Chapter 28
Pep Talk
JONAH
Most guys clear out after the last whistle—strip the gear, hit the showers, start the group text about where to get dinner.
These days, I stay. I run drills until my legs burn and my lungs feel like I huffed a can of oven cleaner.
I hit the blue line, circle, come back, do it again.
Shut off the scoreboard, shut off the world.
I tell myself I’m training, but anybody watching would call it what it is: an avoidance of having to think thoughts, which always include Eli and Zoe.
Nothing numbs it. Not the smell of ice, not the slap of my blades, not the lactic fire climbing my thighs. Every lap, every carve, the same movie plays in my head:
Eli, in the backseat, saying “I believe in you.”
Zoe, her hugs, her unwavering support, that smell of hers that still lingers in the house and brings me right back to those moments she was in my arms, and I wanted it to last forever. How she loved my son, and I think she might’ve loved me too.
I’m sure I love her.
And I screwed it all up.
Then back to Eli, knotted up in my arms in a closet, his whole body shaking, face streaked with tears and snot and defiance. Pulled out of my arms.
The fort. God. The way I built it out of desperation and old bedding. The way it saved him that night, and every other night after that.
Every fucking turn, there he is. The weight of him. The ghost of him.
And now he’s in Gwen’s house across town. In a bedroom I’ve never seen. In a space I can’t touch.
The hearing is scheduled in fourteen days.
A lifetime.
Especially since I get one supervised visit a week, otherwise, no contact.
My chest goes tight, then tighter. Sweat beads down my spine, soaks my shirt.
I keep skating, keep pushing, keep the pain right at the edge of bearable.
It doesn’t help. Not a dent in the agony.
If anything, it’s worse now—I’m slower, I’m messier, I’m not even moving like a hockey player, just a guy with too much self-hate and nowhere else to put it.
Coach tries looking the other way for an hour and a half—classic move. Then he makes noise at the doors. Lights, keys, the whole “I’m locking up” performance. I ignore him. Maybe if I stay out here long enough, I’ll forget.
He finally comes onto the ice, no skates, just those orthopedic shoes that announce a man’s knees are shot. Hands on hips. “You planning to sleep out here, Holt?”
I growl something noncommittal and go for another suicide sprint.
He shakes his head, disgusted and impressed. “You’re worse than Brooks, and that’s saying something.”
Three more laps. I lose count. My calves are cramping. I can’t find the energy to care.
Coach kills the lights over half the rink. He stands by the tunnel, arms folded, and waits. In the end, it’s not dramatic. It’s not a showdown. The ice just wins—I run out of legs, stop at center, and have to hang forward on my stick until the lightheadedness passes.
“Hit the treadmill if you’re still antsy,” Coach says. “But you’re done ruining my sheet for tonight.”
Yeah, yeah. I drag myself off the ice and strip the gear in silence. I don’t even hit the showers—just towel off, pull on sweats, and head for the gym.
I crank the treadmill to max incline, max speed, and go until my shirt sticks to me and my knees threaten mutiny. Sweat pours off my chin. My headphones died fifteen minutes ago, so I’m listening to my own breathing—ragged, ugly.
Still not enough.
None of this is enough to drown it—the thoughts, the panic, the failure. That in the end, Eli will decide I was just a blip, a failed experiment. Another reason to never trust again.
I don’t see Dad come in.
He’s just there, suddenly, by the bench near the weights.
He’s not wearing a jacket, just the same old team polo and jeans he’s owned for a decade.
His hair is going white at the temples now, and his eyes are rimmed red like he’s been agonizing over Eli too.
He looks at me—really looks at me—and doesn’t flinch at the sweat or the feral edge in my face.
Without a word, he walks over and pulls the power cord out of the wall. The treadmill whines, then dies mid-stride. I nearly eat shit, grabbing the handrails to keep from smacking my teeth on the console.
Then it’s just me, breathing loud and fast, hands locked on the rail, staring at the belt.
Dad doesn’t say a damn thing.
He sits on the bench. Sets his elbows on his knees and waits.
My pulse is jack-hammering. Sweat tickles down my ribs, pooling at my waistline. I’m not looking at him. I’m not going to look first.
