Chapter Text
Episode 7 - The Faceoff Reimagined
Garrett
The hallway behind the rink smells like stale popcorn and Zamboni exhaust, and I'm pretty sure I'm leaving a sweat trail on the carpet as I shoulder my way past a maintenance guy who has the good sense to step aside. My skates are still on, blade guards slapping against the concrete with every stride, and somewhere behind me I can hear Coach barking at someone, probably Tuck, probably me, probably everyone, but I don't stop. I can't. If I stop, I'm going to put my fist through drywall, and I'd really prefer to make it through the second period without an assault charge.
I shove open the first door I see, some dinky little dressing room left over from when the arena doubled as a theater venue, judging by the rack of dusty costumes shoved against the back wall, and let it slam shut behind me.
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
Why does everything have to go to shit all at once tonight? St. As is ripping us a new one out there. Coach has that vein in his forehead, the one that only shows up when he's about to bench somebody, and I think that somebody might be me. My best friend – hell, I don't even know if I can still call him that after the shitshow that went down in the locker room – won't look me in the eye. And Wellsy.
Jesus, Wellsy.
I'm trying so hard to get my head in the game, but I can't shake this feeling that something's wrong. She hasn't answered any of my calls. Not one. Three voicemails, six texts, and crickets. And look, I'd cut my own balls off before I became some clingy helicopter boyfriend who needs a status update every fifteen minutes, but this? Complete radio silence on a night she promised she'd be in the stands? That isn't her.
My chest tightens at the thought of her, at everything that's waiting for me on the other side of this door, and I start to pace. Three steps one way, three steps back. Mirrors against almost every wall, which is a special kind of hell when you're already pissed at yourself, Garrett Graham in surround sound, sweat-soaked and wild-eyed, jersey twisted, hair stuck to his forehead, looking exactly like the kind of guy who's about to lose a hockey game and a girlfriend in the same night.
I close my eyes. I run a hand down my face, hard, scraping salt and sweat off my skin, trying to give my limbs a task, because if I don't, I'm pretty sure they're going to find one. Probably involving that mirror. Or that questionable-looking lamp. Or my own goddamn head.
Where are you, Wellsy?
If I could just hear her voice for a second. One second. Hell, I'd settle for the sound of her breathing on the other end of the line, that little sigh she does when she's trying not to laugh at me. Just something to hold onto. Something to make the noise in my head stop for one breath.
And then, like some kind of cosmic joke, or maybe a prayer I didn't realize I was saying, I hear her.
My legs stop dead. I turn around so fast I almost trip on my own skates, and there she is, standing in the doorway in her coat and that scarf I bought her in November, cheeks pink from the cold, and I swear to God my entire body exhales at once.
Oh thank fuck.
She's here. She's okay.
"Hey…" She gives me a half-smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, and I'm already crossing the room before she's done getting the word out. "Need a pep talk?"
She's trying for light. I can hear her aiming for it. But her voice lands somewhere short, quiet, weary, small in a way that hits me like a body check from behind.
It takes me back, against my will, to the morning she stood across from me in my bedroom and told me, with that same brittle steadiness, what Aaron Delaney did to her.
Every defense I own slams up at once. My eyes are already cataloguing her – face, hands, posture, the way she has her hands clasped a little too tight. Did someone say something to her? Did someone do something? Because if they did, I will burn this entire campus to the ground and call it a Tuesday.
"What's going on? Are you okay? Where were you?" The words trip over each other on the way out.
"I'm fine." Soft. Reassuring. Not convincing.
"I called, but you didn't– "
"No, I know. I'm–" Her face flickers, panic surfacing for half a second before she stuffs it back down. "I'm sorry. I should have texted. I w–" She stops. Takes a breath. I can see the gears turning behind her eyes, that little crease between her brows she gets when she's working through something she doesn't want to say out loud. "I was dealing with something that kind of took over for a minute there, um, but I'm– I'm here now."
"You're dealing with what?" My breath catches. Her hands are doing that thing, fingers playing with her rings, knuckles a little too white. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Okay?"
And then her hands are on me, and the question dies in my throat. She reaches up and pushes the damp curls off my forehead, gentle, careful, the way she touches me when she thinks I need it more than I'm letting on. Her palms slide down and settle against my chest, and my jersey rucks up around her fingers, and I feel myself lean into her before I've decided to.
