Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
ELLIOT
Well, that was the closest I’ve ever come to vomiting during a hockey game. And Shawn once dragged me to a game at the height of my pregnancy sickness.
Playoff hockey is stressful on a completely different level. Every penalty feels catastrophic. Every goal feels like it’s the only thing that matters. There is no margin for error, no room to breathe, just constant pressure grinding down everyone involved.
Watching Austin go down and stay down stole years off my life.
Watching Arthur’s reaction to him go down? That might haunt me forever.
Fear. Rage. Hurt. Regret. It all crossed his face in the smallest, most controlled microexpressions.
To anyone else, it would look like a coach doing his job, concerned but composed.
But I know that man. Studying his face is my favourite pastime.
In those seconds before Austin got back up, Arthur was not just worried.
He was in agony.
Austin stayed on the bench for the remainder of the game. Even without him, the Otters found a way. Noah Watts scored the winning goal with less than a minute left in regulation time.
The Otters now lead the series three to one.
I waited with the rest of the training staff and physios, standing by. Most nights we’re not needed once the game ends, but we stay anyway. Just in case. Tomorrow we will treat bruises, strains, sore backs, and the invisible aches that come with playoff hockey.
Rose finds me briefly and confirms what I hoped to hear. Austin is fine. The impact knocked the wind out of him, scared everyone half to death, but once his breathing settled, there was no lasting damage.
Arthur disappears down the tunnel with his team after the win. I don’t see him again before we’re cleared to board the bus back to the hotel. Not that I expected to. Coaches rarely linger.
Still, I had hoped. Just a glimpse. Just to make sure he was okay too.
I call Sam on the drive back to the hotel.
I’m not surprised when he immediately launches into a rapid-fire interrogation about Austin, and I do my best to answer every question.
Despite his obvious concern for a hockey player who has been incredibly kind to him over the last six months, Sam sounds good.
Happy. Grounded. He gives me a quick update on school, mentions a spelling test, and promises that he and Rhett are not playing too many video games, which tells me they absolutely are.
After the exhausting, high tension game, hearing his voice is therapeutic. If Austin’s near miss shaved years off my life, Sam just handed them back to me one by one.
It’s after ten when I finally get back to my room, though it feels earlier. Even though we’ve only been here two days, they’ve been long days, stretching in a way they never seem to at home. Everything feels slightly suspended, like time runs differently when you’re away.
I change out of the Otters branded athletic gear the staff wear during games and pull on soft linen shorts and a navy cotton sweater.
When I catch my reflection in the mirror, I look like I’m about to board a sailboat.
I consider changing, then remember I packed light and didn’t give myself many options.
Arthur said he would text when he got back to his room, so I sit on the edge of the bed and wait. I scroll mindlessly through videos to pass the time. My feed is already flooded with highlights from the game. Foster’s impossible save. Austin’s goal. Austin hitting the ice.
Eventually I can’t watch that part anymore. I close the app and open my messages instead.
Nothing from Arthur yet.
It’s almost eleven.
He should be back by now.
Elliot: Back yet?
My phone tells me he reads the text almost immediately.
No reply.
I give it a minute. Then another. The silence stretches, heavy and uncomfortable, until my patience finally snaps.
“Screw it,” I mutter to the empty hotel room as I swing my legs off the bed.
I slide my feet into my sandals, grab my room key from the nightstand, and head for the door.
I have a persistent, gut-level sense that Arthur is not okay, and I am done letting him retreat behind that closed, stoic wall. Not tonight.
The hotel is hushed at this hour. The carpet muffles my footsteps as I make my way toward the elevator.
The only people I pass are two young women in glittering mini dresses, laughing softly, clearly on their way to a club.
I watch them for a second longer than necessary, struck by the sudden realization that I skipped that entire phase of life.
I went from being a teenager juggling two jobs to a girlfriend, then a wife, then a mother in what feels like a heartbeat.
Arthur’s room is three floors above mine. When I knock, there’s a pause long enough to make me question my choice to come. I lift my hand to knock again just as the door opens.
“Hey.”
