Chapter 30
THIRTY
PARKER
I pinch my eyes, a mountain of tears building behind my lids. None of these girls should have had to go through this.
What do you do when you can’t take anymore?
You leave. Or at least I do. Left Michigan. Left Hockey.
You don’t stand there and let it get worse. You don’t let someone take a sword to your heart and let them carve a deeper scar.
And maybe that’s why this feels worse than betrayal.
Because Annika taught me to trust again while hiding the one thing that explained everything about her. What makes her who she is.
My cleats snap against the concrete, each step louder than the next, echoing off the tunnel walls like a countdown.
One step.
Two.
Three.
“Parker.”
Annika’s voice breaks behind me. For the first time, she’s not steady, not controlled. She’s broken.
Stopping, my shoulders fall and I blink my eyes and inhale. But I don’t want to turn around. I don’t want to see her like this. I don’t want to feel this pull—the one dragging me back when my instincts are screaming for me to walk away.
But I do anyway.
She’s standing in the exact spot I left her. Except she looks smaller and weaker like a flower wilting.
“I…” she starts but her voice gives out.
I drag a hand down my face trying to hold onto something solid. Anything. “Please,” I say, I beg. “Just give me something.”
She swallows hard, eyes veiled with tears.
“Something that makes me understand.” I take a few strides toward her because God I love her and want her to say something that makes sense out of this. “Because right now, I don’t understand how you could do that.”
Her hands tremble at her sides and her breathing is fast and shallow.
And for a second, I think she’s just going to shut down.
I wonder if she’s repressed some of the memories and just closes herself off when pressed.
I know this. This is her area of expertise and she explains all the time how the brain can shut off what it feels is threatening.
But then, she breaks.
She reaches for my hand, and I let her take it to ground her in hopes she gives me a reason to stay or at least think about staying. Because despite everything, I want to be the person she runs to. The person she trusts most in life.
Her voice falters. “He… he.” She folds into herself. “He said he would kill me. Was I wrong to believe him? I was a kid,” she chokes out.
“I know.”
This time she looks me directly in the eyes and says, “No, you don’t. Not like this.”
Tears spill over her lids and run down her face. Everything in me wants to make her pain go away, but I don’t wipe them off.
I just wait and listen.
Her voice cracks as she continues. “At first it didn’t feel wrong. I was embarrassed but I don’t remember thinking my dad is molesting me.” She slaps her tears away between every other word.
My stomach does that twisty thing like when you’re on a roller coaster preparing for the next upside-down loop.
Her gaze drops somewhere past me. She’s not even here anymore. This is her saying out loud what she has never said to anyone.
“His finger would slide over my lips,” she says in a hushed tone. “Just like that. And when I’d pull away, he’d laugh and say I need lip balm.”
My hands curl into fists. My body locks. I couldn’t move if I tried.
“And I believed him,” she chokes. “Because he was my dad.”
She uses the word Dad. Not coach. Not monster.
She continues, voice shaking harder now. “He’d come into my room, sit down on the edge of the bed and ask questions that didn’t make sense at the time.”
I force myself to stay still and listen even though my heart feels shattered for both what she and her teammates went through.
By someone who they trusted.
By someone who should have been their protector, not their molester.
She gasps out a breath. “When I started my period, he… knew before I had even told my mom.”
My mouth goes bone dry, every trace of moisture gone.
“He gave me my first tampon.” She closes her eyes and inhales. “Said I needed to get used to having something inside me.”
Jesus Christ.
I drag a breath through my teeth, sharp and unsteady. There’s a rage burning inside me that I’ve never experienced before. When my ex cheated on me, I was devastated and angry, but I’ve never felt this way. I manage to keep it locked down, letting her tell me her story is the priority now.
“At first, I thought…” she squeaks out a broken laugh, “I thought he was helping me, helping navigate my period with hockey. The first few months at the rink, he would have me lie on heating pads before practice. But then… then he started asking when I wasn’t on my period.”
I hold my breath, torn between wanting to know and wanting to run, but there’s no path forward with Annika without the truth—without understanding the events, her triggers, and why the woman who demanded honesty from me in every session didn’t trust me enough to handle her secrets.
“When I said no, that I still have one more week before the next one, he’d… he’d touch me.”
The words splinter on her lips.
I don’t move.
Don’t breathe.
My body freezes in place.
I close my eyes for a second but then I imagine it so I pop them open, hoping to erase the images from my brain.
“This went on for months and I didn’t know what to do. I was so ashamed and embarrassed.”
She sobs, body shaking like nothing I've ever experienced, except when Matt was in the hospital and Noelle collapsed in my arms.
But these aren’t tears of fear.
They’re tears of shame and regret.
I don’t know what to say so I pull her into my arms. At this point, I have no words.
While still in my arms, she chokes out, “He tried to go further and I hit him.” It comes out quickly like she needs me to know that part. Needs me to know she was fighting back. “I hit him with my hockey stick and screamed ‘If you ever touch me again, I’ll tell everyone.’”
I snap back. “Good. He deserved worse.” I take a long swallow and ask gently, “Where was your mom?”
Annika’s eyes fall, tears still falling two and three drops at a time. “She worked nights a few days a week. She was an in-home nurse for a woman who was paralyzed.”
“So he… molested you for weeks? Months?”
“Months. Looking back, things I thought were innocent, weren’t. I know that now. But I finally stood my ground. I told him I’d tell everyone, and he threatened to kill me if I did. And I believed him.”
That’s a reason, an absolutely horrifying one. Someone that would molest a child is certainly capable of killing.
He won because since he threatened her, it meant he could keep doing it to others, knowing she wouldn’t report it.