"Just, you know, it didn't matter as much as being here for you."
Something in my ribcage twists. Because that's a Wellsy answer if I've ever heard one, and I should call her on it. I know I should. But she's looking up at me with that face, and the clock is ticking, and Coach is going to come looking for me any second.
"Please just text me next time. I was worried about you."
"I know. I know." Too fast. Way too fast.
Before the silence can do its work, she plants a smile on her face, wide, bright, a little forced around the edges, and grips my shoulder like she's about to send me out onto the ice herself.
"Okay, focus up. Graham, what's going on out there?"
Something is off. I know it the way I know the sound of my own skates on fresh ice. But she's giving me an out, and I'm not strong enough right now to refuse it, so I take it. I'll come back to this. After the game. After I've stopped playing like a guy who learned hockey yesterday. I'll come back to it.
"Everything." The word comes out on a frustrated huff. "I'm playing like shit. Getting pressured like crazy. Making stupid mistakes. Everybody's counting on me to be in control, but I just got in a stupid fight with Logan, because…"
I can't say it. I can't make my mouth form the syllables for the man sitting in section 112 with a glass of red wine and a woman who isn't my mother. I can't give him that real estate. Not tonight.
Hannah catches it. She always catches it.
"Your dad's here."
"With Cindy." The name tastes like battery acid.
"We can't let him win." Her voice steadies, the way it does when she's switching into the version of herself that pulls me back from the ledge. "It gives him power. This is how we win. We just– We show up, and we live our lives. Okay? We can do that. Right?"
"Yeah." It comes out rougher than I mean it to.
"And as for everything else, we can just start with the small stuff and work your way up."
I blink down at her. "Small stuff?"
"Yeah, whatever that means for hockey. I guess the small stuff could be stop playing like shit."
A laugh punches out of me before I can stop it, short, startled, real. My girlfriend, ladies and gentlemen. The most inspirational pep talk in collegiate sports.
"Okay, yeah. I can do that." It's a promise, and I mean it. Then, because the venting has nowhere else to go: "Delaney's kicking my ass though. Guy's a fucking monster."
I expect her to roll her eyes. Tell me to suck it up. Make some crack about my ego.
Instead, something moves behind her eyes, fast, almost too fast to catch, and her jaw goes tight at the corner. Just for a second. Just long enough.
My blood drops about ten degrees.
"Wellsy." I work to keep my voice soft. To bury the spike of fear underneath it. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Her hands find mine. Squeeze. "I'm… I'm good." She looks me dead in the eye, and her voice doesn't waver. "I promise."
But her hands are cold.
And Hannah Wells doesn't get cold.
Hannah
I know Garrett can tell something's wrong. He always knows when something's wrong. And I don't know what to say to him as I stand in front of his expectant stare.
His hands are still wrapped around mine, and he hasn't blinked in what feels like a full minute. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, or maybe it's his, I can't tell anymore where I end and he begins when he looks at me like this. Like I'm the only person in the building. Like nothing on the other side of that door, not the score, not the crowd, not his father in the stands, matters more than the answer I'm about to give him.
Which is exactly the problem.
Because the answer is going to gut him.
I rehearsed this in the car. I rehearsed it walking through the parking lot, my breath fogging in front of me, the cold biting through my coat. I rehearsed it in the tunnel when a security guard pointed me toward the dressing room, and I rehearsed it again standing outside the door, listening to him pace on the other side of it. I had words. I had a plan. I was going to wait until after the game. After the postgame. Maybe even until tomorrow morning, when he'd slept and showered and his blood wasn't still humming from a period of hockey.
But then I walked in and he looked at me like I'd just pulled him out of a burning building, and every rehearsed sentence I had walked right out of my head.
Just say it, Hannah.
I think about lying. God, I really do. I think about it for a long, ugly second, about smiling wider, about telling him it was a paper deadline or a fight with my mom or anything, anything other than the truth. He'd believe me. He'd want to believe me. He'd let me kiss him on the cheek and send him back out onto the ice and we could deal with the rest of it later, in the dark, in his bed, where I don't have to look at his face when I say it.