Minutes pass. The room is full of that rubber-gym smell, the humid tang of the air. My legs are useless. My feet feel like they’re vibrating.
Eventually, I let go, step off, and slouch to the nearest bench. The metal frame wobbles. I brace my elbows on my thighs, same as him, and put my face in my hands. Give it a second. Give it five.
Still nothing from Dad.
Finally, he speaks. It’s almost conversational, like we’re discussing lawn care.
“What are you most afraid of, Jonah?”
I almost laugh. What is this, therapy? My brain cycles through the answers, trying to find one that doesn’t make me look like a complete waste. I try tactical:
“We only have thirteen days before the judge makes it permanent.”
He nods.
“The judge now thinks I’m an asshole.”
Dad’s expression doesn’t change.
I try to rephrase, get more strategic: “There’s not enough evidence to prove I’m better for Eli. The court’s just going to look at history, and I don’t have it. I’ve only been his dad for five weeks, one of those while he was in foster care.”
Silence. The kind that’s not patient but inevitable.
Something sours in my stomach. I try again, lower, more raw. “It’s gonna be a bloodbath.”
Dad gives me the old coach stare. He could wait out a clock.
My throat closes. The words pile up behind it, hot, desperate, too big to hold in.
And then I break.
The sound that comes out is not a sob—not at first. Just this low, gutted sound, almost a cough, then another behind it.
My hands are over my face, but it doesn’t matter.
My shoulders go—shaking, then full-on tremor—and I can’t stop it.
For a minute, the only thing in the room is me falling apart.
My breath rasps. All the sweat from the run floods my eyes, or maybe that’s just the crying, but I can’t make it stop.
“I’m afraid,” I choke out, “that he’s going to decide I’m not good enough.”
Dad’s there, hand on the back of my neck, solid and steady. He doesn’t say a word.
I keep going, because once it starts, there’s no shutting it down.
“He’ll just—he’ll grow up, and look back, and all he’ll remember is that I showed up too late.
And I lost. And then he went back to another house, and I’m just…
” I can’t even finish the sentence. I shake my head. “I’m just one more asshole who left.”
The words hollow me out. More than the skating, more than anything Gwen could throw. It’s the truth, and it burns.
I sit and let it burn through me. Dad’s hand doesn’t move. It’s the same grip I put on Eli’s shoulder in the closet, the same way I held him in the fort.
It’s a long time before I calm down. When I finally surface, the gym is silent again—just my breath, ragged and slowing, and the absolute absence of any excuse.
Dad clears his throat.
“You know what being a father really is?” he says. The tone is almost bored, but the pressure of his hand says otherwise. “It’s not the good nights, Jonah. It’s not Lego sets or bedtime or the days that make you feel you’re doing something right.”
I’m silent. Not because I don’t have thoughts, but because I’m not capable of speech.
He goes on. “It’s this. Exactly this. Getting your ass kicked and showing up again, anyway. Staying in it after you lose—after you’re embarrassed, after you’re scared shitless. Because if you quit, that’s the only thing your kid will ever remember.”
He waits, lets that sink in.
“Eli sees you. The way you see him. That kid is smarter than any nine-year-old I’ve ever met. And that ‘I believe in you’—he said it because he meant it. He knows what you don’t.”
I stare at the floor. The rubber mat is stained, shredded at the corners.
“I want to fight,” I finally say, voice like gravel. “I just—I don’t know how.”
Dad swings around to face me square-on. “You remember what that social worker said?”
I blink, knowing that he’s going to bring back the thing I fucked up royally. The memory grinds up through the rest—my threat to Gwen that made me lose my child.
“Going to anger management,” I say.
He raises his brows, like I’ve just solved a riddle. “Did you?”
“No.” The word tastes like concrete.
Dad shrugs. “So do it. As soon as possible.”
He stands up, slow, joints popping. He raps my shoulder once—hard enough to get my attention, not hard enough to hurt.
His voice is low. “You don’t have to win the whole game tonight. Just win the shift you’re in.”
I nod.
He turns and heads for the doors, leaving me with the echo of his footsteps.