32. April 4, Monday
Chapter thirty-two
Zoey
After Hanna hung up, Zoey lowered the phone slowly. It slipped from her fingers and thunked onto the floor, screen going dark.
Caring is not the same thing as being ready.
The phrase echoed in her skull.
First Mitch.
Then Ilya.
Then Nina.
Then Fido and missing puppies and Christian on a stretcher.
Now a stranger with a calm voice telling her the life she had built might not be shaped right for the child she wanted to bring into it.
Her eyes burned.
She pushed out of the chair, leaned against the lower cabinets, and slid until she hit the floor, knees knocking together, back thudding against wood.
You thought you were ready.
You thought wanting it this badly made you good at it.
She was too much. She wanted too much.
The words felt bitter.
Too much hope.
Too much want.
Too much history with Mitch.
Too much risk for Ilya.
Too much optics trouble for Nina.
Too much attachment for a boy whose life was not hers to claim.
Zoey braced her palms on the tile floor and let the tears come.
Not the shocked, feral sobbing from the night before. This was lower. Quieter. A slow, steady leak she couldn’t patch.
She cried for the boy whose hand had fit so perfectly in hers on the ice. For the room she’d already designed in her head. For every moment she’d let herself imagine buckling a booster seat into the back of her compact and maybe, eventually, hearing Mom for the first time.
She cried for the version of herself who walked into the arena months ago in a too-tight work shirt and a box of hopes, believing she could reinvent herself cleanly.
Now those hopes sat in pieces around her.
Her marriage ended, and the man she’d let herself love after that decided he wasn’t safe for her.Her boss thought she was a PR problem waiting to happen.
The system she’d decided to trust with her dream of motherhood told her to slow down before she accidentally confused hope with readiness.
It was hard not to see a pattern.
Maybe the common denominator was her.
She curled in on herself, forehead to her knees, and let that thought hit fully for the first time.
What if wanting so much, trying so hard, was the problem?
What if she’d spent so long proving she could survive without being chosen that the universe decided that was her job now?
Endure. Do not receive.
Her phone buzzed weakly on the floor, rattling an inch.
She didn’t move yet.
She would. She’d get up. She’d eat something with an actual nutrient in it. She’d probably cry three more times before noon.
But right now, the tile was cool, her chest hurt, and she didn’t have anything left to hold herself together.
Another buzz, disturbing the silence.
A text from someone with an update on Christian?
Another text from Kira trying to apologize for her brother?
Mitch sending another accusatory message that she wouldn’t reply to?
Kayla telling her she’d be home after her next patient?
With a groan, Zoey stretched out a hand, fingertips numb as she dragged the phone across the tile and lifted it. Her thumb shook as she woke the screen.
A slew of unread text previews appeared, but her heart stuttered when she saw a message from Ilya, time-stamped from a couple of hours ago.
Her stomach tight, she tapped his thread.
Ilya: Found them. Four. Alive. Taking them to the vet. I’ll text with any updates. I'm sorry for being an idiot.
She stared at the message until her vision blurred.
Puppies. Alive.
Four tiny pieces of good news after a stretch that had otherwise felt like blunt-force emotional trauma.
Her thumbs hovered.
She typed: Thank you for telling me. I’m glad.
It was all she could safely give him.
She hit send and let the phone fall into her lap again, breath shuddering out.
A key scraped in the front lock.
“Zo?” Kayla’s voice floated from the entryway around the small corner. “I’m back from the office early! I brought chocolate and my best listening ears; where are you?”
Zoey stared at the baseboard.
Her mouth felt numb.
Kayla appeared a moment later, hair in a messy knot, grocery bag crinkling against her leg.
She took in the scene in one long, silent sweep: Zoey on the floor, knees pulled up; phone limp in her lap; the faint puffiness around her eyes that said she’d been crying for long enough to get a loyalty card.
“Oh, babe,” Kayla said softly.
Then she got down on the floor.
Not a delicate crouch. A full, ungraceful, therapist-in-jeans flop. Right there on the tile, back against the cabinets, shoulder bumping Zoey’s.
“Okay,” she said, rubbing Zoey’s shoulder with a chilly hand. “Is this a get-you-to-bed situation, a chocolate-fueled-vent-then-cry situation, or an I-want-some-outside-advice situation?”
“D,” Zoey croaked. “All of the above.”
“Finally,” Kayla teased gently. “I’ve been waiting for ages.”
She reached between them, plucked the phone from Zoey’s slack fingers, and reached up to set it on the counter above them—just out of reach but still visible.