But then he'd skate out there, and he'd take a hit from number 29, and he wouldn't know.
He wouldn't know.
And that, more than anything else, is what I can't live with.
"Garrett." My voice comes out steadier than I expect. That helps. "I need to tell you something. And I need you to let me get through it before you say anything. Okay?"
The change in him is immediate. His shoulders square. His thumb stops moving across my knuckles. I watch him slot himself into the version of Garrett Graham who shows up for me, the one who sat on the bedroom floor with me at three in the morning, who never once flinched, who never once made my pain about him.
"Okay." Quiet. Careful. "Okay, Wellsy."
I take a breath. It shakes on the way in.
"I found out yesterday." I look at his chest, not his face. The number on his jersey. The faded scuff on the V of the collar where he caught a stick last month. Anything but his eyes, because if I look at his eyes I'm going to lose my nerve. "Who he was. The guy. From, from high school."
I feel him go absolutely still.
I push through. Faster, now, before he can interrupt, before I can stop.
"It's Delaney."
I don't say the rest. I don't have to. I can feel the second it lands, the way the air changes between us, the way his hands tighten around mine, not painfully, not even on purpose, just because every muscle in his body locked at once. I keep my eyes on his collar. I count the stitches along the neckline. One. Two. Three.
"Wellsy." His voice has gone strange. Flat. Quiet in a way that scares me more than yelling would.
"I'm not done." I squeeze his hands. Hard. "Please."
He doesn't speak. But his jaw is doing something I've never seen it do before, and I can hear him breathing through his nose, slow and deliberate, like he's counting too.
"I needed a day." I make myself look up. Make myself meet him. "I needed, I needed to sit with it. By myself. Before I could say it out loud to anyone, including you. That's where I was. That's why I didn't text. I wasn't ignoring you, I just– I couldn't pick up the phone and say his name yet. I'm sorry. I should have at least told you I was okay, and I didn't, and I'm sorry."
His chest rises. Falls. He's still not talking. I keep going.
"And I'm telling you now, right now, before you go back out there, because I need you to hear me, Garrett. Really hear me." I take his face in my hands. His skin is hot under my palms, flushed from the game. "I am not telling you this because I need you to do something about it. I'm not asking you to fight him. I'm not asking you to say anything to him. I'm not asking you to defend my honor, or be a tough guy, or any of the things I know your brain is doing right now. I can see you doing it. Stop."
His eyes flicker. Something dangerous moves behind them and then, slowly, banks down. Not gone. Just contained. For me.
"I'm telling you," I go on, softer, "because you are about to go back out onto that ice, and that man is going to be there, and you deserve to know. You deserve to not be blindsided. You're my person. You don't get blindsided. Not by this. Not by him."
His throat works. He swallows hard.
"And–" My voice wobbles for the first time, and I hate it, but I keep going. "And I need you to be careful out there. Not for my sake. For yours. He doesn't get to take anything else from me, Garrett. He doesn't get a penalty box temper. He doesn't get a suspension. He doesn't get your draft stock. He doesn't get you. Do you understand me? I am telling you so you can protect yourself. Not so you can protect me."
The room is so quiet I can hear the muffled thrum of the crowd through the walls. Some announcer's voice, indistinct, far away. A whistle. The world on the other side of this door, still spinning, oblivious.
Garrett hasn't moved. He's looking at me like he's never seen me before. Or like he's seeing me more clearly than he ever has. I can't tell which.
"Say something." It comes out small. "Please."
For a second, I think he isn't going to say anything at all.
He just looks at me. Eyes locked on mine, jaw set, that single muscle near his temple ticking like a metronome. His hands are still in mine where I pulled them down from his face, and I can feel the fight happening in them, the way his fingers keep flexing, like they don't know whether to hold on tighter or let go entirely so they can do something he'd regret.
Then he closes his eyes.
Just closes them. Like he's bracing against something. Like the inside of his own head needs a minute.
I've seen him angry before. I've seen him on the ice when somebody runs a teammate into the boards. I've seen him in his kitchen the morning after I told him about Aaron Delaney. I've seen Garrett furious. But I've never seen him do this. This terrible, controlled stillness. Like he's holding something down with both hands and praying it doesn't claw its way out.
When he opens his eyes again, they're wet. Just at the rims. He blinks it back so fast I almost miss it.
