33. April 4, Monday
Chapter thirty-three
Zoey
Victor’s Diner looked exactly the same as it had the night everything had started with Ilya.
Same angry man yelling from the kitchen.
Same laminated menus with corners peeling like they’d survived several minor wars.
Same smell of coffee, bacon grease, and syrup soaked into the bones of the place.
Even so, Zoey had never felt more different.
The woman who sat here with him weeks ago had been a mess in cute boots, spiraling about her worth and her divorce, convinced the mature, reasonable next step was to outsource healing to a stranger with a decent jawline.
That stupid plan worked. In the least direct way possible.
She found a man, all right. Just not one who’d been new to her. Not one she could tuck safely into the “meaningless rebound” drawer and close without consequence.
Ilya had been threaded through the entirety of her adult life. Long before locked offices and stolen coffee runs. Long before one reckless night in a hotel room had rearranged her internal furniture so thoroughly she still occasionally walked into emotional walls.
And now he was…not in her life.
Not the way he had been.
Not the way she wanted.
The ache of that still lived under her ribs, dull and stubborn, but it no longer felt like it was the only thing holding her upright.
The bell over Victor’s door jingled as she pushed it open.
Conversation hummed. A teenager in a faded Cyclones jersey shoved another kid in a booth, laughing.
An older couple shared a newspaper at the counter, coffee cups resting heavy in arthritic hands.
An exhausted nurse in scrubs scrolled her phone between bites of what might have been a very late breakfast or a very early dinner.
And in the nearby corner booth, hunched over a mug like he was auditioning for Quasimodo, sat Mitch.
Of course.
Because the universe had decided subtlety was for cowards.
He looked up at the noise.
The old reflex flickered first—camera-ready grin, a flash of charm, a muscle-memory attempt to make whatever awkward thing was happening feel easier because he wanted it to be easier.
Then his expression faltered.
Last night came back over his face. The emergency vet. His raised voice. My wife. The whole waiting room staring while he and Ilya bled old history all over the linoleum.
His mouth flattened. His shoulders went tense.
“Zoey,” he said.
Not warm. Not cold. Wary.
She could have pretended not to see him. The diner wasn’t packed, but it was busy enough. She could have taken a counter stool, ordered to go, stared at the chrome until her meal and coffee came, and left.
Her feet, apparently, had other ideas.
She walked over, each step feeling weirdly separate from her body. Her heart didn’t speed up. That was new. It just thudded, dull and steady.
“Hey,” she said, stopping at the edge of the booth. “Didn’t know you were a Victor’s guy now.”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “Apparently I’m branching out into diners where people who hate me might show up.”
“I don’t hate you.”
His eyes flicked up.
She meant it.
That seemed to make him more uncomfortable, not less.
He gestured at the empty seat across from him. “You want to sit? Or are we pretending we don’t know each other in public now?”
The edge in his voice was deserved. Some of it, anyway.
Once, she would have sat because refusing felt rude. Once, she would have twisted herself into whatever shape made the moment smoother for him.
Now, she considered the offer calmly.
She wanted coffee.
She also wanted a chance to get some shit off her chest.
“Okay,” she said, and slid into the booth.
He blinked, like he hadn’t expected her to agree.
The waitress appeared with a pad in hand, looking between them with the dead-eyed competence of a woman who’d seen every kind of breakup over hash browns.
“What can I get you, hon?”
“Large coffee,” Zoey said. “Cream, no sugar. And…” She scanned the specials board. Everything looked like her arteries would hate her. “Short stack. Please.”
The waitress nodded and looked to Mitch.
He lifted his mug. “Refill, please.”
When she left, silence settled between them.
Not comfortable. But not lethal.
“So,” Mitch said eventually, fingers tracing the rim of his mug. “Last night was a disaster.”
“That’s one word.”
“I shouldn’t have lost it in public,” he said.
“No,” Zoey agreed. “You should not have.”
His mouth tightened. “I was blindsided.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” The hurt came through then, rough and sharp under the defensiveness. “Because from where I was standing, it looked like everyone else had time to get used to it but me.”
Zoey sat back.
There it was.
“Ilya and I should have told you sooner. That part is true.”
His jaw flexed, like he hadn’t expected her to give him even that much.
“But,” she continued, “that doesn’t mean you were entitled to explode at me in an emergency vet clinic like I was some errant child.”
He looked away. “I know,” he muttered. “I know. The second I said, ‘my wife,’ I heard it.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.” His gaze snapped back, annoyed and ashamed at the same time. “Jesus, Zoey. I’m not proud of it.”