Then she blindly groped for the grocery bag and dragged it toward them, reaching inside until she found a chocolate bar.
Kayla set it on the floor in front of them like a peace offering.
Zoey stared at it. Her throat worked.
“Okay,” Kayla said quietly. “Lay it on me. What happened?”
“Ilya broke up with me. I might be losing my job. I had to transport a near-dead dog to the vet where I found out she has puppies…who were also possibly near death, if not dead already. But I literally just saw a text from Ilya telling me that he found them and that they’re okay, so I’ve been stressing about that for hours for nothing.
” Zoey sucked in a deep, useless breath that scraped her ribs.
“And Hanna, Jayden’s caseworker, doesn’t think I’m right for him. ”
The words sounded small even to her.
“Ah, Zo.” Kayla’s brown eyes were wide and kind.
Zoey sniffed and squeezed her eyes hard. “He freaked out. After he saw Christian’s hit. I found him after the game and he made it clear that I…”
Her chest tightened, but she needed to get it out.
“He was in one of the back tunnels, half-dressed, looking like someone already died,” Zoey croaked, her voice raw.
“He kept saying Christian was hurt because of him. Because he told him to go in harder on the boards. Mitch had said Christian was playing scared and Ilya basically took that and—” Her hand flapped weakly. “Turned it into a speech for him.”
Kayla hummed, an encouraging sound, not a judgmental one.
“And then Christian gets lit up on that exact play…” Zoey choked.
Kayla nodded, her face serious. “I saw.”
It was a nightmare, and Ilya’s brain just…went straight to, ‘This is my fault. If I cared less about you, if I paid more attention, this wouldn’t have happened.’”
She picked at a crack in the grout.
“He said he thought he could balance everything. Me, the team, being captain, watching Kira, trying to rescue that damn dog. And that last night proved he couldn’t.
That loving me was selfish because it distracted him.
That if he missed something because of me, and it broke someone else, then that was on him. ”
“And you heard…what, exactly?” Kayla asked quietly. “Translate his panic into Zoey-ese for me.”
“That I’m too much,” Zoey whispered. “Too risky. Too…much? I don’t know.
That loving me costs too much. That every man who gets close to me eventually realizes I’m the variable he can’t afford.
” She laughed once, short and jagged. “He said I deserve someone steady,” she muttered.
“Someone who can walk into the life I want without flinching. And then he looked at me and said, ‘I can’t be that guy.’”
Kayla’s fingers tightened briefly on her shoulder. “Did he actually say you were too much?”
“No.” Zoey’s throat burned. “He said he wasn’t enough. Which is maybe worse. Because now I get to feel rejected by his self-loathing too.”
Kayla’s mouth tipped, sympathy edged with wry understanding. “Yeah. That particular combo move is a crowd favorite.”
“And I told him,” Zoey burst out, voice climbing, “that love doesn’t wait for paperwork.
That if he went down like Christian did, it wouldn’t hurt less just because we weren’t official.
That I already chose this, in my head. Chose him.
Chose the risk. And he just…wouldn’t. He kept saying he couldn’t ask me or a kid to sign up for that.
” She swiped at fresh tears, irritated with her own face.
“I know it was him being…terrified. Of failing. Of breaking a family if he ever had one. Mitch kind of weaponized that years ago, apparently, and now it’s like…
Doctrine. But his rejection still felt like a confirmation that I’m unlovable. ”
Kayla let them sit in silence for a few moments before she exhaled slowly. “So, the story his fear is telling him is: if I love them, I’ll ruin them. And your brain translated that into: I am too much for him to love safely.”
Zoey’s shoulders sagged. “Yeah. I guess.”
“And how much evidence do you have that you are objectively ‘too much’?” Kayla asked calmly. “Outside of men in crisis saying defensive, self-loathing things?”
Zoey stared at the baseboard. “I mean, my sample size is…not great.”
“Your sample size is two,” Kayla corrected. “One ex-husband who wanted a support staff instead of a partner, and one hockey captain who thinks love and dereliction of duty are synonyms.”
Zoey huffed, an almost-laugh.
“Okay,” Kayla said. “What else?”
“Nina overheard us,” Zoey said miserably. “Right after he walked away. She basically made it clear that if this looks like it’s affecting him or the room, I become an optics problem they can solve.”
Kayla’s brows climbed. “She actually said that?”
“Not in those words,” Zoey hedged. “But close enough. ‘The woman running our most sensitive outreach work cannot be a locker room instability issue while sleeping with the face of the franchise.’ Or something like that.”
“Ouch.” Kayla winced. “That’s…direct.”