24. Maren
MAREN
I noticed it on Sunday.
Not a dramatic change. Nothing I could have pointed to and said there, that’s when it started.
Just the texture of a conversation that had shifted without announcement.
His texts came back a beat slower than usual.
His answers were complete sentences but somehow shorter.
When I asked how the game film session had gone he said fine and didn’t elaborate, which was not how Ryan talked to me.
Ryan told me what he’d seen in the footage, what adjustments he was going to bring to the next skate, which of the younger guys was starting to read the ice the way he needed them to.
Ryan did not say fine and leave it at that. At least not to me.
I told myself he was processing. That was fair.
It had been two days since Griffin had walked out of his apartment, and Ryan was a man who went internal under pressure.
I knew that. I’d watched it happen during the losing streak, watched him pull the weight of it into himself and carry it quietly until he’d worked out what to do.
He needed to solve it before he could put it down.
I called Paige. I should have called her sooner.
Not because I needed advice. I knew what I thought, knew what I needed, had known it since the parking garage. I called because Paige had been my first call after every significant thing that had ever happened to me, and this qualified.
She answered on the second ring. “Hey, girl. How’s it going?”
“Griffin found out.”
Paige paused. “How bad is it?”
“He walked in at Ryan’s place. Me, wearing Ryan’s shirt, and two wine glasses on the counter.”
“Oh.” Another pause. Longer. “Oh, that’s…yeah. Not great. How’s Ryan?”
“Pulling back.” I heard myself say it plainly and was glad it came out that way instead of the version where my voice went uneven. “He’s trying to fix things with Griffin I think—I don’t know. He’s just being different.”
“But you’re in the middle.”
“I’m always in the middle.” I stared at the ceiling. “I knew this was the risk. I went in knowing it.”
“That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No.” I exhaled. “It really doesn’t.”
Paige held it for a moment, and the pause meant she was deciding whether to say what she was thinking. “Do you trust him?”
I sat with the question for a moment, then answered confidently. “Yes.”
“Then let him do whatever he needs to. And I know that’s not the satisfying answer.”
“It’s not.”
“I know. But you’ve been careful with yourself for a long time, Maren. If he’s worth trusting, let him earn it.” Another pause. “And if he doesn’t come through—”
“I know.”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to say you’ll help me move his stuff to the curb.”
“I was going to say I’ll bring wine,” Paige said. “But yes. Also that.”
I laughed despite myself. It helped, the way Paige always helped. Not by fixing anything, just by making it lighter.
“Call me when it’s resolved,” Paige said. “Or if you need to talk. Either way.”
“I will.”
“And Maren.” A beat. “He’s going to come through.”
On Monday he canceled the dinner we’d planned. Rain check, he’d said. Long day. I sent back a thumbs-up and sat with my phone for a while afterward, not quite putting it down.
By Tuesday I had stopped telling myself anything comforting and started paying attention to what was in front of me.
Griffin came in for his follow-up treatment at eight on Wednesday morning.
I heard him before I saw him. The familiar rhythm of his walk, slightly uneven still, the knee pulling at him without him fully acknowledging it.
I was setting up the treatment table when he came through the door.
He saw me and his expression did the thing I recognized from childhood.
That quick recalibration, the half-second of adjusting to a situation being exactly what he’d hoped it wouldn’t be.
He set his bag down and took a seat without meeting my eyes.
I ran through the assessment efficiently, checking the joint, testing the range of motion, making notes. The swelling had come down. The compensating stride was better. He’d done the protocol I’d told him to do. He had listened to me for once, and I was choosing not to say anything about it.
“Good news,” I said. “You can play Thursday.”
He exhaled. “Thank god.”
“With conditions.” I held up a hand. “You come in before the morning skate for twenty minutes of prep work. You ice after every practice and every game. And if it flares during warm-ups, you tell me immediately and we reassess.”
“Okay.”
“Griffin.”
“Okay, Maren. I got it.”
I nodded and moved into treatment, and the silence settled between us.
Pressurized, loaded, the silence of two people with a great deal to say who had agreed, without discussing it, not to say any of it here.
I could feel him composing something, discarding it, thinking about it again. I waited. I was good at waiting.