"Okay." It comes out hoarse. He clears his throat. "Okay."
He pulls one hand free of mine, not to step away, but to bring it up to my cheek, and I feel the slight tremor in his fingers when his palm settles against my skin. He's so warm. He's always so warm.
"I heard you." His voice is low. Careful. Like he's choosing each word and setting it down gently, one by one, in case any of them go off. "I heard every word you just said. I want you to know that."
I nod. I don't trust my throat.
"You're right." A pause. He swallows. "You're right that my brain is– yeah. It's doing all of that. Every single thing you said. It's doing it right now."
"I know."
"Yeah." A short, broken huff of breath that isn't quite a laugh. "Yeah. You know."
His thumb moves across my cheekbone. Slow. Once, twice. And then his face changes, not dramatically, just a small tightening at the corners of his mouth, like he's adjusting to a weight he wasn't expecting to carry.
"Wellsy." He says it carefully. "I want to make you a promise. And I want it to be the right one. Not the one that sounds good standing here."
My stomach drops a little. I don't know what he means yet, but I know him, and I know what that voice means.
"I want to tell you I won't touch him." His thumb keeps moving on my cheek. Slow. Grounding. For him or for me, I'm not sure. "I want to tell you I'll skate out there and I'll play my game and I won't hear his name in my head every time he steps on the ice. That's what I want to tell you. But if I tell you that, and I can't deliver– "
He stops. Swallows.
"I've never lied to you. I'm not starting tonight."
The tears come back. Quiet ones. I don't fight them.
"So here's what I can promise." His other hand comes up. Both palms on my face now, framing me, holding me steady. He bends his knees a little so we're level. So I have to look at him. "I'm going to try. With everything I have. I am going to try so hard, Wellsy. I'm going to skate, and I'm going to play hockey, and I'm not going to give that fuck–" he catches the word, shakes his head, starts again. "I'm not going to give him a single inch of my game that I don't have to. I'm going to think about my draft. I'm going to think about my team. I'm going to think about you sitting in that stand watching me. And I am going to try, with everything in me, to be the kind of man who can hear that name and keep his hands at his sides."
His voice drops. Almost to a whisper.
"But if he says something. If he comes at you, even with words. If he– " His jaw works. "I don't know what I'll do. I don't. And I won't stand here and swear something to you I'm not a hundred percent sure I can keep. You deserve better than that."
I'm crying harder now. Not the kind of crying that needs fixing, the kind that just happens, when somebody loves you out loud in a room with bad lighting and dusty costumes.
"Okay," I whisper.
"And I need you to know something else." His thumbs sweep under my eyes. "I am so fucking proud of you. Do you hear me, Wellsy? I am so proud of you I don't even have the word for it. You walked in here, on a Saturday night, in the middle of the worst game of my life, and you told me the truth because you didn't want me out there alone with it. That's– "
His voice cracks. He stops. Swallows. Starts again.
"That's the bravest thing anybody's ever done for me."
I shake my head against his hands, but I don't have words for it, and he doesn't need any.
He's quiet for a second. His eyes search mine, back and forth, like he's looking for something specific. And then, softer, almost like he doesn't want to ask, he says, "Are you okay? Like, right now. In this minute. Standing in this room. Are you okay?"
And there it is. That's the thing about Garrett. That's the thing that's always been the thing.
He doesn't ask me how I am the way other people ask. He doesn't ask me the way my mother does, with that frightened hopeful lilt, are you doing okay sweetheart, the question already begging for a yes. He doesn't ask me the way the campus counselor asked, with the careful professional tilt of her head. He asks like he actually wants the answer. He asks like the answer is allowed to be no.
"I don't know yet," I say honestly. "I think I will be. I'm not– I'm not in pieces. I promise. I just, I needed you to know. And now you know. And I think that's all I can do tonight."
"Then that's enough." Immediate. No hesitation. "That's enough, Wellsy. You did the thing. You're done. Okay?"
I nod against his hands.
He leans down and presses his forehead to mine. Just rests it there. I can feel his pulse in his temple, hammering away, fast, too fast, the only thing about him that's giving away the storm underneath. Everything else, he's holding. For me. He's holding it all for me.
