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T he holiday break went by in the blink of an eye. It was crazy how fast time went when you were having fun, and Max had been having fun. He and Remi ate terrible food and made love as much as his body would allow him—twice in his closet—just because they could, for nostalgic purposes. She showed him old bands that he wished he had known about when they were still together. They laid in bed— his bed—and ordered random things off Pottery Barn for his house: decorative pillows, a gigantic painting of the ocean for above his couch, picture frames for pictures he hadn’t taken yet, and different jewel tone glass cups, because Remi said they would be aesthetically pleasing to drink fancy drinks from in the fall.

The fun helped.

It pushed away the reality of what he was up against.

The NHL Network had replayed his mishap on the ice several times over the holiday break while giving little insight into “What was really going on with Max Miller?” He hadn’t watched it, he couldn’t. The sight of him stumbling around on his skates, his helmet being frantically ripped from his head in panic—it was too much to watch happen over and over again when it already lived rent-free in his head.

Max made his way down the cool, long corridor that led to the Condors locker room, where he would find his team getting ready for practice.

This was it.

This was the moment he had been dreading.

His heart hammered in his chest and the words he had to say out loud played over and over in his head. Words he knew well by now. Words he thought he wouldn’t have to speak for years and years to come.

But that didn’t hold true for him anymore.

And now, his exit music would play.

When he entered the locker room, the sound of his team’s chatter went instantly silent, and he looked down at his feet, avoiding their gaze. When he finally found the courage to look up, he found comfort in the gentle smile of his fellow goalie, Brown. He gave Max an encouraging nod, and the simple, silent gesture set the wheels in motion for what came next.

Max made his way to his locker and took a seat. He could feel the pause of motion throughout the locker room in anticipation. The familiarity of this moment was stolen from him by his lack of equipment present, he didn’t have a bag to hang, or pads to put on, not even a protein shake that would carry him through the practice. The blades of his skates were haunting, still dull from his last game, his last skate, his final start. His practice jersey was nowhere to be found, and it was so solidifying, how real this had all become.

The foreshadowing was an awful reminder of why he showed up today.

The team watched on in anticipation as he sat there, his head hung low, his silence a deafening scream.

Brown made his way across the locker room to Max and the team made room for him, like the parting of the Red Sea. Out of respect for Max’s old superstitions, Brown took the seat to the left of him, because the right was off-limits. Even if Max didn’t believe in superstitions anymore, even if he didn’t need them, he was grateful for this simple nod to his legacy.

Brown placed a sure hand on Max’s shoulder, and that simple act of kindness poured an overwhelming amount of comfort and reassurance into Max.

“You got this,” Brown said.

Max looked up; all the boys were looking at him. Waiting. Watching.

He had left them in the dark long enough.

Max stood, running anxious hands through his thick red hair, the words sitting on the tip of his tongue.

Brown patted his back, and repeated his words, “You got this.”

Max looked around, these men, these teammates, these Condors—they were his family, his constant, his home . He somehow hadn’t realized it until it was too late, and for that, he would never take them or this opportunity to have known them, sharing this locker room and this arena with them, and the wins and the losses with them, for granted ever again.

He loved hockey.

He loved this team.

He… would be okay.

“So, as you all know, I’m not a man of many words,” he started, happy a few of the smart-asses on the team made jokes of agreement at his statement—it was a much-needed ice breaker. “But sometimes all we have left to give is our words. I guess that’s what I’m here to do, I’m here to tell you the truth. A secret I have selfishly kept from you, hell, a secret I tried to keep from myself. Denial is an ugly thing, but oblivion was where I chose to hide for the majority of this season. Over the past few years, I have noticed small signs that my vision was not as strong as it had been in the past. These were things I think many people face in their lifetime, things that can be fixed with glasses or a procedure.” He paused, and Brown gave his back another reassuring pat.

“But as time went on, I started to notice my performance struggle on the ice because of my vision, which led to severe anxiety. I started to notice that this was something more. It was more than struggling to see at night, or floaters when the lighting suddenly changed.” Max took a deep breath, steadied his voice, and went on. “I went to see an eye doctor under the radar, and he saw something in my eyes. Something bad. He told me I needed to see a specialist, which instantly freaked me the fuck out. But what scared me more was the look on his face. I knew from his look that whatever he saw wasn’t good. I knew at that moment that this wasn’t going to end well for me. Before I left his office, he told me to try and contact my biological father, and that he might have answers for me.”

Several men in the room gasped, they knew his story, they knew enough about his past to know that Max had never met his real father.

“I tracked him down and the doctor’s suspicions were confirmed—my father is legally blind.”

The whole room grew eerily quiet, their breaths held, even their hearts seemed to pause beating to allow Max to go on.

“My father has a condition called retinitis pigmentosa, and along with his red hair, he passed this on to me as well. I will go blind. This outcome is unchangeable, unfathomable, and heartbreaking. I will spend the rest of the season on injured reserve, and I think we all know, without me having to say it, what comes after that.”

The team’s captain, Patrick Carter, made his way to Max, bringing him in for an embrace. Brown stood next, and hugged Max as well. Slowly, one by one, his team packed in around Max until the ever-growing hug he was at the center of was completed, every player in the room wrapping their arms around the next in solidarity for Max. The locker room remained silent, and Max knew this was their way of saying goodbye, in true Max fashion, with words being too hard to speak.

Because words were hard when you were losing a game, but words were impossible when you were losing a teammate.

Coach was the last to join the hug. Max looked up from the sea of heads lowered around him in the embrace and found his coach looking back, a single tear running down his cheek accompanied by the proud smile of a father.