Page 47

JACOB

The pill bottle in my hand is light, almost empty, and I hate how badly I want to shake out the last few pills. My fingers twitch like they’ve got a mind of their own, desperate to pop the cap. I don’t need them. It’s just... they help. They take the edge off so I can get through the next practice, the next game, school, whatever life throws at me. But lately, they don’t last as long, and I’m running out faster than before.

I press my thumb to the cap, but before I can twist it open, the door creaks, and on instinct, I shove the bottle under the nearest pillow.

Riley’s standing in the doorway as I force myself to stand and blink rapidly against the brutal wave of pain that blurs the edges of my vision. She stares at me, and I smile, but she doesn’t greet me with happiness like she usually would. Instead, the lines that bracket her mouth deepen.

When she steps into the room, the pounding in my head eases a little. Riley has a way of doing that, making the unbearable bearable. Just the anticipation of her fingers on my scalp, her voice low and calm, like the ocean lapping over a jagged shore, her body a soft place to land. But my anticipation is all wrong. Her eyes narrow, and she reaches over and lifts the pillow before I can stop her. The bottle rolls out, clattering against the bed frame, and her face pales and hardens.

“What are these, Jacob?” She reaches for the bottle, and I grab for it.

“Nothing.” She snatches back her hand, holding the pills out of reach so she can squint at the label.

“This isn’t nothing, Jacob,” she says, her voice rising. “How long have you been taking these?”

“Long enough to know they work.” Anger bubbles up to mask the embarrassment of being caught as weak and dependent.

Not dependent. I’m in control of everything, always.

She stares at me, hurt pinching her soft pretty features. “Why didn’t you tell me or your brothers? Where did you get these from?”

My silence must reveal something because she blanches.

“It’s not a big deal!” The words echo in the room, and when she takes a step back, my chest tightens as guilt mixes with rage.

“It’s a big deal, Jacob. You need to see a doctor not some back street pill pusher.” Her voice is calm and steady, but it carries the eerie stillness of the moments before a storm. The kind of quiet that hums with the weight of everything unspoken, the chaos waiting just beneath the surface. “You can’t just medicate yourself. The number of headaches you’re getting… the severity… isn’t normal. What if it’s something…” She can’t even bring herself to say it.

Something more serious.

Just thinking about the words floods me with panic thick as mud. Footsteps sound on the stairs, and with each thud, panic rises, tightening my throat, strangling my denial, my anger, my desperation.

“What the hell’s going on?” Hayes is here. I didn’t know he was home, so lost in the grip of pain and the question of how to deal with it. Always, how to deal with it.

Riley stares at me with wide, unblinking eyes, willing me to be the one to tell him. The threat rests weightily in her glare. You tell him, or I will.

“It’s nothing,” I say.

Riley hangs her head, and I close my eyes just before she passes the bottle of pills into Hayes’ broad palm. In the silence, he’s doing what Riley did, peering at them, trying to make out the tiny writing on the label, then waiting until he shuffles through what he knows about medication.

“Painkillers?”

“Fuck.” I turn away, unable to face them, and cross the room to the window. The view outside isn’t remarkable, just the usual stretch of buildings and sky, but the air’s cool and clear out there. Out there, I’m free from the weight of expectations and the sting of disappointment pressing down on me, suffocating me. Out there, everything’s a little lighter. A little easier.

“Why, Jay? Why are you taking these? They’re addictive.”

“Just stay out of my fucking business.”

“Did Doc give them to you?”

I brace my shoulders, hands gripping the window ledge for stability. My head screams, and I curse myself for not taking the last two pills in the bottle. What if I can’t get anymore? What if Hayes takes them and I… I stare at my shaking hands like they belong to someone else.

“Jesus,” Hayes mutters as Riley’s footsteps pad closer. She doesn’t touch me, but she’s close enough, and her presence still has the calming effect I’ve grown so dependent on.

“Help me understand why you’d risk your health, your career, hell, your life over this rather than talking to us.”

I laugh bitterly, running a hand through my hair. “You think I have a choice? The whole country is looking at me. Will Jacob Drayton match his father’s records? Is he man enough? Will a Drayton finally lift the Stanley Cup or flunk out like the last one?”

“Oh, Jacob…”

“Don’t,” I say through gritted teeth. “Don’t use that fucking tone. I can’t take it.” I grip my skull between my hands and squeeze, but it does nothing.

Nothing works.

Not anymore.

I can’t breathe.

Riley sees what I am. She knows my weakness. She knows. My heart is thunder, the pound of horses’ hooves, and my mind swims.

I clutch my throat with one shaking hand. “You don’t know what it’s like,” I say, my voice cracking beneath my palm. “Living in his shadow, carrying his fucking name, hearing his criticism over and over, knowing that I was responsible for ending his career, his chance, his life . You don’t know what it’s like to try to live up to all that, to prove that you’re not the worthless shit he always told you that you were… to push through pain so bad that it makes you want to fall to your fucking knees and weep.”

“Jacob—”

“You think I can just talk about it, and everything will be fine?” I laugh bitterly, not even sounding like myself anymore.