"I love you," he says, into the space between us. "I love you so much. Do you know that?"
"I know."
"Good." His breath shudders out. "Good. Hold onto that. Whatever I look like out there in the next forty minutes, whatever my face is doing, hold onto that. That's what's real."
And just for a second, just for one flickering second, I feel him stiffen. Some other thought passing through him, dark and fast, gone before I can name it. His hands tighten almost imperceptibly on my face. Then ease.
I don't ask. I think I know.
I think I've always known there's a part of Garrett that's afraid of his own hands. Afraid of whose hands they are. He doesn't talk about it. He doesn't have to. I've seen the way he holds a beer bottle when his father's name comes up in conversation, too gently, like he's reminding himself he's allowed to set it down without breaking it. I've seen the way he checks himself, mid-laugh, mid-temper, mid-anything, when he hears an echo of Phil in his own voice. And I know, I have always known, that the thing he's most afraid of in the entire world is the possibility that there's something of his father curled up inside him, waiting.
And I just handed him a reason.
I just handed him the perfect reason.
He pulls back just enough to kiss my forehead. Long. Lingering. And then he straightens up to his full height, rolls his shoulders once like he's settling armor back into place, and looks down at me with something that's almost a smile.
"Go out there," he says quietly. "Don't watch him. Watch me. Okay? Only me."
"Only you."
"That's my girl."
He squeezes my hand one last time and plants a confident kiss on my lips. The taste of the salt of his sweat and our tears lingers on my lips as he lets go of my hand and walks past me toward the door.
And just before he opens it, he stops. Doesn't turn around. Just stands there with his hand on the door, and his back to me, and his shoulders rising and falling once, slow and deliberate.
I watch him flex his fingers. Once. Then close them into a fist. Then open them again.
Like he's checking. Like he's asking them whose they are tonight.
Then he goes.
Garrett
The cold hits me like a slap when I step back onto the ice.
I take it on purpose. I draw it in through my nose all the way down to the bottom of my lungs and I hold it there, and for the first time tonight my head goes quiet, just for a second, just long enough, and then it all comes back.
Delaney.
His name lands in my chest like a slap shot. I shake it off, shake it off, shake it off, and skate hard to the bench, blades chewing the ice loud enough that I can almost drown out my own brain.
Almost.
Logan’s at the boards when I swing through the gate. He doesn't look at me. I don't blame him. We'll deal with that later. Coach barks something at me, Graham, eyes up, head in it, and I nod, twice, sharp, because if I open my mouth I don't know what's going to come out.
I find her before I mean to.
She's not in the stands. Of course she isn't. She's standing just inside the mouth of the tunnel that leads back to the dressing rooms, shoulder pressed against the cinderblock wall, half-tucked behind a security guard who looks like he decided ten minutes ago that he wasn't going to ask any questions. Her coat is still on. Her hands are folded against her stomach. She's watching the ice with this still, serious focus, like a coach studying tape.
The second she catches my eyes, her face changes. Softens. She gives me the smallest nod. I'm here. I'm okay. Only you.
Only me.
I tap my stick against the boards twice. Our thing. She sees it. Her mouth twitches.
Okay. Okay.
I can do this.
The second period is a blur.
Not the blur where you don't remember it. The blur where you're so locked in that the world narrows down to the next shift, the next puck, the next three feet of ice in front of you. I stop thinking about Phil in section 112. I stop thinking about Cindy's lipstick. I stop thinking about the way Logan wouldn't look at me in the tunnel. I stop thinking about my hands, and whose they are, and what they want to do.
I think about hockey.
I think about only hockey.
Pass to Dean. Cycle the puck. Cross the blue line. Don't look at 29. Cycle the puck. Get the puck deep. Win the wall. Don't look at 29. Dean wins a board battle and I'm there, right there, top of the slot, and I bury the rebound top corner before the goalie's even square to me.
The horn goes off.
The bench explodes.
I tap gloves with everyone on the ice and skate past the bench and I don't celebrate, not really, because I'm not done. We're not done. We're down by one and we are not done.
I find the tunnel on my way back to the bench. She's still there. Shoulders straight, one hand pressed flat against the cinderblock now, like she has to physically hold herself in place. She's not smiling. She's looking at me like she knew I'd find it.
