Chapter 14
Declan
The kitchen looks like a war zone, and we haven't even left for the airport yet.
"Beck. Beck. Sit your ass down before you give Biscuit a heart attack."
"I CAN'T SIT DOWN, DECLAN, WE'RE GOING ON THE ROAD! We're on a winning streak and we're going on the road! This is the best day of my entire life and you're acting like we're going to a funeral!"
Biscuit, who's been tracking Beck's frantic laps around the kitchen island like he's watching a tennis match, lets out one sharp, panicked bark and immediately squats on the hardwood.
"Beck!"
"That's not my fault, that's a biological response to excitement—"
"It's piss, Beck. He's pissing on the floor again because you won't stop jumping around like a fucking wind-up toy."
Diego appears from the corridor with a roll of paper towels already pre-torn, a look of supreme, weary patience etched into every line of his face.
"This is the third time this week," he mutters, dropping to one knee to handle the mess. "I should bill the dog separately."
I turn back to my open suitcase on the counter, only for a folded stack of shirts to come sailing across the kitchen and smack me directly in the chest.
"Diego."
"Pack them!" he calls from the floor. "A man can never have enough clothes, Declan!"
"It's a goddamn hockey road trip. Not a military deployment."
"You think they have proper laundry service at these hotels? I have heard horror stories. Pack. The. Shirts."
I shove them in, mostly to make him stop throwing things at me, and zip the bag half-closed before Diego can launch a second wave.
Across the island, Mason's the only person in this entire house behaving like a functioning adult.
He's got a bowl of yogurt and granola in front of him, his duffel already packed and sitting by the door like he did it calmly forty-five minutes ago.
He's casually thumbing away at his phone with this small, soft little smile.
I narrow my eyes at him. "Who the fuck are you texting this early?"
His thumbs freeze and the smile vanishes like that time I caught him with his hand down his pants.
"Zoey," he says, way too fast, sliding the phone face-down on the counter. "Yeah, it's Zoey. We've been texting all morning. You know… about the stuff."
I'm two seconds from calling bullshit when the tablet on the wall chimes, the screen lighting up with an incoming call.
"ZOEY MORRISON calling," the British robot's voice sings. "Swipe to accept."
The three of us stop what we're doing and stare at each other.
Fuck.
The last time her name lit up a screen like that, she told us something that changed all our lives forever. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it for five days.
About Mom. About Zoey.
About the way she fucking cried like I've never seen before, all while trying to make sense of what was going on back home.
My sister. The strongest woman I've ever known, brought to tears by our parents careless actions.
I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
I haven't told Josie. I don't know what to say.
I don't know how to explain why I've been so distant.
Maybe because I don't know how to deal with this shit right now. Because for the first time in my life, I was finally starting to feel happy for myself, and then my asshole father decided to go ahead and fuck it all up again.
I swipe to answer before Beck can dive across the room and beat me to it.
"Hey, Zo."
"Good morning, boys," Zoey says, already grinning, propped up against the counter at Butter Batch Bakery like she hasn't got a single croissant left to sell. "What's going on? You all look like you're being shipped out."
"We were literally just talking about you," I grunt, looking across to Mason.
"Oh?" Zoey arches a brow. "Should I be worried?"
"You mean should I be worried," I say, eyes cutting sideways at him. "Apparently you two have been texting up a storm this morning."
Zoey's face does this strange little scrunch as she looks at her phone like she's checking a thread that doesn't exist.
I glance at Mason. He's gone very still over his yogurt, like he's been caught out.
My eyes narrow right back at him.
"Oh. I see. You weren't texting Zoey."
Mason has the audacity to look offended. "I… I… I was—"
On the tablet, Zoey's still squinting at her own phone.
"I haven't texted any of you since the other day," she says slowly. "Mason, sweetheart, who exactly do you think you've been talking to?"
Mason's face goes white.
"Could've been a mix-up," he mutters.
He closes his eyes like he's praying to a God who clearly stopped taking his calls the second this family was born.
But I let it go. Because we've been through enough this week, and if Mase needs to deal with what's going on in his own way, then I'm not going to stand in his way.
But if he wasn't texting Zoey… who the fuck was he texting? And why is he keeping it a secret?
I lean against the counter, arms crossed, watching my sister's face on the tablet screen. The slightly too-bright smile, the way her eyes keep darting to the corner of her camera like she's checking her own reflection for cracks.
