Chapter 37 - Nate
One second, I’m standing in Tessa’s doorway, her hand held out, holding a bag of all my things and her eyes on mine, telling me she needs space, telling me to go.
Next, I’m behind the wheel of my Bronco, knuckles white around the steering wheel, the highway blurring past in streaks of salt and dirty snow.
No music. No radio. Just the too-loud sound of my heart and the echo of her voice.
Will you whisper her name and tell her you love her while you fuck her?
You broke me.
I trusted you.
I think I mean to drive back to the city.
To the penthouse. To the life that is still technically mine.
Or maybe I’m just taking the long way, giving her a few hours to breathe before I show up again and try to fix it.
But I keep driving. The exit markers stop looking familiar, and the lights thin out, and somewhere between one breath and the next, the asphalt turns into a road I know even better than the one that leads to the arena.
My headlights sweep over the old fence posts, the weathered Carson Farms sign, and the gravel drive my tires have known since I was sixteen and begging my dad to let me take the truck into town.
I pull in and put the Bronco in park.
The engine ticks as it cools.
The house is mostly dark, but the porch light is on. My mom’s habit. She never goes to bed with her boys out, even now that one of us is supposed to be a grown man in charge of an entire franchise.
I stare at that light for a long time, palms slick against the steering wheel, chest hurting in a way I don't think I can recover from.
I didn’t mean to come here.
Of all the places I could’ve run to, my body chose this one.
Home.
Not the penthouse with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the city skyline.
This. The mud-stained steps. The door that sticks in winter.
The kitchen that always smells like coffee and home cooking.
I get out before I can think myself out of it.
The cold smacks me in the face, sobering and sharp.
I open the front door, and it squeaks the way it always has.
“Hello?” I call out because I haven’t been here unannounced like this in a long time.
Soft light spills from the kitchen.
I follow it.
My dad sits at the table, a mug cradled in his big hands, shoulders hunched. There’s a half-done crossword folded in front of him, pen resting on the page. He looks up when I step into the doorway.
For a second, he doesn’t say anything.
His eyes sweep over me once, taking in the wrinkled suit, the exhaustion, whatever the hell is written all over my face. His mouth pulls tight, like he knows and doesn’t like it.
“Well,” he says finally, voice low, roughened by years of early mornings and yelling at stubborn cattle. “If it isn’t Captain Carson.”
I flinch.
He sees it, and his expression softens.
“Come sit,” he says, tilting his chin toward the chair across from him. “Coffee’s still warm. Or I can pull something stronger from the cabinet if you need it.”
I’m tired of using alcohol to numb how fucked up everything is, so I shake my head. “Coffee’s fine.” There's no use in arguing with Dad that coffee at this time of night isn't a good idea.
He pours me a mug without another word. I sit. The old wooden chair creaks under my weight.
For a second, we just sit there.
The clock ticks.
I can hear the crackle of the wood stove running hot.
“You wanna tell me why my son showed up looking like he just got dragged by a stag?” Dad asks quietly, eyes on his mug. “Or do I have to guess?”
I try to laugh it off. It dies in my throat.
“I messed up,” I say.
“Big or small?”
“Big.”
He nods, like he expected that. “With the team?”
“With Tessa.”
Her name feels like a bruise on my tongue.
Dad doesn’t push. He just takes a slow sip of coffee, waiting me out the way he always did when I came home from school with a chip on my shoulder and some half-truth ready on my lips.
“I hurt her,” I force out.
He raises his eyes to mine. There’s no judgment there. Just that steady Carson calm that used to piss me off as a teenager and now feels like the only thing keeping me from coming apart.
“How?” he asks simply.
The word is a doorway, one I used to turn away from. But I can't keep doing that.
So, I step through it. I tell him about the PR push. About the way the team saw Tessa as a solution before I ever understood the cost. About the folder. The branding strategies. Phrases like "stabilizing image" and "alternate options."
I tell him how I didn’t tell her. How I kept swallowing the truth because I was afraid that if I said it out loud, I’d lose her.
How I let the team mould our relationship into something glossy and marketable while she was just loving me, blind to the fact that there was a boardroom somewhere discussing how best to use her.
How I showed up at her house drunk and desperate and turned mean when she wouldn’t give me what I wanted.
How I used her past like a weapon. How I saw the way her face changed, the way her eyes shuttered...
I tell him everything.
Every ugly thing.
By the time I finish, my hands are shaking around the mug, and I feel hollowed out and exposed.
My dad’s jaw is tight, a muscle ticking near his ear.
“That’s not you,” he says softly.
“Feels like it is,” I say, voice cracking. “Feels like I’ve been turning into this guy for years and just pretended not to see it until she held up a mirror.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you got so used to being who everyone else needed that you forgot the difference.”
I blink. “What does that even mean?”
He leans back in his chair, eyes on mine, the way he did when I was seventeen and telling him I was leaving for juniors.
“You remember what you were like out here?” he asks. “Before the calls. Before the drafts. Before a whole city decided they owned a piece of you?”
“Dad...”
“Humour an old man,” he says, holding up a hand.
“You were stubborn as hell. Cocky, sure. But you loved it out here. You’d skate on that pond until your toes went numb, then come in and muck stalls with Eli without being asked.
You’d throw hay, ride fence lines, and help your mom in the garden.
You loved the game. But it wasn’t all you were. You also loved this life.”
I swallow hard.
“Then what?” I ask, even though I know.
“Then they started calling you the future of Summit City,” he says. “Captain material. Franchise saviour. And somewhere in there, you decided that was all that mattered.”
The words feel like a body check.
