Chapter 3 Liam
LIAM
“Oooff—”
The sound rips out of me, low and awful, as it travels from somewhere rather than my own body.
The first thing I notice is the pain. Bone deep all over.
I feel like I got hit by a truck—a big one.
What the hell happened?
What kind of rough game did we play?
Wait.
Did I play a game last night?
Where the fuck am I?
Why does everything hurt?
I try to open my eyes, but they feel glued shut, dry, swollen, too heavy to lift.
I push harder, manage a slit, then give up. My whole fuckin’ face hurts.
I try to unscramble my brain, to piece together how the hell I ended up here.
It comes back in fragments.
I remember working out with Paul.
I remember a strip club.
A woman danced for me.
I remember going somewhere new, pounding shots, and music, and hitting the dance floor.
I remember deciding to walk back to my car.
Pizza. Water.
Then.
Men with baseball bats.
Oh. That happened.
My chest tightens. I blink hard, but everything’s blurry, edges smearing together like bad watercolor.
I move my hand and feel something tug—a thin, plastic line, running up to a bag hanging above me.
What the hell?
An IV?
I blink again, slower this time, and the sharp pain hits, spreading through my ribs and into my side. My breath catches. There’s something under my nose. I reach up, fingers brushing plastic.
An oxygen cannula.
Every breath feels shallow and foreign. I try to push myself upright, and a bolt of pain rips through my side.
I force my gaze downward.
There’s a drainage tube anchored into my ribs, taped tight.
My chest is a mess of wires and sensors, each one blinking or beeping in time with a machine that’s tracking every damn beat of my heart.
A sharp alarm goes off. I struggle, looking around to see what it is.
The heart monitor, maybe?
A nurse walks in, presses a button, and the noise stops.
“Hello, Mr. Callagan,” she says.
For a second, I forget how to breathe.
There’s something too familiar about her soft, steady voice. It tugs at something I can’t quite reach.
She moves around the room, checking monitors, flicking the bag of fluid hanging from the metal pole.
My vision’s still blurry, like I’m seeing through water, but I catch the shape of her curly dark hair pulled back, shoulders squared, efficient movements that tell me she’s done this a thousand times before.
“Welcome back,” she says quietly. “You’ve had quite a night.”
I blink, trying to focus. “Back from where?” My voice is gravel, words scratching my throat.
“You were brought in with multiple injuries,” she says, scanning the monitor. “A few broken ribs, a fractured nose, and a punctured lung. You’re stable now, but you need to rest.”
She types something into a little rolling computer cart, the soft clack of the keys filling the silence.
“You remember anything?” she asks, her tone professional, but there’s something underneath I can’t name.
I swallow, the motion burning. “Bits and pieces. Just…noise. A parking garage. I think I got jumped.”
“That aligns with the report,” she says, her voice even. “Police might come by to take your statement once you’re more alert.”
Her cart squeaks closer to the bed. “What’s your pain level right now? On the scale one to ten?”
“Uh,” my voice is hoarse. “I, uh...I don’t know. Everything hurts, but it’s not… unbearable. Seven, maybe?”
She nods, jotting it down. “That’s manageable. I’ll see about getting you something to take the edge off.”
Her tone is calm, detached in that trained nurse way, but the longer she stands there, the harder it is to ignore the feeling that I know her.
Not just the voice, but also something about the way she moves, how she hesitates before she speaks, like she’s choosing every word carefully.
I squint, but my eyes won’t cooperate. “Have we met?” I ask, my voice coming out slower than I meant it to.
She freezes, just for a second. Then she smiles, polite but thin. “I take care of a lot of patients, Mr. Callaghan.”
She steps away from the computer and leans over me. My image of her gets a little clearer, but she’s looking at my IV, so I still can’t see her face.
“Can you...look at me?” I ask.
She goes rigid, and my heart hammers inside my chest. The monitors whine, and she sighs, steps away, and turns them off.
Then she turns. Steps closer and holds up two fingers.
I’m not looking at them. I’m looking at eyes the color of a cloudless day.
At the lips, the color of cherry blossoms in bloom. At a face I memorized a long time ago.
“Emma,” I breathe.
The machines whine again.
She rolls her eyes. “Mr. Callaghan, you have to stay calm, or this will keep happening.”
Keep calm.
Keep calm?
Right.
Tell that to my pulse.
Because how the hell am I supposed to stay calm when the woman who ruined me for all others is standing here after six years vanishing without a word?
“Emma,” I say, and it’s a demand this time. “What the hell?”
