Chapter 17
seventeen
Luke
Eli's text hit the group chat at seven that morning.
Today's the day. Lock in. Leave nothing out there. Let's go get this.
I read it twice, lying in my bedroom with the curtains still pulled, feeling the specific hollow ache of a heart that hadn't quite landed anywhere solid in two days.
Dani's last text sat above Eli's in my thread, sent close to ten.
Not tonight. It's late and I have an early shift. We can talk when there's actually time to talk.
There was nothing warm underneath it that I could find, no matter how many times I read it over.
I understood, in a distant way, why. I'd gone quiet on her, buried under Coach and Bryan and my agent, and one apology text sent late didn't automatically erase two days of silence.
But something in the flatness of her reply had lodged itself under my ribs anyway, and I couldn't quite shake it loose.
My phone buzzed again a minute later. Not Dani.
Mom.
I almost let it go to voicemail. Then I thought about what Coach had said, days ago now, about carrying myself through all this, and I picked up instead.
"Hey, Mom."
"There's my boy." Her voice came through warm and a little too loud, the way it always did when she was excited and trying not to show it too much. "I watched every second of your latest game. I nearly threw the remote through the television when you made that save in the third."
"I'm glad you didn't. Those things are expensive."
"Worth every dollar for that." She laughed, and something in the sound of it settled me, even three states away. "I'm so proud of you, Luke. I don't know if I say that enough."
"You say it plenty."
"Not enough." A pause, softer now. "I've been thinking about that a lot lately. How I let so much go unsaid after your father passed. I got so wrapped up in just getting through the days that I forgot to actually say things to you. I regret that."
I sat up against the headboard, phone pressed to my ear, the room quiet except for her voice and the distant hum of the air system.
"You did the best you could," I said. "I never doubted that you loved us."
"I know. But loving someone and telling them clearly aren't the same thing.
" She exhaled, the sound crackling slightly through the line.
"I watched you find every excuse to be the loudest guy in the room after he died.
The flips, the jokes, all of it. I never said anything because some part of me understood it.
I was doing my own version of the same thing, just quieter.
Burying myself in work instead of grief. "
"I never blamed you for that."
"I know you didn't. But I think you learned it from me anyway. That if you get loud enough, busy enough, nobody has to see what's actually underneath."
I closed my eyes. She'd never put it that plainly before, not in twenty-three years of careful half-conversations around the edges of what happened to us.
"I've been figuring some of that out myself," I admitted. "Lately. Not doing a great job of it, honestly."
"Is this about a girl?" No hesitation in the question, like she'd been waiting for the right opening.
"Something like that. Her name's Dani." I hesitated. "I think I might be losing her, Mom. Or already lost her a little, this week. I don't fully know."
"Tell me."
So I did. I told her about the party, the fall, the concussion I'd tried to hide because I was terrified of losing my one shot.
I told her about the fever, the honesty that came out of me sideways when my guard was too weak to stop it.
I told her about the pool, the dinner Monday night where I'd told Dani things I'd never said to anyone, not even to her.
And then I told her about the last three days—the silence, the flat replies, the sense that something had quietly closed between us and I didn't fully understand why.
Surprised by my own confessions, even I didn't understand why I was opening up to my mom.
"She has a daughter," I said. "Lily. Five years old.
Her father was a basketball player, and he left before Lily was even one.
Promised everything, disappeared before she hit her first birthday.
I think every time I go quiet, even for a good reason, it just proves something she already believed about guys like me. "
"Oh, Luke."
"I don't know how to fix something I don't fully understand the shape of."
My mother was quiet for a moment, and I could picture her exactly, sitting in the recliner by the window, the one that faced the street where Dad used to pull the truck in every evening.
"You know," she said finally, "my world turned completely upside down the day I met your father.
I was twenty-two, working the counter at a hardware store, and this man walked in asking about paint chips he clearly didn't need.
I knew inside of ten minutes that my whole life had just changed shape.
" A small laugh. "It's terrifying, feeling that kind of pull toward someone. It doesn't come with a manual."
"How did you know it wasn't just a feeling? That it was real?"
"You don't, not at first. You just decide to trust it enough to find out.
" Her voice steadied, sure now. "But Luke, listen to me.
A woman who's been hurt like that doesn't need grand gestures right now.
She needs consistency. Small, boring, unglamorous consistency, over and over, until her body believes what her heart wants to.
Words matter, but only if they show up the same way twice in a row. "
"What if she's already decided I'm not going to?"