Something in my chest shifts. Not relief, not even close. Just recognition that she fought in the only way she knew how.
Silence crashes down between us. I can still see by the way her hands shake.
I draw her into my body, and she collapses on my chest like she’s been hanging on too long by a single thread that is now unraveling.
I hold her. Comfort her. Because no one should have to shoulder something so horrendous on their own.
Realization hits. That’s the problem.
She did carry it alone.
Even after she had me.
Her tears soak through my jersey, hot and relentless.
For a moment, I forget everything else.
But then Nadia’s voice cuts back through my head—sharp and clear.
I ease back enough to see her face and I say so softly it’s hard to tell if the words are coming out or if I’m just thinking them.
“Nadia says you saw him.” Her body stiffens.
“In the locker room while he invaded her. She was crying. You heard her.” Her eyes flicker.
“Is it true?” I ask it carefully because my anger is changing shape now.
Less rage. More hurt.
Her lip trembles then she nods.
Everything inside me fractures.
Not just because of those girls.
Because she looked me in the eye every day and still decided I wasn’t safe enough to tell.
Annika knows my fear is not being enough for my family, for football fans and for the woman I love to not trust me feels like someone’s rolling me over shards of glass.
“I…” she tries to speak but it gets tangled in her throat. “I was always there because he was my ride. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You have told me for months everything is a choice. I chose to be late in college. I chose to move home. I chose football over hockey. I chose to trust you.” My voice disappears by the end.
Her eyes widen.
“Do you know how hard it was for me after Michigan? How hard it’s been for me to trust another woman?” I ask.
She stares at me, her blue eyes rimmed with red.
“You kept asking me to let you in. To trust you with my head, my career, my fears.” I shake my head, emotion thick in my throat. “And the whole time, you never trusted me enough to let me carry this weight with you.”
“I was trying to survive.”
I shut my eyes briefly, regretting the direction of the conversation.
“I know you were trying to survive,” I says quieter.
“Part of me wants to pull you into my arms and tell you none of this changes anything,” I confess.
Because God, I don’t want to live without her.
“And the other part doesn’t know how to make peace with it yet,” I admit.
“Because losing you feels like I don’t have the air I need to breathe. ”
She flinches like I slapped her, then her face crumples. And I hate that it does and that I’m part of it.
I drag my hands into my hair and pull on it, pacing around trying to regain control.
Families begin lining up in the tunnel, waiting for the players to come from the locker room, so I take her hand and pull her into the equipment room.
I have one more question. “Why didn’t you show up at the trial to testify?”
“I couldn’t.”
I take a deep breath and whisper, “That’s not an answer.”
“If I did, he would kill me.” Her voice cracks. “And I would’ve had to say everything he did to me and everything I think I saw. I couldn’t survive it.”
I believe that she believed him. I do. And maybe that’s what makes this impossible.
Just to keep the timeline in my head accurate, I ask, “So you left for America?”
“As soon as I had a chance, before it came out. I thought if I left, I could outrun the pain and it would disappear.”
“And yet, here you are, face-to-face with it.”
She shuts her eyes and echoes, “And yet.”
“I just wish he’d never had the power to scare you into silence,” I say, voice roughening, the words heavy on my tongue. “He got off… and the odds are that he’s out there doing it again.”
She lets out a sob that moves through her whole body. “I know.”
My chest constricts with every word. “He took your innocence, their innocence and whoever else after that.”
My voice is softer now and her eyes meet mine. “And maybe I could’ve handled all of this if you had trusted me enough to tell me.”
Her face crumbles.
“I would’ve stayed, Annika,” I say, wiping one of my own tears that fell from my lashes. “Even if I didn’t understand right away… I would’ve stayed.”
If she trusted me enough, this wouldn’t be happening.
“That’s the part wrecking me right now,” I confess, my voice shattering, my heart constricting. “Not just what happened… but that you never believed I could handle loving all of you—cracks, flaws, everything.”
Tears spill faster down her cheeks.
“I know you were hurting and scared… but he hurt your teammates. I’m struggling because the woman I know is fearless and would fight for anyone,” I admit, voice thinning. “So, I keep trying to picture how scared you must’ve been back then.”
“I was fearless before him.” She cries, “I had to find my way back.”
My heart aches for her, and for me.
“I trusted you with my head. Handed you my heart on a silver fucking platter and you didn’t trust me.”
She adds, “I showed you the note.”
“You left out key details. You could have told me the night Nadia confronted you in the bathroom on Margarita night.” I sigh. “You didn’t.”
Sniffling, Annika admits. “I hoped it would go away. I guess Nadia was right… I’m good at pretending.”
There it is—the shaky truth.
“This is fucked up. I’m so sorry he violated you and your trust,” I say as I wrap my arms around her hoping to soothe the ache in both of our hearts.
She digs her finger pads into my shoulder blades, anchoring me in place and I squeeze her tight until her cries weaken into sniffles and her grip loosens.
And God help me, part of me wants to stay forever.
But another part is bleeding out, knowing she never let me all the way in, knowing all too well that trust is my issue.
I step back because if I don’t, I know I’ll stay.
And right now, I need to process all of my emotions.
How do I love someone through this while balancing the fact she didn’t trust me to share the darkest parts of her life?
I need to go to the waterfall. Mom’s place.
“Annika, I love you, but right now, I need to go,” I say, my voice worn thin. “I need time to think.”
I press a soft kiss onto her lips that feels like goodbye even though it’s not what I want. My hand covers the doorknob.
Her face falls. “Parker—” She reaches for me.
“Don’t,” I whisper even though every instinct I have wants her in my arms. I grip the doorknob harder, turn and crack it open. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”