Chapter 32 #2
Beau doesn’t rush to fill the space I leave hanging.
He just exhales softly, a breath that sounds like understanding rather than pity.
It makes something in my chest pull tight, because this is my big brother.
The one who notices the things I don’t say, the one who can read the tension in my shoulders like it’s printed text.
“You thought if you stayed in motion, the ache wouldn’t catch up to you.”
I look down at my hands, still shaking faintly from the hours I spent trying to outrun myself on the ice. “Yeah.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Ky.”
“I’m starting to figure that out.”
He steps closer, not enough to crowd me, but enough that I can feel the gravity of him. “You’ve been carrying this alone for months, haven’t you? Too proud to say anything and too scared to sit still long enough to feel it.”
“It’s not pride,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I just… didn’t want to make it someone else’s problem.”
Beau takes that in without rushing to answer, the way only he does.
It's like he knows the edges of this aren’t sharp because of anger, but because of everything I’ve been trying to carry alone.
He shifts just slightly, enough to make me look at him, and when I meet his eyes, there’s no judgment waiting for me there, only understanding earned from his own battles.
“You’re not a problem,” he says, the words landing with a calm that feels like it’s settling into places inside me I haven’t touched in days. “You’re a man who fell for someone who doesn’t know what to do with something real.”
I swallow hard, the truth of that scraping against the hollow ache in my chest.
“I’m not guessing, Kyle.” Beau holds my gaze, and there’s a softness there that wasn’t always part of who he was.
“I’ve loved someone who thought backing away was the only safe move she had.
Someone who believed she had to give every bit of herself to everyone.
Someone who pulled back from good things because all she ever learned was that good things disappear. ”
He doesn’t say Alise’s name because he doesn’t have to.
I’ve known for as long as I can remember that he was in love with her.
It wasn’t something he talked about, but you could see it in the way he watched her when he thought no one noticed.
I wasn’t there when it all cracked open between them, but I know enough to understand the shape of what he went through.
And I can see it now, the quiet recognition of someone who knows exactly what it costs to love a woman who doesn’t trust the good things in front of her.
Beau isn’t speaking in hypotheticals, but about an ache you don’t forget, even after it finally becomes something beautiful.
“I know what it looks like when someone wants something so much it terrifies them. And I know what it feels like to be the one left standing there, wondering what you did wrong, when the truth is… you did nothing wrong at all. You just felt something too deep, for someone who’s still learning how to trust anything that isn’t theirs to control. ”
Something shifts painfully in my chest like a bruise being pressed just hard enough to remind me it’s still there. I drag in a breath that doesn’t make it all the way to the bottom of my lungs, and for the first time tonight, I don’t hide the shake in it.
“I keep replaying the look on her face when she said it and pulled away from me,” I say quietly, letting the words loosen the knot behind my ribs. “The way she looked at me today, like I was someone she had to guard herself from.”
Beau’s jaw tightens, a subtle shift that says he’s holding back the instinct to defend whatever fragile middle ground exists between the two of us. “That’s not what she was doing.”
“How do you know?” My voice cracks, pulled thin in the places I’ve been trying to keep sealed.
“Because I’ve seen that look before.” He glances at the ice, at the empty lines carved by my skates. “Alise used to get it when she wanted something so badly she didn’t trust herself to want it. When she needed space to breathe, even though the last thing she wanted was distance.”
I close my eyes long enough to let the truth hit without the world watching me take the blow.
“She’s scared, Kyle. And fear makes people do things that look like rejection, even when they’re holding on with everything they have left.”
The irony of that settles thick and bitter at the back of my throat. I know what it feels like to be scared, to be left standing in the wreckage of something that mattered. And I know exactly how much of me she still has, even when she pretended she didn’t.
“I thought I could handle it, could give her space, be patient, keep the peace, whatever she needed, because it was her.” My hand curls into a fist, knuckles going tight. “But watching her smile like nothing happened… hearing her laugh like the last few weeks meant nothing—”
My voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, a sound I wasn’t expecting.
“I didn’t think it would hit me like this,” I admit, finally letting the truth surface. “I thought if I kept moving, kept skating, kept pretending—”
“That it wouldn’t hurt,” Beau finishes for me, not as a question, but as an answer you only offer when you’ve lived it yourself. “And it does because it’s real.”
The words land with a weight that sinks straight through me, settling somewhere beneath my sternum, where everything else tonight has already come apart.
I want to pretend that this ache is temporary, just another bruise that’ll fade if I work hard enough.
But Beau said it like a fact, not a theory.
