Ryan
My mother is arguing with a nurse about green Jell-O when I decide she is going to live.
“It tastes like cough syrup,” Susan says.
“Mrs. McAllister, it is what we have.”
“Then what you have is a problem.”
The nurse looks at me for help.
I, wisely, study the monitor.
Dad walks in with coffee and takes in the untouched Jell-O, Susan’s expression, and the nurse’s defeated professionalism.
“Green,” he says.
“Green,” Susan confirms.
“I’ll find red.”
The nurse leaves looking grateful for farm husbands with survival instincts.
Susan’s echo looks good. The cardiologist says valve function, monitoring, Austin transfer, rehab schedule.
I ask every question I did not ask last time.
Medication. Warning signs. Activity. Follow-up.
I write answers in my phone while my mother watches me with a softness that makes me want to climb out of my skin.
“You can breathe, sweetheart,” she says when the cardiologist leaves.
“I am breathing.”
“No, you’re organizing.”
Dad coughs into his coffee.
I ignore both of them.
In the hall, Dad shuts the door halfway and stands beside me.
“You don’t have to explain leaving the game,” Dad says.
I look down the corridor. Peyton is at the far end with the twins, buying them something from a vending machine and apparently negotiating hostage terms over Skittles.
“I know.”
“I was scared when you signed your first contract,” Dad says.
That pulls my attention back.
My father keeps his eyes on the tile. “Not of the hockey.” He stops. Starts again. “You were always good at putting things in a box and carrying them quiet. Then you went and got paid for it.”
I keep still.
He doesn’t have the rest of the sentence, or he won’t reach for it. He just stands there with his hands in his pockets like a man who said more than he meant to.
“Last night you left a game for your mother,” he says finally. “First time in a long while I didn’t worry about you.”
The hallway goes blurry at the edges.
Dad squeezes my shoulder once. He doesn’t say anything about the girl down the hall. He doesn’t have to.
Then he goes back into Susan’s room before I can be forced to answer.
My phone has been buzzing since dawn.
Coach Sully first.
“How’s your mom?”
“Stable. Arguing about Jell-O.”
“Good woman.”
“League?”
Sully exhales. “The fine is confirmed. Leaving mid-period in a Round One game. They had to make noise.”
“I expected it.”
“Do you want the club to fight it?”
I think of the helicopter. The offer. The clean, efficient answer that would have kept the cameras happy.
“No.”
“Game Six is tomorrow. Roman has the room if you need time.”
The old answer climbs up automatically.
I’ll be there. I am fine. Team first.
I look down the corridor again.
Peyton is crouched in front of Lily, tying a shoelace while Emma talks at her with both hands. Peyton nods like the story matters.
Maybe the new answer gets to be honest.
“I need the transfer settled first,” I say. “Then I’ll decide.”
Sully is quiet for a beat. “Good. That’s the right answer.”
After the call, I text the group thread.
Mom’s stable. Transfer to Austin likely. Be ready for Game Six. Roman has the room until I’m back.
Responses come fast.
Zach: We got you.
Finn: I will be mature and terrifying.
Colt: Absolutely not in that order.
Kowalski: Family first.
Evan: I accept temporary emotional authority.
Roman: Nobody gave you that.
Evan: The room voted privately.
Zach: We did not.
I laugh under my breath, and the sound surprises me.
Then Silas calls.
I let it ring twice before answering.
“How is she?” Silas asks.
“Stable.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
I believe that too. The world is apparently full of inconvenient truths today.
“We need to discuss the optics before Game Six,” Silas says.
“No,” I say.
Silas pauses. “No?”
“My mother is in cardiac recovery. I left a game. The league fined me. The team won. Those are the facts. I am not dressing them up.”
“Ryan, nobody is asking you to—”
“You are.”
I look through the glass at Peyton with the twins. Lily is showing her something on a phone. Emma has one hand tucked through Peyton’s arm like that is where it belongs.
“I’m done making family emergencies useful,” I say.
Silas’s voice cools. “That sounds like Peyton’s language.”
“No. It sounds like mine when I stop letting other people borrow it.”
Another silence. Longer.
“Game Six,” Silas says finally.
“I’ll update Sully.”
“Ownership will expect you back.”
“Ownership can expect whatever it wants.”
I end the call before Silas can turn it into a negotiation.
My hand shakes once afterward.
I hate that less than I expected.
I find Peyton near the cafeteria, coffee in one hand, her phone in the other.
“Media has it,” she says before I ask. “The fine. You leaving. Half sympathetic, half asking if a captain should walk.”
“Let them.”
She studies me. “That easy?”
“No.”
That earns me a tired smile.
“Progress,” she says.
“Do not sound too proud of yourself.”
“Impossible. I am insufferable when proven right.”
“I noticed.”
Her smile widens by one dangerous degree.
God, I want her.
Not softly. Not in some future-tense version where my mother is fully recovered and the series is over and there are clean sheets, a locked door, and no one down the hall asking whether Jell-O counts as food.
I want her now, in a hospital corridor, with my mother recovering twenty yards away and my phone full of headlines.
I want her because she got me here.
Because she stayed.
Because she keeps looking at the worst parts of me and not mistaking them for the whole thing.
The force of it makes the world narrow.
She sees it.
Of course she sees it.
Peyton’s expression changes, the tiredness dropping away for one unguarded second, and there it is between us again. The thing we keep trying to make wait its turn.
Her gaze drops to my mouth.
Mine drops to hers.
For one stupid, impossible second, the air forgets where we are.
Then Lily shouts from the vending machine, “Peyton, Emma says peanut M&M’s are healthier because peanuts are protein.”
Peyton closes her eyes. “I am needed elsewhere.”
“For nutrition law.”
“A sacred field.”
She starts to pass me.
I catch her hand.
Just her fingers. Quick. Hidden by the angle of my body.
Her breath catches.
The sound is small.
It goes through me anyway.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Stop thanking me.”
“No.”
She looks down at our hands, then back at me. Her face is composed. Her pulse is not. I can feel it in the thin, reckless place where our fingers touch.
“Stubborn,” she says.
“You like it.”
“I tolerate it under medical duress.”
I let go before I do something stupid.
She walks away, but not before I see the heat in her face.
For the first time since the corridor outside the tunnel, I feel something besides fear.