Two taps on the boards.
Back to work.
Third period.
Dean ties it on the power play with eight minutes left, a beauty of a one-timer from the dot, and Briar's bench loses its collective mind. I can hear our crowd over their crowd for the first time all night. I can feel the building turning. There is nothing in sports like a road game you're not supposed to win starting to tip.
Four minutes left and Logan, who hasn't looked me in the eye since the locker room, sets me up with a no-look backhand pass through three sticks. I one-time it past the goalie's blocker. 3-2 Briar.
He skates straight to me. Hits me with a glove on the back of the helmet. Looks me in the face for the first time in three hours.
"That's the shit, Graham."
It's not an apology. It's not a we're okay. But it's something. And I'll take it.
I tap his cage. "Let's fucking go."
I find her in the tunnel again. Both hands pressed to the wall now. Mouth moving, silent, three words I know by heart. I love you. I almost lose it right there.
Two taps. Get back to it.
We're killing the last forty seconds and they're throwing everything at us. Their goalie's pulled. It's six on five and they win an offensive zone faceoff and it goes wide, behind the net, and Birdie clears it down the ice for icing.
The whistle blows.
Faceoff. Their end first. Wait. No. Icing on us. Faceoff in our zone.
Twenty-three seconds left.
I skate to the dot.
And there he is.
Twenty-nine. Delaney. Up close, under the lights, mouthguard chewed white around the edges. He's grinning at me like we're old friends. Like this is fun.
It is fun for him. I can see it in his eyes. The whole night has been fun for him.
He doesn't know that you know.
That thought is the only thing keeping my stick on the ice.
He glides into the circle. Bumps my shoulder, friendly-like. Leans in.
"Hey, man. Everything they say is true. Playing against you has been really fun."
I don't look at him. I look at the linesman's glove. At the puck in his hand. At the stitching on his sleeve.
"Yeah, alright."
It comes out flat. It comes out fine. It comes out like a guy who's just trying to win a hockey game.
I am so proud of myself for half a second I almost smile.
The linesman raises his hand. Players settle. The crowd is a wall of sound. Twenty-three seconds. Tie game. We can hold this. We can hold this and we go to overtime and we steal a point on the road and I go home and I curl around Hannah Wells in my bed and I let myself feel everything I've been holding for the last two hours, and...
Delaney leans in one more time.
His voice is low. Conversational. Just for me.
"Graham. You know what's gonna be even better than me beating you?"
Don't.
Don't.
Don't.
"Beating you in front of that lying slut." As his words register, I sneak a quick glance towards Wellsy’s direction before something takes over me.
I don't remember dropping my stick.
I don't remember dropping my gloves. I don't remember the linesman shouting. I don't remember the puck hitting the ice or not hitting the ice or any of it.
I remember his face.
I remember the small, satisfied curl at the corner of his mouth, the half-second of gotcha before he registered what was about to happen, and I remember thinking, with a clarity that doesn't belong inside a man losing his mind, this is exactly what he wanted.
And I do it anyway.
My right hand connects with his jaw and it is the cleanest thing I've done all night. Bone on bone. The shock of it travels up my arm and into my shoulder and into the part of my chest where my heart is and somewhere in there a voice that sounds like my father says that's my boy and I almost throw up on the ice.
He goes down.
I get one more in, a left, glancing, off his shoulder, before the linesman is on me, both arms locked around my chest, hauling me backward, and Logan is suddenly in front of me with both hands on my jersey shouting Graham. Graham. GRAHAM. Look at me. Look at me, brother, and I'm looking at him but I'm not seeing him. I'm seeing Wellsy in the tunnel. I'm seeing her face. I'm seeing what my face must look like to her right now.
I'm seeing Phil in section 112.
I don't have to look. I know what he's doing. I know exactly what he's doing.
He's smiling.
The ref is at the scorer's table. The arena is howling, half boos, half cheers, depending on what jersey you're wearing. Delaney's on his feet now, jaw red, shaking it off, looking pleased with himself in a way that makes me want to do it again.
I don't. Logan’s hand is on my chest. Stay with me, Graham. Stay with me.
The ref skates to center ice. Raises his arm.
"Number forty four, Briar. Five-minute major. Fighting. Game misconduct."