Good. That was something.
The waitress returned with coffee. Zoey wrapped both hands around the mug and let the heat anchor her.
Mitch took a long drink of his refill, then set it down too hard. Coffee sloshed against the rim. “I feel like an idiot. I feel like I’ve been standing in a room full of people who knew the joke before I did. Like I was the joke.”
“You weren’t the joke.”
“No?” His laugh came out brittle. “My best friend and my ex-wife were sneaking around behind my back. I was talking to him about you. Asking if you were seeing someone. Wondering out loud if I’d blown up my life. And the whole time…”
“The whole time he was miserable,” Zoey cut in, sharper than she intended.
Mitch stopped.
The look he gave her was confused. Almost wounded. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not saying we handled it well,” Zoey said, voice tight. “I’m just saying you weren’t the only person bleeding in that situation.”
His mouth tightened. “Right. Sorry. Poor Serge.”
The sarcasm hit wrong.
Something hot and protective flared through her chest.
And there it was…the thing she actually wanted to ask him since last night.
Not about their marriage.
Not about who owed whom an apology for feelings that had lived in dark corners too long.
This.
“What did you say to him?” she asked.
Mitch’s expression shuttered. “What?”
“You heard me.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Last night?”
“Last night. Ten years ago. Every time he scared you by not being the steady one.” She leaned forward, voice quiet enough that the booths around them couldn’t hear. “Because you know exactly where to aim with him.”
Mitch went still.
A beat passed.
Then another.
“I was hurt,” he said, voice small and defensive. He winced as soon as it left his mouth, like he heard how thin it sounded. “He lied to me.”
“I know,” Zoey agreed. “He did. So did I. Be mad about that.”
“I am.”
“Good. Be mad. You’re allowed. But last night wasn’t just anger that he lied.” Her fingers tightened around her mug. “It was you weaponizing everything you know he hates about himself.”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“You knew exactly where to aim,” she went on, calm and relentless. “Kids. Family. His fear that he’ll leave wreckage behind. His fear that he can’t stay. You didn’t stumble into that. You chose it.”
A muscle jumped in Mitch’s cheek.
For a second, she thought he might snap back.
Instead, he sagged against the vinyl, the fight draining out of him in one long breath.
“I wanted him to hurt,” he admitted.
The rawness of it silenced her.
His eyes stayed on the table. “I saw you two, and I felt stupid. Betrayed. Like I’d been walking around with my heart hanging out and everyone was too polite to tell me the guy holding the knife was my best friend.”
Zoey winced.
“I know you’re not my wife anymore,” he said, beating her to it. “I know. But knowing something and feeling it are apparently not the same thing, which is deeply inconvenient.”
Despite everything, a sad little laugh almost escaped her.
Almost.
Mitch rubbed a hand over his mouth. “And yeah. I know Serge. I know where to hit because I’ve seen him fall apart before.”
Zoey stilled.
His gaze dropped. “After you and I left for Chicago…after the wedding. He got…bad.”
Her throat tightened despite herself.
“Smoking. Drinking too much. Missing workouts. Not missing practice, exactly, because Serge wouldn’t do that, but he was there and not there.
Coaches were pissed. His agent was calling me.
Kira was calling me, pretending she wasn’t scared.
” Mitch swallowed hard. “Apparently he looked like his old man.”
Zoey’s anger stumbled.
“I flew back between games,” Mitch said. “I thought I’d talk to him. Drag him out. Yell at him. I don’t know. Do something.”
“And did you?”
His mouth twisted. “I yelled.”
The admission came out flat. Ugly in its own way.
“I told him he was wasting everything. Spitting on every chance he’d been given. That Kira needed him. That the team needed him. That he was acting like the exact thing he spent his whole life trying not to become.”
Zoey’s stomach turned. “Mitch.”
“I know.” His voice roughened. “I know. I was twenty-two, full of myself, and scared out of my mind. Serge was always the one who held the line. Always. If he was breaking, then what the hell did the rest of us have?”
Zoey sat very still.
“He wouldn’t listen,” Mitch went on. “Or maybe he couldn’t. I was talking at him like if I found the right cruel thing, he’d snap back. So, I did what every coach, every guy in my life, every asshole who ever called it tough love would’ve done.”
Nausea crawled up her throat.
“And did it work?” she asked.
He laughed without humor. “He stopped. Smoking. Drinking. He got his shit together. So yeah. For a long time, I told myself it did.”
“And now?”
Mitch stared at his coffee.
“Now I think maybe I taught him something I didn’t mean to.”
Zoey’s heart squeezed hard enough to hurt.