Page 59 of Your Biggest Downfall (Ravens Hockey #3)

austin

It was four in the morning, and I was completely fucking wasted. The entire bottle of whiskey I’d stashed in the kitchen? Gone. Every last drop.

I was so drunk that when I held out my hands, I swore I had an extra one. Maybe that’s why I lost the game tonight—too many goddamn hands.

“Fuck, I feel good,” I slurred to no one in particular.

I thought about trying to sober up since Nova was coming home soon...

Wait.

I squinted at the clock. Pretty sure it said four a.m. Where the fuck was my wife? She should have been home by now.

“I should call her,” I muttered, realizing that would involve finding my phone.

Where the hell was my?—

I lifted the bottle to my lips, about to finish off the last drop, when the front door slammed open.

Holy shit. I was getting robbed. At four a.m. There was a robber in my house.

My heart pounded. How the fuck was I supposed to protect myself? I glanced around wildly, my eyes landing on the bottle in my hand. Perfect.

With a scream—more like a banshee howl—I hurled the bottle toward the intruder, figuring if I looked crazy enough, they’d back off.

“What the fuck, Austin?” a familiar voice shouted from the doorway.

The lights flicked on, blinding me for a moment as I tried to make sense of what was happening. My head spun, and I blinked, trying to focus.

“Is this a bottle of fucking whiskey?” the voice continued, sharp and accusing.

I squinted, my eyes adjusting to the blurred figure in the doorway.

And then I saw her—Nova. She stood there, a jagged piece of glass clenched tightly in her trembling hand, blood dripping slowly down her arm from where the bottle had shattered.

The label was still visible, mocking me with its familiarity.

Her face was a wreck—streaks of mascara smeared down her cheeks, the remnants of tears that had clearly fallen long and hard. Her eyes were swollen, red, and hollow, as though all the fight had drained from her.

It was the look in her eyes that hit me like a punch to the gut.

She wasn’t just exhausted; she was completely broken.

Her shoulders slumped, her body shaking with barely controlled sobs.

The heartbreak on her face was so raw, so palpable, that it twisted something deep inside me.

Every tear-streaked line of her face told a story of betrayal, of hurt, of a soul too worn down to keep fighting.

The glass in her hand seemed less like a threat and more like the physical manifestation of her shattered heart.

She wasn’t angry—she was devastated. I didn’t know how to fix it.

“Austin,” she said. “What are you doing?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. My throat felt tight, my mind scrambled for something—anything—to say. “I... I can explain,” I stammered, the words tumbling out clumsily. But even as I said them, I knew they were useless.

She let out a bitter laugh, the sound cracking in the air like glass shattering all over again.

“Explain? You’re going to explain this?” Her voice trembled, and she lifted the piece of glass, as if to remind me of the damage already done.

“You didn’t call. And now I’m standing here, bleeding, holding the pieces of whatever the hell this is supposed to be. ”

I took a step toward her, but she flinched, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t,” she said in warning, her voice breaking. “Don’t come closer. I don’t even know who you are right now.”

“Nova, please,” I begged, my hands shaking as I reached out, desperate to bridge the growing chasm between us. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

She shook her head, her lips trembling. “That’s just it, Austin.

You can’t seem to take accountability for your health.

You don’t even know that you’re an addict who is not getting help.

Hell, when was the last time you even went to therapy or called your sponsor?

” She lowered the shard of glass, her eyes searching mine, looking for something—maybe the person I used to be or the person she thought she married.

“I can’t keep picking up the pieces for you. Not anymore.”

Tears spilled from her eyes as she dropped her gaze to the floor, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. And for the first time, I realized how deep her pain really went, how I had broken something inside her that I wasn’t sure I could ever fix.

I staggered forward, my mind hazy and my body unsteady, trying to figure out what the hell was happening. But before I could say anything, she shook her head as tears streamed down her face.

Nova walked over to me, her eyes narrowing with suspicion as she leaned in, sniffing the air around me. The second she caught the scent of alcohol, she recoiled, disgust flashing across her face. She scrunched her nose and stepped back, shaking her head.

“You know what? I cannot fucking do this tonight,” she muttered. She turned away from me and started down the hall toward our bedroom. “This is why you weren’t answering your goddamn phone?” she snapped, her words slicing through the haze of my drunken mind.

My phone. Where the hell was it? I glanced around the room, my head spinning as I searched for it.

Then I spotted it, blinking on the kitchen island, flashing with notifications.