Hearing him say it out loud breaks open something I’ve been gripping too tightly to even recognize.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I admit, the confession scraping up from the deepest, unspoken corner of my chest. “Wanting her. Losing her. Still wanting her, even knowing she doesn’t think she can choose me. It feels…”
Beau doesn’t rush to fill the silence. He lets it press in until the truth in it has nowhere left to hide.
Finally, he drops his gaze to the ice. “When Alise pushed me away, I kept telling myself I’d wait as long as it took to convince her it wasn’t a phase or that I’d suddenly forget about my feelings for her.
I wasn’t trying to be noble or patient. I just knew she was worth the ache. ”
He looks up at me, and it’s unnerving. Like he sees straight through the walls I thought I still had left.
“You love her, and you’re terrified she won’t let you.”
My breath stutters, sharp at the edges, as if he said something too impossible to swallow.
“You’re scared she’ll pick safety over you, because that’s what people do when the world has hurt them enough times.”
“What if she does?” I stare at the ice, watching the thin lines my blades cut into the surface.
“Then you let her,” Beau says. “And you still show up. Not to convince or chase her, just to be the person that doesn’t disappear.”
His words hit something raw I didn’t realize had been waiting to be acknowledged. I drag a hand over my jaw, the motion grounding and useless all at once. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”
“You are. You’ve always been the one who leads with your heart first, even when you’re scared. That’s not a weakness, Kyle. That’s why she fell for you in the first place.”
A breath shudders out of me, shaky and uncontained. “Doesn’t feel like she did.”
“She did,” he says without hesitation. “You just scared her. And she scared herself.”
For a moment, the realities we’ve been wrestling with fall into a quiet between us. Beau shifts his stick against the ice. “You don’t have to fix any of this right this second. You just have to let yourself feel it.”
I shake my head once, weakly. “Feeling it is the worst part.”
“I know.” He steps closer, the gesture careful, brotherly, understanding in a way that cuts through me. “But it’s also the first honest thing you’ve let yourself do since the terrible interview today.”
“I don’t know where to put it.” I swallow hard, the motion tight, uneven.
“Stop trying to. For once, just let it hurt.” Beau gives my shoulder one steady, anchoring squeeze. “I’ll leave the lights on for you.”
He pushes off the blue line and skates toward the exit tunnel, and with every second that passes, the rink grows quieter.
I watch his shadow stretch and fade as he disappears into the dark.
The door closes behind him with a muted thud that reverberates through the hollow space of the rink and me.
Then there’s nothing but silence that leaves me nowhere to hide.
I stand there long after he’s gone, my breath dragging unevenly through my chest like it’s fighting its way out.
The emptiness around me presses close, filling the places I’ve tried so desperately to outrun.
I can feel the weight of every unsaid thing, every quiet truth I’ve shoved so far down I thought I’d buried it.
But here, in the stillness Beau left behind, there’s no distance between me and the ache I’ve been refusing to touch.
My breath shudders out of me, uneven and ragged.
There’s no audience here. No brothers. No teammates.
No cameras waiting to twist the narrative into something palatable.
There’s only the truth, rising from somewhere deep inside me like a tide pulled by something bigger than every excuse and lie I tried to use to keep myself safe.
“I love you.”
The words crack in the air the moment they leave my mouth, as raw and exposed as the part of me I’ve been holding shut with both hands.
“I love you,” I say again, barely more than a breath. “God, Alycia… I love you.”
The confession pulls something I’ve been strangling for days, maybe longer.
My throat tightens with it, an uncontainable pressure that climbs until a sound slips from me.
Then I’m not holding myself up so much as leaning into the net, letting the cold threads dig into my palms while everything I’ve tried to hold in slips free.
The tears come quietly, but with just enough force to undo me and let the truth breathe. When the trembling in my chest eases just enough to let air in again, I lift my head and drag my sleeve across my cheeks. The rink is still empty, wide and quiet, like it’s listening.
“Alycia,” I whisper, her name catching on the remnants of a sob. “I’ll wait. As long as it takes for you to believe me… I’ll wait.”
It doesn’t feel like a declaration or some polished vow meant for someone else’s consumption.
It feels like the completely unhidden truth holding me the way nothing else tonight has been able to.
I glide back from the crease, the ache in my chest settling into something fragile but steady.
A love that hurts, heals, and refuses to die, even when everything else around it feels like it already has.
And somewhere in that dark, silent expanse of empty stands, something takes root. It might break me or save me.
I’m not sure which.
But for the first time in days… I don’t run from the possibility.