His voice is flat. Controlled. Empty. He looks older than he did this morning when he kissed me goodbye in my doorway. The lines around his eyes are deeper, his shoulders heavier. He’s still wearing his suit, jacket unbuttoned, tie loosened, as if he never quite came down from the game.
“Hey.” I slip inside and he closes the door behind me with a quiet, deliberate click. “Your room is a lot bigger than mine.”
It’s an opening. A small, easy thread he could tug. A chance to tease me, to remind me that he is bigger, higher up the food chain, more important.
“Yeah,” is all he gives me.
Oh boy.
“Is this a rank thing?” I ask lightly, forcing a smile. “Because it seems a little elitist if you ask me.”
“I guess.”
I exhale sharply, frustration bubbling up.
“I don’t assign the rooms, Elliot. Tell Cal if you need something bigger.”
“I don’t need a bigger room,” I say, my voice firmer now. “I need you to talk to me.”
“I am fucking talking to you. This is talking.”
“No,” I snap, the words coming fast and sharp. “This is bullshit. If you don’t want to see me tonight for whatever reason, that’s okay. But do not gaslight me by pretending everything is fine when you know damn well you are shutting me out.”
The words hang between us, thick and undeniable. I turn toward the door, but he steps into my path, solid and immovable.
“I’m not trying to shut you out,” he says quietly. “I’m trying not to drag you down with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gestures toward the bed. Reluctantly, I back up and sit, folding my legs beneath me. The mattress dips softly under my weight. Arthur drags the armchair closer, the legs scraping faintly against the carpet, and lowers himself into it across from me. He looks suddenly tired. Exhausted.
“When Austin went down, I thought…”
“You thought his Achilles had been sliced,” I finish gently.
He drags a hand over his face, rough and slow.
“It’s common enough. It happened to a guy in Philly not two months ago.
” His gaze drops to the carpet, jaw tight, and I wait.
“But watching it happen to Crawford. Thinking that he was…” He exhales hard.
“Austin’s a good kid. He’s a cocky, know-it-all, arrogant little shit, but he’s still a good kid.
And he’s talented. He could have a massive career.
He should have a massive career. And when I thought that might be taken from him, I just… ”
“You didn’t want him to lose his career the way you did.”
“Yes. But it’s more than that.” He looks up then, eyes dark and unguarded. “The worst part wasn’t that he might never play again. It was the thought that he might turn into me.”
My chest tightens. Just when I think my heart cannot split any further, it finds a way.
“Hockey was my purpose,” he continues, voice low and stripped bare.
“When I lost it, I didn’t just lose my job.
I lost the only part of myself I ever liked.
The only part I respected. I lost the thing that got me out of bed in the morning.
” He swallows. “I found another purpose eventually in coaching. But it was never the same.”
He leans forward until his elbows rest on his knees, shoulders slumped under the weight of everything he’s been carrying.
The urge to reach for him is overwhelming.
I want to climb into his lap, press myself against him, hold him together.
But he is finally talking, finally letting the words out, so I stay still and let him have the space.
“I think I was watching it all happen again in my head,” he says quietly. “Only this time it was Austin. I saw him lose his purpose. I saw him shut people out. I saw him play through pain and never actually heal. And it fucking destroyed me. Because he doesn’t deserve that.”
“Neither did you.”
He looks up at me then, lips pulling into a sad, crooked smile. “Austin might be a bit of an asshole,” he says softly, “but I’m a Grade A, heartless son of a bitch.”
“Bullshit.” I shift closer on the bed until I can reach him.
I take his warm hands in mine. “You love casting yourself as the villain in your own fairy tale, but I do not buy it. I never have. A heartless son of a bitch would not be losing sleep over a player’s wellbeing.
He would not be tearing himself apart over decisions he made when he was at his lowest.”
He opens his mouth to argue. “But—”
“No.” I squeeze his hands, grounding him.
“Furthermore, a heartless son of a bitch could not do the job you do the way you do it. You think you are this big, bad monster everyone is afraid of, but people do not follow monsters the way your team follows you. They respect you. They trust you. They know you care about them, even when you’re hard on them.
You want what is best for them and for the team, and they know that. ”