"So," Zoey says, voice pitched determinedly cheerful. "Road trip! Three games. Big stuff."
"BIG STUFF," Beck confirms from the floor, where he's wrestling Biscuit into something resembling stillness. "Zo, I'm gonna be on TV. Real TV. Not just, like, a TikTok where Mason films me doing burpees because our contract says we have to."
"You're already on TV, idiot," I mutter. "We're a professional hockey team."
"Yeah, but THIS is away game TV. Different energy."
Zoey laughs, but it's stretched too tight.
I know that laugh.
I've heard that laugh every single day this week, because I've spent the better part of five days hearing it in my own head, replaying the worst phone call of my goddamn life.
Dad's filing for divorce.
Thirty-one years of marriage, three brothers who built their entire personalities around surviving a household that never quite worked, and one sister who's spent her whole life trying to escape.
Mason looks up from his cereal bowl. "You doing okay, Zo? You look tired."
"I'm fine!" She sings, looking away from the camera. "Just, you know. Bakery stuff. Morgan's school project. The usual chaos."
Liar. I know it. Mason probably knows it. Even Beck, mid-wrestle with seventy pounds of mutt, pauses to look up.
Because none of us have said it since that call.
Not once. Not a single mention in five days.
We've talked about everything except it. The game. The road trip. Biscuit's bathroom habits. Diego's hangover. Hell, we had a damn hockey game to distract ourselves from the doom we've been waiting for our entire life.
We've built an entire week out of avoidance, brick by brick, like if we just don't say the word divorce out loud, it'll stop being true.
But the thing is…
Even though my siblings have finally realized just how bad our parents relationship is… I still know things they don't. Things Zoey is just learning about and can't make any sense with.
These are things I haven't told anyone before, not even Josie, not even after she cried in my arms about her own mother and I sat there with my own secret burning a hole straight through my chest.
Because I know exactly why my father filed.
I know about the yoga instructor Mom mentioned. I know her name's Brianna, and I know he's been sleeping with her since she was twenty years old. I fucking saw a photo on his phone three Christmases ago that I warned Mom about, but she didn't want to hear it.
She never listened. Not once.
I've been carrying this shit since I was twelve, watching Dad from the top of the stairs while he laughed it off and lied through his teeth. The worst part was, Mom just hid from it. Refused to believe it, maybe just to keep the family together.
So I buried it the way I bury everything, and now it's clawing its way back up at the worst possible time.
"Okay, well," Zoey says, clapping her hands together like she's trying to physically push the mood somewhere lighter. "I just wanted to wish you boys luck before you left. Kick some butt. Bring home some Ws."
"WE WILL DESTROY THEM," Beck announces, hauling Biscuit up by the collar. The dog immediately goes limp like he's been shot. "Beck Morrison does not lose on the road. That's a fact, Zoey. Write it down."
"I'll alert the media."
Diego, who's been quietly sipping his smoothie at the end of the counter, like he's waiting to witness the slow demise of our family, finally speaks.
"Alright. Enough! If you three do not get in that car in the next ten minutes," he says, voice flat and deadly calm, "I will personally drag you both to the airport by your very expensive haircuts."
"Diego—"
"Mason. Beck. Declan. Say goodbye to your sister, and move. I have a household to run and I cannot do that with three grown men loitering in my kitchen like a boy band that got dumped by their label."
"Way to gay it up, my man," Beck mutters, grabbing his bag off the floor.
"I have a vision, mijo. You are ruining it."
Mason chuckles, grabs his duffel, and leans toward the tablet. "Love you, Zo. Talk soon."
"Love you too. Bye, Mase."
Beck turns for the door, but then pivots back, suddenly serious in that lightning-fast way Beck does sometimes—on, off, on again, like a switch nobody else can see him flip.
"Hey, Zo. You sure you're—"
"I'm fine, Beck."
"Right. Okay." He hesitates a half-second too long. Then, because deflection is his love language, he grins. "Tell Mom I said hi, if you talk to her."
The second the word leaves his mouth, the air in the kitchen changes.
Zoey's smile flickers, and my heart fucking shatters as Beck races towards the front door.
"I'd better go—" I begin, but Zoey interrupts me.
"Wait! Hang back a sec, Dec," Zoey says, just as I push off the counter to follow them out. "I need to talk to you about something."
I freeze.
Beck, predictably, freezes too. He has one boot already through the door, but his head swivels back like a dog who heard the word "treat."