Chapter 20 #2
"Oh my God," I whisper.
"HR IS GOING TO HAVE A FIELD DAY," Sawyer bellows, delighted.
"I am basically HR," I call back, and the room roars.
But when I look up to see his smile, Declan isn't laughing.
"Dec? Are you—"
I follow his eyes, and across the room, Beck sits alone in his stall. He's still half in his gear, arms crossed, watching the celebration like it's happening on the other side of glass.
He got the assist on the winning goal. He got the win.
And he looks like a man who got neither.
I watch Declan tense up, and the room feels it too.
The celebration unravels in stages. The chanting stumbles first, then the laughter. The bass still thumps from the speaker, but the boys go quiet anyway. Like even in the middle of all this sticky, sweaty, glorious chaos, they know their captain has spotted one of his own bleeding.
Declan releases a heavy sigh and closes his eyes for a moment. And then, instead of crossing to Beck like I expect him to, he reaches into his stall and pulls out his phone.
"Yo, turn the music down," Mason says quietly.
The room goes still as Declan puts the phone on the bench and we all stand listening to the dial tone on speaker. It rings twice, and then a voice fills the locker room—warm, smooth, slick.
It's the voice of a man who's been rehearsing for this moment his entire life.
"Declan! Son! Listen, I've been trying to reach you boys all week, there's been a lot of… a lot of noise. A lot of things being said, and I just want to make sure we're all on the same page before your mother—"
"Stop."
The whole room holds its breath, eyes looking anywhere but at Declan.
In the corner, Beck's head comes up.
"I'm not calling to get on your page, Dad. I'm calling to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago. So here's the deal. You're gonna listen, you're not going to interrupt me, and then… I'm done. We clear?"
The phone sits silent, before, "Y-yeah. I guess so."
Across the room, Mason crosses to stand beside Beck, slowly pressing a clean towel against the cut on his brother's eyebrow.
Beck's eyes stay locked on Declan's phone.
"I've carried this shit for seventeen years, Dad.
I've known since I was twelve, and I saw you with another woman.
" Declan leans forward, elbows on his knees as he stares down at the floor, speaking to his father, but opening his deepest, darkest wound to the entire locker room.
"I told Mom, and she didn't want to believe me.
But she knew. She always knew." He shakes his head as I fight back a tear.
"I spent years carrying it, and you know why, Dad? "
"Declan, son—"
"I carried it because I thought if I held it tight enough, if I held it together long enough to get my brothers out of that house… it couldn't hurt them anymore."
"Declan—son, that's not—there's context—"
"I told you to listen." He doesn't raise his voice.
He doesn't need to. "And there is no context.
You want to know what it cost? Zoey raised your kids while you were 'working late.
' She was a teenager making school lunches, not friends.
Mason learned to cook because someone had to feed us, and now he's spent his whole life making sure everybody else was okay because nobody ever checked if he was. And Beck—"
Declan's eyes lift to find his little brother across the room. Mason pats Beck on the back and nods solemnly.
"Beck believed in us. In the family. In you."
Beck swallows hard, like he's swallowing glass. Mason's face shatters, and across the room, Sawyer Stone dips his chin like he's witnessing something sacred. The only sound in the room is the shaky exhale of a man finally putting down twenty years of stolen childhood.
"That's what breaks my heart, Dad. Beck was the only one of us who still thought it was real, and it was the best goddamn thing about him. But you know what? I lied to him every single day to protect it. That's on me. I own that." His voice roughens. "But you built the lie, Dad. I just carried it."
Declan draws a long breath and leans back against his stall. He closes his eyes and takes a second to process, slowly exhaling through pursed lips.
He looks across to me, and I give a small, gentle bow of my head.
"Tonight, Dad… I don't want an apology, I don't want a relationship, I don't want anything from you anymore. This is me telling you I'm out."
The voice on the line comes back smaller, already spinning with desperation. "You don't mean that. You're emotional, it was a big game—"
"And one more thing." Declan looks straight at Beck now, and he says the next part to him, through the phone.
"That's my choice. And mine alone. If Mason wants to talk to you, or Zoey, or Beck…
that's their choice to make. Not yours. Not mine.
I'm not deciding things for them anymore.
I'm not managing anybody. They're not projects.
" He finally smiles at his brothers. "They're my family. "
He hangs up.
The phone sits on the bench. Years of hurt, ended in ninety seconds.
Declan exhales, and I swear I watch the weight leave him. His whole frame drops half an inch, like someone finally took the bags off his shoulders.
I move over and my hand slides over his back. He's shaking.
And Beck.