Page 49

JACOB

I wake in a silent room, warm and pain-free, wearing only boxers and anchored to the bed by an unknown weight around my chest. I glance down, finding Riley’s arm draped around my middle, her hand pressed over my heart.

“Jacob.” Her voice is raspy, and she snuggles closer behind me, holding me tightly against her body.

She knows . She must. Hayes and Shawn wouldn’t have kept what happened at training from her, and icy dread slides through me before I can think clearly. If she’s here, embracing me, watching over me, she can’t be mad or disappointed.

I stare at nothing, words lodged in my throat like broken glass. I’ve fought off players twice my size, taken body checks that rattled my teeth, and punches to the face without flinching, but this? Admitting what’s in my head? It terrifies me.

“Talk to me,” she whispers. “I’m here.” Her fingers trace slow, soothing circles onto my chest. Not for the first time, I realize how undeserving I am of her kindness.

I shake my head, my jaw locked so tight it hurts. “You don’t want to hear it.”

“Yes, I do.” She shifts closer, her voice steady but gentle. “Tell me how you’re feeling. You don’t have to deal with this alone.”

The weight I carry presses into my shoulders, my ribs, my heart. Hockey, the team, my brothers, my dad—I’m losing myself, one piece at a time, beneath the weight of it. I’ve built high walls over the years against even my brothers, who are my flesh and blood. I’ve sheltered like a coward inside those walls because facing the truth would force me to look in the mirror, and I couldn’t stand to see the truth of my reflection. Scared. Weak. Ready to give up. Exactly what my dad told me I was.

But I can’t do it anymore, and Riley is my safe place; the cool fingers on my fevered brow, the soft voice in the night reminding me it’s all just a bad dream.

I exhale, long and shuddering, fighting against my instinct to keep the truth folded neatly inside me. “I can’t do it anymore, Riles.” My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.

“Can’t do what, sweetie?” Her lips touch the bones at the top of my spine, sending warmth skittering down my back.

“Hockey,” I choke out. The word tastes like a failure, bitter and sharp. “I can’t keep doing it… I don’t want to.”

The silence that follows is deafening. I stare down at my hands, my knuckles bruised from the last game, my fingers twitching like they don’t know how to be still.

“Okay,” she says, breaking the quiet.

I blink and twist to look at her, half-expecting her to recoil or to try to talk me out of it. Y ou can’t give up, I imagine her saying. You’re so close to going pro. You just have to keep your head down and keep going. But that isn’t what she said. “Okay?”

“Yes.” Her voice is gentle but firm. “If you can’t do it anymore, then don’t. You stop. You just stop.”

The simplicity of her words knocks the wind out of me. Stop? Just stop? It’s not that simple.

“I don’t know who I am without it,” I admit, my voice raw. “I’ve spent my whole life on the ice because my dad wanted me to. It was the only way we could get him to notice us, and then it was about proving him wrong. And now…” I trail off, swallowing hard. “Now I don’t even know why I’m doing it. I hate it, Riley. Every practice, every game… it’s like I’m chained to it, like I’m not a person anymore, just an extension of a puck and a stick, a cog in a wheel, my dad’s fucking ghost made real… and I can’t keep spinning, Riley. It’s too much. I can’t do it anymore.”

Her eyes shine with quiet understanding as she shifts to face me fully. “Jacob, look at me.”

I do, reluctantly, and her gaze hits me straight in the chest. She’s so beautiful. So open, sweet, and lovely. So strong and supportive, yet kind and accepting. She’s everything I never even had the chance to believe could be mine.

“You don’t owe hockey anything,” she says firmly. “You don’t owe your dad anything, your brothers, the team, your coach, or me. None of us. You’ve been carrying all this pressure like you’re going to let everyone down, but you don’t need to live your life for anyone else. Especially with a concussion.” She smooths her hand over my forehead, over my temple, and behind my ear, and I shiver, blinking like I’m suddenly faced with the sun from behind a storm cloud.

I shake my head, my throat tight. “But I’ll disappoint everyone. The team, the coaches—they’re counting on me.”

Riley shakes her head. “And what about you?”

My throat cracks, shame forcing me to look away. “You deserve someone who’s going somewhere, Riles. If I quit now, I’m not going pro. I’m not going to win the Cup. I’m… nothing.”

Her face softens, and she strokes my cheek, forcing me to look at her. “You’re everything to me, Jacob. You. Not the player. Not the athlete. Just you.”

Her words are a cool balm, but I’m so raw they barely sink in. “Letting it go…” I trail off, the weight of the thought pressing down on me. How do I explain that giving up on everything my dad said I’d never achieve feels like letting him win? Like proving him right. If I stop, I’ll be a quitter. I’ll be too mentally weak to be a winner. I’ll be—

“Letting it go isn’t the end,” Riley says. “Your life is for you to shape, Jay. It’s the only way to find peace in your heart.” She presses her palm flush with my chest, directly over my heart, that’s being torn to shreds.

“Letting go is weak,” I say. “Strong people don’t give up. They keep going—”

“Until they die, Jacob? Is that what you think your dad was? Strong? For keeping life-threatening medical issues to himself, risking his own life and the lives of others, and driving when he knew he was at risk of having fits? Quitting hockey and lying to everyone so he didn’t have to admit his weakness? I’m sorry, but your dad was a coward. He couldn’t face his fallibility, and he left you boys to shoulder the responsibility for the end of his career, his unhappiness, his death. Your dad had his reasons for behaving that way, and maybe we should feel sorry for him, but it’s just crazy to keep trying to prove something to a dead man, Jacob. He was a great hockey player, but he sucked at being a father.”

I close my eyes, and she continues to stroke my hair, back and forth, until my pulse lowers, and my body relaxes into hers. “I don’t know who I am without it.” It’s the thing that’s the hardest to admit because getting swallowed whole by a sport, digested until you don’t know up from down, is as weak as giving it up.

“Then you’re about to have so much fun finding out.”

I open my eyes, looking into the beautiful, calm brown eyes of a girl who emerged from my past as a woman with more wisdom than me and my brothers put together. I cup her rounded cheek in my rough palm and brush my lips over hers in a kiss that’s like a whisper of love passing between us.

A promise too.

To see each other. Really see each other for all the days, good and bad, easy and challenging to come.

“Jacob,” she whispers, drawing me into a fierce embrace. “I’ve been so worried.”

“The doc gave me some new meds,” I admit hoarsely. “They’re helping. And he’s sending me for tests.”

“That’s good,” she says, squeezing her arms tighter around me. “That’s really good, Jacob.”

I rest in her embrace, my body sagging with relief I didn’t know I was ready to accept. For the first time in months, the pain isn’t gnawing at me, or the panic.

And for a brief moment, the weight on my chest eases.

For the first time, I let someone else carry it. Riley holds me like she can glue my broken pieces back together, and I don’t fight it. I let her warmth sink in as my exhaustion subsides.

And for now, it’s enough.