I grabbed it, my fingers fumbling as I swiped it open, and my stomach dropped when I saw the screen filled with missed calls and texts—most of them from Luna.

Luna: Pick up the phone. Nova’s mom is dead.

Luna: Don’t be an asshole. Wake up and answer me. She needs you.

The words blurred before my eyes, but their meaning barreled into me. Nova’s mom was gone. And I’d been sitting here, drowning in whiskey, while she was going through the worst moment of her life. The news sobered me up instantly.

“Nova,” I shouted, panic surging through me as I stumbled down the hallway.

My feet felt like they were encased in cement, my vision blurry, but I had to get to her.

I rounded the corner into the bedroom, and there she was—standing by the bed, an open duffle bag in front of her. Her hands were moving quickly, stuffing clothes into the bag with a sense of urgency that made my chest tighten. She was packing.

I froze, watching her as she grabbed handfuls of clothes and threw them into the bag, her movements frantic and angry, like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

Her shoulders were tense, and her breath came in shallow bursts.

She wasn’t just packing clothes—she was packing herself away from me, away from this disaster I’d become.

I moved toward her, desperate to reach out, but she shook me off with a sharp jerk of her arm. “No,” she shouted, her voice cracking. “No, you don’t get to do this.”

Her words sliced through me, raw and filled with venom.

“My mom fucking died, and what were you doing? Sitting around drinking? You’re a fucking drunk.”

Blood dripped down her hand. “Let me get you a towel,” I muttered, guilt gnawing at me.

She paused, her eyes widening as she noticed the crimson droplets staining her clothes. “You see what you fucking did, Austin?” she snapped, the anger in her voice as sharp as a razor’s edge.

I did this. I hurt her.

“I can’t be with someone so drunk he’s hurting me,” she said, lifting her injured hand as she walked into the adjoining bathroom. She stuck a towel under warm water and dabbed it over the scratches on her arm. “I—I can’t be with someone who would ever think of doing this to me.”

The bleeding stopped, but the marks remained—deep scratches around her tattoos, like someone had clawed at her.

For a moment, she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Then she wiped the hair off her face, took a deep breath, and turned away, walking past me like I didn’t even exist.

“I didn’t mean?—”

“What?” she shouted, throwing more clothes into her duffel. “You didn’t mean to get drunk? Or throw a bottle at me?”

I stood there, speechless.

“Which one?” she yelled, storming toward me, her voice shaking with outrage. “Which fucking one is it?”

She shoved me hard, pushing me back against the wall with more force than I expected. Her face was twisted with rage, her tears magnifying the fury in her eyes.

“You are an addict, Austin, and you need help,” she screamed, her voice echoing through the room, leaving me paralyzed.

I was frozen, my heart beating wildly as her words echoed in my head. “I—I’ll get help for you. I will get better for you. I p-promise,” I stammered, reaching out to her again, but she was already backing away, shaking her head in disbelief.

“No,” she said, her voice quieter but filled with a cold finality. “That’s the problem. Luna warned me. You got help for me, but you need to fix your own problems—for you.”

“It’s always about fucking Luna. She was always going to be first, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, she fucking was,” Nova spat. “Because she would never leave me the night my mom fucking died.”

She kept packing, her movements quick and purposeful, not even sparing me a glance. My heart continued to hammer in my chest while everything came crashing down on me all at once.

“What do you need? Let me help,” I pleaded, my voice frantic. “I’ll come with you.”

She shook her head, slinging the bag over her shoulder, the exhaustion written in every line of her face. “I need you to get the fuck out of my way so I can leave,” she said, her voice emotionless.

I grabbed her wrists, my touch desperate. “Let me help.” My voice was breaking.

She pulled away, pushing past me like I was nothing, like I wasn’t even there.

“Nova, please,” I begged, following her down the hallway. “Let me make this right. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I fucked up. What can I do?”

She turned with a deadpan expression. “You’re panicking about us, about this fucking relationship,” she spat. “But I just told you my mother is dead, and all you care about is fixing us ? You fucking asshole.”

Her words hit their target. My heart sank, an ache spreading through my chest as I realized how badly I’d let her down.

“What can I do to help you?” I asked again. My hands trembled at my sides, and I couldn’t tell if it was because this conversation was sobering me or because I was nervous.

Nova stared at me, her eyes searching mine for a long, agonizing moment. Then, after what felt like an eternity, she swallowed hard and said, “Send me the divorce papers.”

The words hung in the air and my heart shattered into pieces.