38. Maddox
Maddox
I’m running out of time, forty minutes to tip-off, and Nate already has the boys warming up in a gym that’s filling fast. I should be there, should be doing the job I chose, the one I promised myself I’d do right.
So why the hell am I still parked across the street from the inn?
The front door opens, and Grace steps out with a suitcase rolling behind her, head down, phone in hand. Patsy stands on the porch, waving goodbye like this is the most normal thing in the world.
My chest aches with the specific, pulverizing weight of watching it happen and being unable to move.
Grace unlocks the rental, loads the trunk with the efficiency of someone who has made up her mind. She slides into the driver’s seat and pulls out of the inn’s small lot.
I watch the car disappear down the street, and the vanishing taillights spur me into action. I’m out of the truck, boots hitting the pavement as I call across the street to Patsy before she can turn and go back inside.
“Was that Grace I just saw leave?”
I’m an idiot.
She squints at me, then her face opens into a smile. “Maddox, yes, it was. She’s leaving. Such a shame, I did so like—”
“Did she say where she was going?” The words are fast and clipped, and I rake a hand through my hair, already aware I have no real right to be asking. Not after the way I walked out on her. Twice.
“She did.” Patsy’s unbothered by my barely contained unraveling. “Her flight leaves early tomorrow morning. She’s staying in Helena tonight.”
The confirmation lands like a fist to the sternum. She’s really gone, and worse than that, she didn’t wait—didn’t leave a window open. Nope, she packed her things and walked out the door while I was standing fifty feet away, too stubborn and too slow to do anything about it.
Before I can think better of it, a clumsy half-truth tumbles out of me. “She left something for me, and I thought I’d get here sooner to pick it up.”
“She didn’t mention—”
“It might still be up in the room.” I cut in, hating the lie even as it leaves my mouth. I hope it’s still in the room. “Do you mind if I run up and check?”
She studies me in a way that suggests Patsy sees considerably more than she lets on, and then she waves a hand. “All right, then. I’ve got a call coming in anyway. Door’s unlocked, go on up.”
“Thanks, Patsy.”
I take the stairs two at a time, push the door open, and find the article is still there, lying exactly where it fell when I let it go.
For a single suspended moment, my heartbeat evens out because this was a long shot, and it paid off.
And right now, that’s the only thing that’s gone right in the last twenty-four hours.
I scoop the pages up, feeling the weight of them settle into my hand, and head downstairs. Patsy’s on her call, and I hold up the pages in a half-wave as I move through the lobby.
“Got it,” I mouth, and she nods without missing a beat of her conversation.
My truck is on the road in seconds, the article on the passenger seat, and I still have no idea what I’m going to do with it.
Twenty-seven minutes to tip-off, and for the first time since this mess started, the clock isn’t what scares me.
At school, the boys are in the locker room, dressed and focused, some stretching, others laughing too loud. Nate spots me walking in and smiles, mouthing, “You good?” I nod because I’m the coach, and I’m supposed to be.
I sink onto a bench and pull the pages from my jacket.
The article she shoved at my chest and swore she was sending to her editor.
I skim at first, looking for what I dread.
The sharp turn where she exposes me the way Erica did—slow at first, then all at once, until I didn’t recognize my own life anymore.
I read on edge, jaw clenched, chest aching, bracing for the hit because I hadn’t seen it coming earlier today. But the hit doesn’t come. Then I slow down and read it the way it deserves to be read, and what I find there isn’t cruelty.
It’s craft. Careful, considered, deliberate craft from someone who understood exactly what she was holding and chose to handle it accordingly.
She writes about my retirement without spectacle, no dramatic reveal, no sensationalism. Beto’s death is there, woven into the narrative with a precision that makes me ache, but there’s no direct blame laid on me or the team, and Erica’s name appears nowhere on the page.
Grace threads his story through mine in a way I wouldn’t have thought to join them. She writes about my work with, and donations to, various rehabilitation facilities, how I still give and support even after having left the sport.
And she lets herself be seen in it, too—her brother is there, not in detail, not spelled out, but woven through the anger and the urgency and the refusal to look away from what drugs take from people. From families. From futures.
The fury in her writing is real, and it’s fierce, but she aims it upward—at systems and indifference and money that moves faster than accountability—not at me.
She shields where she could have cut. She explains where she could have blamed.
She gave me more compassion on the page than I gave her standing in the same room.
She sees me.
My chest aches with something that sits right at the border between awe and grief.
She wrote about me with respect and with an honesty I don’t deserve, not after how I treated her.
Shame moves through me slow and thorough, and I don’t like how well it fits.
Because I didn’t fight for her. I walked away.
“You look like hell.” Katie’s voice cuts through everything. “I was going to say you didn’t need a good luck charm today, but now I’m reconsidering.”
I look up at her, standing there with her arms crossed and her eyes doing the thing they do where they’re sharp and worried at the same time.
She’s already reading me whether I want her to or not. “Game starts in ten. You okay?”
I don’t bother giving a convincing answer. “Grace is gone.”
“Gone gone?”
“Helena tonight. Her flight’s tomorrow morning.”
“But Mom said you were going to talk to her, make things right.” She shifts her weight, hands moving to her hips. “What did you do?”
“She was always going to leave.” Folding the pages, I push them back into my jacket. “She was only here for the assignment.”
Katie tilts her head and looks at me the way people look at someone who’s saying something they know isn’t true. “That might have been the case at the start, but we both know things changed.”
She narrows her gaze. “Did you know she asked Zoe about available office space in her building? And there’s whatever it is she’s working on to save the VFD. Lara Crandall’s real tight-lipped about it, which means it’s real enough to matter.”
