23 #3
Briggs didn’t retreat from the anger in my face. “That doesn’t mean you should forgive it. It means you didn’t imagine the good parts because she failed you tonight.”
“I don’t want the good parts.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to remember her loving me.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that like you fucking understand.”
Briggs looked across the ice. “I understand wanting the memories to die before you do.”
The words settled somewhere I didn’t touch. He offered no explanation, and I didn’t ask because I already knew.
“I can’t go to the cabins.”
“Then don’t.”
“Everybody is supposed to arrive tomorrow.”
“They can go without you.”
“I paid for them.”
“They can still go without you.”
“Charm will come.”
“Probably.”
“She’ll think if she gets close enough, I’ll listen.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
Briggs nodded. “Then you won’t.”
He offered no warning that I might regret it and gave me no speech about closure or hearing her side. Briggs accepted the answer exactly as I gave it.
“She’s going to cry.”
“Probably.”
“She’ll tell me she loves me.”
“She already has.”
“It won’t change anything.”
“No.”
The certainty in his voice allowed me to breathe more deeply than I had all night.
“You believe me?”
Briggs looked at me. “That you’re done?”
“Yeah.”
“I believed you in the group chat.”
“Everyone else thinks I’m angry.”
“You are angry.”
“They think it’ll burn out.”
Briggs studied the blood on my hand. “It will.”
My jaw tightened.
“The anger will,” he clarified. “Your decision doesn’t have to.”
I stared at him.
“You didn’t end it because you stopped loving her. You ended it because loving her stopped being safe.”
The words entered every fractured place inside me. I lowered my head while Briggs sat beside me and allowed the truth to settle.
He didn’t tell me safety could be rebuilt. He offered no timeline for healing and didn’t suggest Charm might become someone different.
Love hadn’t saved my mother. It hadn’t kept my father alive through his overdose. It hadn’t stopped foster parents from deciding I was too angry, too Mexican, too old, too mean, too damaged, or too fucking attractive.
Love had never stopped anybody from hurting me.
Charm taught me how badly it could hurt when I finally believed it might.
“I don’t know who I am without her anymore.”
Briggs slowly turned his stick between his gloves. “You don’t have to know tonight.”
“I knew before.”
“You knew how to survive before.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
The answer came quietly, but my temper was too exhausted to rise again.
Briggs leaned his helmet against the glass beside him. “Surviving is what you do when somebody takes everything and leaves you with a body that keeps breathing anyway. It isn’t the same as having a life.”
“I had a life.”
“You had hockey and the drive of a madman.”
“I had a life before her.”
Briggs didn’t agree, and I hated him for that too.
My phone vibrated from the bench. My entire body reacted before my mind caught up, my head snapping toward the sound and my heart slamming against my ribs as though Charm had somehow found a way around the block.
Briggs noticed but didn’t say anything.
I forced myself to stand and skated toward the gate. My legs ached beneath me, heavy from the hour I had spent trying to outrun something living inside my body.
Three messages from Chris waited on the phone.
Chris: Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Washington confirmed for Saturday.
Chris: Conversations after. Nothing guaranteed. Play first.
The third followed.
Chris: Whatever happened tonight, handle it before you put on skates for conditioning tomorrow. Scouts can smell stupid.
I stared at the messages.
Saturday. Scouts. Washington.
The future I had spent years building remained exactly where I left it that morning. It didn’t care that Charm was gone. The NHL wouldn’t pause while I learned how to live without her.
Briggs stepped through the gate behind me. “Chris?”
I nodded.
“Scouts still coming?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you play?”
I looked toward the empty net. “Hockey existed before her. It’ll exist after.”
Briggs waited. He knew it wasn’t an answer, but he let me have it.
We removed our skates in silence. My hands were scraped, with one knuckle split open despite the gloves. My ribs would bruise where Briggs drove me into the boards, and the left side of his jaw had already started swelling.
Physical damage made sense. It would change color, ache for several days, and disappear.
Everything Charm touched felt permanent.
“You staying at my apartment?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“I didn’t invite you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“The couch sucks.”
“I’ve slept on locker-room floors.”
“Because you’re an animal.”
“That has been established.”
Briggs finished tying his shoes and reached for his bag. I didn’t thank him, and he didn’t expect me to.
We gathered our gear and started through the tunnel, our footsteps echoing against the concrete. Halfway to the exit, I stopped.
Briggs looked back.
“I meant what I said to Cade.”
“I know.”
“I’m done with her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t need you showing up tomorrow with some speech about how she was scared or how six months should count for something.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t need you helping her get to me.”
“I won’t.”
“If she calls you—”
“I won’t tell her anything you don’t want her to know.”
The answer came without hesitation, and my throat tightened.
Briggs shifted the strap of his duffel higher onto his shoulder. “You don’t have to convince me, Ry. Love isn’t a contract requiring you to stay until somebody finishes destroying you.”
I looked away before he could see what the words did to me.
“She was my soul.”
Briggs went completely still.
The confession slipped out so quietly that I almost pretended it hadn’t. “I told her to leave my fucking soul, but she was it.” My hand tightened around the strap of my gear bag. “She was my soul.”
His eyes shone, but his face remained steady for me. “I know, brother.”
The first tear fell before I could turn away.
Briggs didn’t pretend to miss it. He stepped close enough that our shoulders touched and waited.
I leaned into him only slightly. It was the most I could give without collapsing again, and he took the weight as though it were nothing.
We stood inside the empty tunnel with our gear hanging from exhausted bodies. Neither of us offered the lies people used when grief became too uncomfortable.
Briggs didn’t tell me I would find someone else. He didn’t promise time would fix it or tell me Charm and I belonged together.
He stood beside me while I tried to accept that the woman I loved was still alive, less than two hours away, and lost to me because I had no idea how I could ever trust her again.
Then he carried half my gear to the truck because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.