I feel her take a full breath.
It’s not enough. Not yet. But under the stars at Pine Hill Lookout, with the world spread out below us full of uncertain futures and unwanted possibilities, it’s a beginning.