I stare at her, her words arriving in the wrong order somehow, not making sense the way they should. “What?”
“That’s what I thought.” She holds my gaze, completely unmoved by my confusion. “If you ask me, she was planning on staying, and before you say it isn’t important or whatever, she wasn’t staying for the town’s charm, alluring as it is… So I’m asking again, what did you do?”
I drag a hand over my face. “I didn’t trust her, accused her of things she didn’t do, and walked out like an asshole. Twice.”
That earns me a long, withering look. “And you’re just going to let her go?”
“What am I supposed to—”
“You care about her. Don’t stand there and pretend you don’t. I haven’t seen you like this—” She stops herself, shakes her head slowly. “Ever, Maddox. Not like this.”
I open my mouth and close it again, and she takes that as permission to continue.
“Don’t get me wrong. I know you loved Rickie.” She chooses her next words carefully, the way Katie does when she’s been sitting on something for a while. “But there was always an imbalance.”
My brow pulls together, though I know what she’s going to say.
“Rickie needed you. More than anyone should need another person, maybe.” She keeps her voice even, not unkind. “And you stepped right into that role without thinking twice. The protector. The one who holds everything together.”
She pauses. “I’m not saying it wasn’t justified—Mad.” She lowers her voice, aware of where we are. “Look what happened, and none of that was on you. You couldn’t have prevented any of it. Some things just move toward their ending no matter what you do.”
I nod slowly, not trusting myself with words yet.
“Anyway.” A small wry smile breaks across her face.
“Maybe it’s because you’re older and slightly wiser—don’t let it go to your head.
” The smile softens into something more serious.
“But you look at Grace differently. You don’t look at her like someone who needs protecting.
You look at her like someone worth standing next to.
Like she’s your equal.” Her hand settles on my shoulder.
“Like she’s your peace. Your actual happiness. ”
I didn’t realize I’d been that readable. “I can’t just leave… the game, the boys, this is my job—”
“Wren is already in the bleachers.” She waves a hand toward the gym. “That’s what an assistant coach is for, isn’t it?”
“But I should be the one who—”
Nate clears his throat from somewhere behind Katie, then steps in next to her, a ball resting on his hip. A few of the boys hover nearby and are not working very hard at pretending they haven’t been listening.
“We’ve got this, Coach.” Nate holds my gaze, steady and sure. “Go.”
From the back of the small gathering, Kevin—a junior, all nerves and raw sincerity—blurts out, “Yeah, we like Grace. You’d be crazy not to go.” He freezes the moment it leaves his mouth. “Sorry, Coach. I didn’t—I just—”
I almost laugh. Almost.
Katie crouches slightly so we’re eye level, her hand still rests on my shoulder. “You’re not doing any of this alone, Mad. You’ve got people behind you who want to help.” She glances back at the boys, then to me. “Let us.”
I look at them—my sister, my team, the easy uncomplicated trust on their faces—and something inside me that has been locked up tight for a long time quietly gives way.
Many people have said those same words to me over the years, and each time, I rejected them, never even stopping to let them sink in. This time is different.
I pull Katie into a quick, hard hug, then turn to face the room. “Play smart. We got here together, so trust each other out there.”
I let that sit for a beat because it’s all that needs saying, and then I’m moving through the corridor, past the people calling out wishes for a win, past the confused faces of anyone watching their coach walk in the wrong direction.
The cold hits me the moment I push through the door into the parking lot, sharp enough to sting, and for one brutal second, a thought lands square in the center of my chest.
What if I’m too late?
The boys are playing without me, and Grace is already on the road. Helena isn’t far, but it’s far enough for Grace to disappear.
I don’t know where she’s staying, and why the fuck don’t I have her number? Once she moved in, we never needed a phone. Shit.
Okay, I’ll start with the car rental and work outward from there.
Patsy might know which hotel, and if not, maybe Mom does.
And if neither of them can help, I’ll call the paper in Los Angeles and work my way down whatever list it takes.
I’ll even hunt down Blane if I have to. I won’t give the thought of failure room to breathe.
The truck engine roars to life, and the tires bite into the road like this is the only race that has ever mattered. The town slips past in familiar pieces—fields and fences, the gas station on the corner—things I’ve driven past a thousand times without seeing any of them.
I see them now.
I see everything with a strange, sharp clarity that only seems to arrive when something is slipping away.
My hands are steady on the wheel. My head is not.
I told myself I was protecting my family, my name, everything.
But all I did was repeat the same mistake I’ve been making my whole adult life, shouldering everything alone, keeping people at arm’s length in the name of protection when really it’s fear.
I didn’t let her in.
I had every reason to trust her, and I chose not to, and now she’s ahead of me on a road to Helena.
Once I’m on the highway, the road opens, long and straight, mountains bruising the horizon, and I push harder, the speedometer climbing as resolve settles in my bones.
A few miles outside town, I crest a small rise, and my breath catches in my throat. I recognize the car first, headed in the opposite direction, back toward Winslow Grove. I would have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention.
I’ve watched that car sit in my driveway and park outside the inn and idle in the school lot while she waited to interview me.
It’s Grace.
My heart thumps so hard it rattles my ribs. I slow without deciding to, eyes locked on her windshield as she passes, sunlight flashing off the glass in a brief bright streak.
She doesn’t look over. She hasn’t seen me or recognized the truck, and for one suspended second, the road stretches between us, widening by the moment, the distance compounding with every yard.
I hit the cutoff and make the hardest turn of my life, tires skidding just enough to leave a mark on the empty road.
She’s going back to Winslow Grove.
I don’t know why, and I don’t need to yet—I just need to get there before she changes her mind.
I’m not letting her go.
Not again.
Not this time.