"Then you keep showing up anyway, and you let the decision be hers to change, not yours to argue her out of." A pause. "I trust that you'll know what to do. You've never once been careless with someone's heart, no matter how loud you've been about everything else. That's not who you are."
I sat with that for a while, throat tight.
"Thanks, Mom."
"Go win your game. Then go fix whatever's broken with that girl, slowly, the right way. Life's too short to let both things wait, but some things can't be rushed either. You'll know the difference."
We said our goodbyes, and I set the phone down on the bed, feeling steadier than I had in days, even if nothing was actually resolved yet. Clearer, at least. Like something that had been tangled in my chest for weeks had finally worked itself into a shape I could hold onto.
I wasn't going to let Dani go without a fight. But I understood now, in a way I hadn't fully understood Monday night, that the fight wasn't going to be won with one text or one gesture. It was going to take longer than that. Longer than I probably wanted it to.
The arena that night was a different animal entirely.
New York had pulled out every stop for Game Six.
Banners hanging from every level, chants already building before warm-ups even started, the kind of electricity that made the hair on your arms stand up just walking through the tunnel.
This was our building. Our chance to finish it here, at home, in front of everyone who'd watched us claw back from down two games to none.
I was halfway through lacing my skates when Eli and Wyatt appeared at the end of the row, both of them wearing the same expression—purposeful, a little grim.
"Come with us a second," Eli said. "Need to talk to you."
We turned the corner into the equipment hallway, and Bryan was already there, arms crossed, jaw set like he expected a fight.
Eli didn't waste time.
"We know what you did," he said, looking straight at Bryan. "Going to Coach about the concussion. Making it look like Luke hid something dangerous from the team."
Bryan's face went tight. "I had an obligation?—"
"You had an agenda," Wyatt cut in, voice level but hard underneath. "And you nearly cost this team its goaltending depth in the middle of a Cup run to satisfy it."
"There was never any actual risk," Eli said.
"You want to know why? Because Dani—Maya's sister, part of this family—is an ER nurse.
She was monitoring Luke around the clock from the night it happened.
Running her own protocols. Tracking symptoms daily.
There was never a single moment Luke was on that ice without someone qualified making sure he was safe. "
Bryan's expression shifted, the certainty draining out of it fast.
"You didn't know that," Wyatt said. "Because you weren't trying to find out the truth. You were trying to get your job back."
The silence stretched for a long time. Bryan looked at the floor, then back up, something different in his face now.
"I didn't know that," he said quietly. "About the monitoring."
"No," Eli said. "You didn't ask. You just went straight to Coach."
Bryan exhaled, some of the fight going out of him all at once. "I'm sorry. That was—that wasn't right, what I did. I let this get personal in a way it shouldn't have."
"We're all in this together," Wyatt said, softer now. "No one gets anywhere alone. We need each other more tonight than any other night this season. If we're rowing in different directions, it doesn't matter how good any one of us is."
I looked at Bryan, and something in me that had been braced for a fight all week finally let go.
"I've got a lot of respect for you," I said. "For all three of you, honestly. You've taught me more about what it takes to be part of a team than I knew going in. I didn't want this to turn into what it turned into."
Bryan nodded, slow. "Neither did I. Not really." He straightened, something resolved settling into his shoulders. "I'm going to talk to Coach before warm-ups. Tell him I'm behind whatever decision he makes tonight. If that's you in net, I'll support it. Full stop."
"Thank you," I said, and meant it.
We shook hands—actual hands, not the perfunctory kind—and Bryan headed off down the hallway toward Coach's office, shoulders squared like a man walking toward something he needed to finish.
Eli clapped me on the shoulder. "You good?"
"Getting there."
"Then let's go win a Cup."
I sat down at my stall a few minutes later, the noise of the locker room a low roar around me, guys taping sticks and pulling on gear with the particular focus that only came before the biggest games of a life.
I pulled out my phone one more time before I had to put it away for good, my mother's voice still in my head. Consistency. Small, boring, unglamorous consistency, over and over.
I typed slower this time. Not a grand declaration. Just true.
I know things have felt off the last few days, and I know that's on me for going quiet when I shouldn't have. I'm not going to stop showing up, even if it takes a while for that to mean anything. I want you in my life, Dani. However long it takes to earn that back.
I read it back once, didn't second-guess it, and hit send.
Then I set the phone in my bag, zipped it shut, and reached for my mask.
Time to take care of business. Time to be the best dragon guard I could be.