“I was proud,” he goes on quietly. “I am. Watching you on that ice… watching you chase something you loved… that meant something. But I also watched you disappear into it. Piece by piece. And I didn’t know how to pull you back without feeling like I was asking you to give up your dream.”
He looks away then, jaw working.
“That’s on me,” he says. “I should’ve said something sooner.”
The idea of my father, this steady, unshakeable man, feeling like he failed me nearly undoes me.
“It’s not on you,” I rasp. “I made the choices. I signed the contract. I let them… I let them do this. To me. To her.”
He studies me for a long moment.
“You did,” he agrees. “You let them. Because it felt like the only way to keep what you thought you needed.”
My throat burns.
“I became everything I swore I’d never be,” I whisper. “The guy who chooses the game over the girl. The guy who lets money and image matter more than the people who love him. I hurt her, Dad. I used her. I became the kind of man I’ve always hated.”
He doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t rush to tell me I’m wrong.
He just nods once, like he’s acknowledging a fact.
Then he leans forward, forearms braced on the table.
“Hockey ends, Nate,” he says, voice steady.
“Whether you play two more years or ten. Whether you walk away on your own feet or they carry you out. It ends. The jersey gets someone else’s name on it.
The fans move on. Those GM types who are breathing down your neck right now?
They’ll be doing the same thing to the next kid in line. ”
He taps a finger against the table.
“But who you are?” he continues. “That doesn’t end unless you let it. That’s the part you live with when the lights go off. When the crowd goes home. When you’re staring at the ceiling at three a.m., trying to decide if you like the man you've become.”
I stare at him, chest tight.
“So what?” I ask hoarsely. “I just quit? Walk away? Pretend the last ten years didn’t happen?”
“Did I say that?” he asks mildly.
“No, but...”
“Son, you have to decide what you want to build your life on,” he cuts in gently.
“The noise… or the truth. The version of you who lives for headlines, contracts, and the next big thing. Or the version who cleans his girl’s driveway at six in the morning because he knows she hates when it ices over. ”
My throat closes.
“Do you love her?” he asks quietly.
There’s no hesitation.
“Yes,” I say. “More than anything. More than I thought I could. And I fucked it up.”
“Can you fix it?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” The words rip something open in me. “I want to. God, I want to. But I don’t know if wanting is enough. I broke something in her. I saw it. I can’t unsee it.”
He nods slowly. “Then maybe fixing it isn’t the point.”
The anger flashes hot. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” he says calmly, “you don’t make this about you changing to get the girl. You hurt her. You lied. You let people use her. The consequence of that might be losing her for good. You don’t get to decide how she heals. You only get to decide who you’re going to be now.”
I go still.
The kitchen hums around us. Fridge kicking on. Wind pressing against the windows. Somewhere outside, a cow bellows low and lonely.
“Who I’m going to be,” I repeat, the words tasting unfamiliar.
He nods. “Not for the cameras. Not for the GM. Not for the boys on the ice with you. Not even for her. For you. You came back here tonight, son, whether you meant to or not. That tells me something. Somewhere under all the lies and pressure, you still remember how to come home.”
My vision blurs. I tip my head back and stare at the ceiling, breathing hard, trying not to break apart.
“I’m tired,” I admit, and it feels like the most honest thing I’ve said in months. “I’m so damn tired, Dad. Not of the game. Of… everything around it. Of the person I have to be to hold it all together.”
He’s quiet for a long beat.
Then, softly: “Then maybe it’s time to stop trying to hold everything together and just… let some things go. See what’s still standing when the dust settles.”
My fingers tighten around the mug.
“What if I don’t like what’s left?” I ask.
He gives me a sad, small smile.
“Then you put in the work and build something better,” he says. “From the ground up this time. Not for them. For you.”
We sit there at that old kitchen table, the same one where I did homework, signed my first junior contract, and told my parents I was leaving home. Only this time, I’m not leaving.
For the first time in months, the buzzing panic in my chest eases just a fraction.
“It’s late,” Dad says eventually, pushing his chair back with a creak. “Your mom will skin me alive if she wakes up and realizes I let you sit at this table all night instead of pointing you toward a bed.”
I huff out something that’s almost a laugh. “Is she still keeping the spare room ready?”
He snorts. “Your room. She never stopped calling it that. Go on. Sheets are clean. Posters are still on the wall. Maybe seeing eighteen-year-old you will remind you who you were before the world started taking pieces.”
The hallway to my old room feels shorter than I remember.
The room is smaller than the spaces I live in now. Single bed. Old desk. Faded posters of my favourite players. A stack of worn-out sports magazines in the corner. The window looks out over the back field; the one Eli and I used as an imaginary rink before the pond froze solid.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
The springs groan.
I toe off my shoes and lie back, staring at the ceiling where glow-in-the-dark stars still cling in a lopsided constellation Tessa would probably tease me for.
I settle into the sound of the wind, the distant low of cattle and the creak of the old house easing around me.
I think of Tessa on her porch, wrapped in that old sweater, eyes filled with hurt.
I think of the way her voice shook when she said, I hope you figure out who you are, Nate.
I don’t know who that man is yet.
But lying here in the dark, in the room where I used to dream about getting out, I make myself a quiet promise:
Whoever I become next...
It won’t be the man who uses the people he loves.
It won’t be the man who lets other people write his story for him.
And if I ever earn the right to stand in front of her again…
It’ll be as the version of me who chose truth, even when it cost him everything.
The thought settles over me like a heavy blanket.
And in my childhood bed, with no skyline, no noise, no headlines... I finally sleep.