“Are you… Uh… How is he?” Griffin asked finally, staring at the ceiling.
My hands stilled for half a second. “I’m not having that conversation while you’re my patient.”
“Maren—”
“That’s not a conversation we’re having in here.”
Silence. I kept working.
“Is he okay? We haven’t…spoken much at practice.”
I turned to face him fully. “Do you want me to assign you a different therapist?”
Griffin’s head came up off the table. “What?” He sounded incredulous.
“There are three other qualified people on staff. If you’re uncomfortable with—”
“Are you serious right now?” He was genuinely affronted. The idea clearly landing as absurd. “You’re my sister.”
“I’m your sports medicine director,” I said. “And right now those two things are in direct conflict, so I’m asking.”
He stared at me. “I don’t want a different therapist.”
“Okay.” I got back to work.
“Maren—”
I crossed the room and shut the treatment room door. Closed it with a quiet, deliberate click. Then I turned back to face him again and steadied myself.
“You want to know how Ryan is?” I hissed, nothing soft underneath it. I was seething and Griffin was about to be the target of my ire. “I have no fucking idea. Because we’ve barely talked since you had your temper tantrum on Friday night.”
Griffin opened his mouth.
“I’m not a teenager,” I said. “I’m not a child. And since we’re apparently using childish language—” I held his gaze. “What you said to me. About Josh. In front of Ryan.”
His jaw tightened. He had the grace to look away.
“I’m not doing this here,” I said. “Not in this room, not about Ryan. If you want to know how he is, you should fucking ask him, you asshole. I don’t speak for him and I never have.
” I picked up my notepad, then slammed it back down on my desk, frustrated.
“Right now I have no idea what we even are because the one person who matters most decided he needed space or whatever the hell is going on, and that space apparently includes barely texting me, and I’m—” My voice caught slightly.
I pressed my lips together. “I thought it was more than that. I thought we were more than that. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t even fucking know right now.
But I’m not talking to you about it while I’m at my fucking job.
We’re not all players who can do whatever the fuck we want. I have a job to do too.”
The room was quiet.
Griffin had pushed himself up to sitting. He wasn’t staring at the ceiling anymore. He was looking at me with the goalie’s precision he turned on everything eventually, and whatever he was seeing was making him recalibrate.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. Quiet. Not accusatory. Genuinely asking. “Mare. I thought we were closer than that.”
I let out a short breath. “You don’t tell me about the women you go out with.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” I knew it was different because my brother was a Class-A fuckboy, but I didn’t have the patience for this conversation with him.
“Yeah.” He held my gaze. “Because this clearly isn’t that.”
He was right. My throat tightened and I hated it, the way it always happened at the worst possible moment, when I’d been doing fine and then someone said the true thing and my body betrayed me.
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
Griffin was quiet. Outside the treatment room the facility hummed with its usual morning sounds. Skates on ice, the distant thud of pucks, someone’s music bleeding through the walls. The ordinary world going about its business while we sat in this small room with everything complicated between us.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What I said. About Josh. That was—” He shook his head. “That was me being an asshole because I was hurt. It wasn’t fair.”
I nodded, letting him have the apology without making him work harder for it.
“I needed a few days,” he said. “To cool off. I’m not—I don’t think what he did was unforgivable. I just needed to be pissed about it for a minute without someone asking me to be reasonable.”
“That’s fair.”
“I’m going to talk to him.” Steady. Decided. “This week. I just needed to get there on my own timeline.”
“Okay,” I said. Relief worked its way through me.
Griffin held my gaze for another moment. Then the hard set of his jaw eased into something more like himself. The dry, sidelong expression I’d known since we were kids. “You better not actually assign me a different therapist.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I’m serious. You’re my sister. You’re the director. I’m a first-line goalie who was just cleared to play in a playoff push.” He gestured at himself. “There are perks. The best trainer is one of them.”
I stared at him for a long moment.
“Get back on the table,” I said. “We’re not done.”
I was fighting the smile, and he could see it, and we both knew the worst of it was over.
Ryan texted that afternoon.
Ryan: Can we talk tonight
Maren: Yeah.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Ryan: Please come over whenever you’re ready
I was there at seven and opted not to use my key.