When I turn to Riley, my panic is a vibration as visceral as a jackhammer on concrete, but she just nods. “I’m here, Jacob. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are your brothers. You don’t have to manage this alone. We’re here to help you with this.. with everything.”

“I don’t need your pity, Riley. And I sure as hell don’t need you to hold me up.”

“Jacob.” Hayes’ voice sounds strangled, broken. “You didn’t end his career or his life. I think he had post-concussion syndrome. I read his journal. He couldn’t play anymore. He shouldn’t have been driving. He’s suffered with headaches and fits, and he didn’t tell anyone. That must have been what happened.”

Post-concussion syndrome. Carl Drayton? Bought to his knees, to his death by a bad hit? Career stolen. Life stolen. My eyes sting as tears rip at my throat, leaving bitterness in their wake, before my mind rebels. That isn’t what happened. It can’t be. I’ve been telling myself something else for so many years. “You shouldn’t have read his private journal,” I snap, hearing myself and how stupid I sound but unable to stop. I’ve been barreling down the same road for years, and nothing can stop me.

“Listen to Hayes,” Riley says. “Your dad was gripped by headaches. It’s why he dropped out. He was too embarrassed to admit it… and he didn’t get treatment for his symptoms, Jacob. He was too proud and look what happened to him.”

Her voice cracks, and her eyes well, becoming glossy and filled with pain I can’t bear to look at. “I’m not going to let you do the same thing. Do you understand me? You have to see the doctor, and you have to tell Coach. It’s not safe for you to play until you do. Look what happened when you took that punch to the head. It made everything worse.”

I grit my teeth together so hard they creak. “You want to take away my career… everything I’ve worked for?”

She gasps like I hit her. “Of course not.”

“Jay. Stop talking crazy.” Hayes is still holding the pills, holding my sanity hostage, and my hands curl to fists at the sight of him, so cool and calm and in control. How can he be like that when every day, every waking minute, monsters bay at my door?

“I don’t have anything else, don’t you understand?” I’m quiet now in the face of a reality so different from what I comprehended, from the spill of realization, I’m too broken to comprehend.

I fold at the waist, gripping the ledge because it’s the only thing keeping me standing.

“It doesn’t have to come to that,” Hayes says. “You don’t know what the doctor will say.”

“If I have to take a break, if the press finds out, I’m finished. No team is going to take me if I could get taken out with one bad hit.”

“We can all get taken out that way, Jay.”

Why is he not getting this? Saliva builds in my mouth, and I swallow it down, but it doesn’t help. Turning quickly, I grab the trashcan and vomit, collapsing to my knees as the pain swallows me whole.

Everything is falling apart, and I don’t have the strength to hold on anymore, not to the ragged edges of myself, not to the game that’s devoured me until there’s nothing left, not to my brothers, who’ll leave me behind when they go pro, and not to Riley, who’ll never want to be with a man weak enough to fall before her like a stack of cards toppled by the wind.

“Just get out,” I hiss as fresh nausea surges through me. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

They don’t leave immediately, lurking in the doorway, their silent communication like a charge in the air, but I can only grit my teeth and wait. When they eventually leave, the silence that follows is heavier than any hit I’ve ever taken.

***

The next day at practice, my head is still pounding. With no pills, the pain in my head is so severe it makes me sweat, and the edges of my vision blur. With every drill, it grows worse. With every sharp turn, every slapshot, I’m closer to crumbling. By the time we scrimmage, I’m hanging on by a thread. And then Hayes checks me, hard, but clean, and my vision contracts to a pinprick, distorting what’s in front of me, clouding my perception and my reactions.

I shove him hard enough to send him stumbling.

“The fuck.” He regains his balance, narrowing his eyes.

I step closer, shoving him again.

“It was a legal hit.”

“Cut it out, Jacob.” Shawn steps between us, but I can’t. I can’t. I fucking can’t.

I shove him again, snapping, “Stay out of this.”

Shawn tries to grab my gloved wrists and hold them tight, but the rage inside me, the frustration, the fear, the desperation is like a wave, cresting high, totally out of control.

I rail against him, and before I know it, I’m throwing punches, and Shawn is using his arms to protect his head while Hayes tries to restrain me. The rest of the team circles us, shouting, but I barely hear them. All I can hear is my dad’s voice in my head, yelling at me to be tougher, to hit harder, to be better.

“Enough!” Coach Thornton’s voice cuts through the chaos like a gunshot. He pulls us apart, glaring. “You three—off the ice. NOW.”

I’m breathing hard, and my hands go automatically to my head, but with my helmet in the way, there’s no relief. I fall to my knees, taking Coach by surprise. I can’t get up. I have nothing left. Pain scores through my brain like a serrated knife. I twist to stare up at Hayes and his face blurs and spins as the edges of my vision contract.

“He needs help,” Hayes says softly, and it takes Buttons, Collins, and Edwards to lift me back up and help me off the ice.

“What the fuck is going on?” Coach yells as he trails us.

“He needs a doctor,” Hayes grits out.

“What for?”

“His head,” Hayes says, and as soon as the words leave his lips, the world closes in around me.