“Been a long time, Liam,” she says.
As if I don’t know that. As if everything didn’t change when she disappeared.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
Her face crinkles. “I mean, I usually work in the ER, but I switched shifts with a friend so I could make sure you were okay. I’ve been here all night?”
“No,” I say. “In the city. In Chicago.”
“Oh, um, like four or five years?”
The whole time. The entire fucking time. She’s been here the whole time.
“Did you not...did you not know I was here, too?” I ask.
“Why would I know you were here?” she asks. I don’t detect a lie in the question, just general confusion.
“My...I mean, my face and name are on a giant banner outside the hockey arena? It’s, like, two stories tall.”
She huffs a quiet laugh. “I haven’t watched hockey since…”
She trails off, catches herself. Her movements turn brisk as she takes the big plastic tumbler from the bedside table and fills it at the sink. She doesn’t have to finish the sentence. I already know.
She hasn’t watched hockey since she left Minnesota.
Six years ago.
With my heart.
When she sets the tumbler back down, her voice takes on that careful, professional calm nurses use when they don’t want to feel anything.
“Your vitals look good. Your nose was broken, but it’s been reset.
You have two black eyes, which will probably affect your vision for a few days, but that should clear up.
There’s a laceration on your forehead that we stitched up.
The worst of it’s under control. You just need to take it easy for a while—no heroics, no hockey. ”
She fusses with the monitor cords even though they’re fine, pretending to be busy. “You’ll have a few follow-ups, but the doctor will go over all that when he sees you.”
“Emma,” I say, her name heavy in my mouth. It’s crazy how one word can mean so many different things.
This time, it’s a plea.
“We need to talk.”
She glances at her smartwatch, avoiding my eyes. “I’ll come back, Liam. You need rest.” She hesitates just long enough for me to feel it. “And I need to get home. I’m tired.”
And then she’s gone.
Just like that.
I stare at the empty doorway, my mind trying to catch up as the memories flood in.
Emma Reyes and I go way back. Middle school, first. Friends who grew up together, who knew every secret, every stupid inside joke.
Then came her sixteenth birthday.
We went to a movie with a group of friends, as always, but something shifted that night. She just looked different to me, and when I complimented her, she blushed, and one of our friends said, ‘It’s about time. ’
Apparently, she’d harbored a crush, and I was slow to recognize it.
We started dating soon after. Took it slow at first with late-night calls, hand-holding, the kind of easy love you think will last forever.
By senior year, we were inseparable.
We had a plan.
I’d play hockey at the University of Minnesota. She’d go to art school a few miles away. We’d get married after graduation, build a life together. I’d use all four years of eligibility, then go for the draft. Wherever hockey took me, we’d go together.
She’d paint. I’d play. We’d make it work.
That was the plan.
We had everything mapped out.
And then she just… left.
She was supposed to help me move into my dorm.
It was a big deal—my first step out of a house that never felt like home. I was excited to leave, to start fresh, and she was supposed to be part of that new beginning.
I went to pick her up that morning. Her mom answered the door, confused. Said she thought Emma had spent the night with me.
She hadn’t.
I called her cell. Straight to voicemail. Tried again and again—same thing.
Her mom called the police, but they wouldn’t file a missing person’s report until forty-eight hours had passed.
We called her sister, Talia, who was in nursing school in California. She said Emma wasn’t with her, but that she was fine. “Not missing,” she said. “Just… not interested in talking.”
That didn’t make sense. None of it did.
I was eighteen, in love, and sure there had to be some kind of explanation. She couldn’t just vanish.
She wouldn’t.
I kept thinking she’d call, that she’d show up and tell me it was a mistake, that she was sorry.
But she never did.
So I went through the motions. Moved into my dorm. Went to class. Went to practice.
Ate, slept, existed.
But every quiet second was her name echoing in the back of my mind.
After a while, Talia stopped answering my calls. Her parents stopped taking my messages. Eventually, the only thing anyone told me was to ‘move on.’
And I did.
Sort of.
I played two years of college hockey before entering the draft. Got picked up by Chicago.
Tried to build some kind of relationship with my deadbeat father.
Became a professional hockey player.
On paper, I made it.
But the truth?
I haven’t gone a single day in six years without thinking about Emma Reyes.
Not one.
I’ve replayed every memory, every conversation, every choice, trying to figure out what I did to make her leave like that. I’ve analyzed it, overanalyzed it, and dissected it into pieces. Still doesn’t make sense.
All I know is this: when she left, she didn’t just disappear.
She took my heart with her.