The crowd erupts.
The walk to the tunnel feels like it takes an hour. My skates are too loud. My breath is too loud. Somewhere behind me Coach is screaming, but it's not at me. It's at the ref, at the linesman, at the whole goddamn building. He knows. He saw the whole thing. He knows what Delaney said, or he can guess close enough.
It doesn't matter. The call's made.
And then I see her.
She's stepped out of the shadow of the tunnel entrance, fully visible now, framed in the gap between the boards and the wall. She's not crying. She's not angry. She's looking at me with this expression I've never seen on her face before, not disappointment, not pity, just this terrible, gentle I know.
She doesn't move toward me. She knows the rules. Players go down the tunnel. Girlfriends don't get to meet you halfway, not on the way to a misconduct, not under these lights, not with cameras everywhere.
But she's right there. Three feet from where I'll have to pass her.
She presses her hand to her chest.
Two taps. Right over her heart.
I almost go down.
I pass her without stopping. I can't stop. If I stop I will crumble and there is a camera somewhere over my left shoulder that's going to put my face on SportsCenter tomorrow morning, and I will not, I will not, give Phil Graham the satisfaction of watching his son break on national television.
But as I pass her, I feel her fingertips brush the back of my jersey. Light. Barely there. The smallest I'm here she can give me without breaking any rules.
The tunnel swallows me.
Behind me, faintly, I hear the announcer say power play, St. Anthony's, and I hear our crowd groan, and I keep walking. I keep walking. I do not turn around.
Twenty-one seconds left on the clock. Five-minute major. Game misconduct, which means I'm done for the night and probably for the next one too. Our PK has been a mess all season. We are about to give up this game.
I sit down on the bench bolted to the tunnel wall because my legs won't hold me anymore.
I take my helmet off. I rest it on the concrete next to me. I look down at my right hand and the knuckles are split open and bleeding through the tape and I cannot, for the life of me, remember the last thirty seconds clearly. I remember the sound. I remember his face. I remember the small voice in my head that sounded like Phil.
The crowd noise changes.
I don't have to see it to know what happened. I hear the goal horn from the wrong end of the building. I hear the away crowd erupt. I hear our bench go silent in that specific way a bench goes silent when a game just slipped.
3-3.
Eleven seconds left. They'll run out the clock. It'll end in a tie.
A tie we should have won. A tie we were winning. A tie that's mine. That's on me. That's my name in the box score, my number on the penalty, my hand on his jaw.
I press my forehead against my knees and I breathe through my nose for a long, long time.
I told her I'd try.
I told her I'd try, and I tried, and I made it the whole night, and I lost it in the last twenty-three seconds, and the worst part, the worst part, the part I'm going to carry around for a long time, is that somewhere in the back of my head, in the dark place I don't look at, I'm not actually sure I'm sorry I did it.
I think Phil would be proud.
I think that's the thing that's going to keep me up tonight.
Hannah
I see it before it happens.
I don't know how. I'm not a hockey person, not really, not in the way other people pretend to be when they are trying to impress somebody at a game. I don't read plays. I’m still not confiden I know what icing is, not really, even after Garrett's tried to explain it three different times with salt shakers on a kitchen table. I don't understand line changes or zone entries or any of the language they're shouting at each other out there.
But I know Garrett's body.
I know the way he stands in the faceoff circle. I know the set of his shoulders. I know the angle of his stick on the ice. I have watched him do this maybe forty times this year, from bleachers and benches and one frozen Tuesday night in Vermont, and I know what he looks like when he's locked in.
This isn't that.
His shoulders are too high. His weight is on his back skate. His head is tilted, just slightly, like he's listening to something I can't hear.
And then I see Delaney lean in.
I can't hear what he says. I'm too far away, and the crowd is too loud, and the glass and the boards and the distance between us swallow every word. But I see his mouth move. I see his face. I see the small, ugly tilt of his chin as he says whatever he says, and I know, with a certainty that lands in my stomach like a stone, exactly what kind of thing it is.
Because I know what kind of man he is.
I have known what kind of man he is for four years.
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
I push off the cinderblock wall before I've decided to. I take one step forward, out of the tunnel, into the gap where I can be seen, and the security guard at the entrance shifts his weight in a way that means don't, ma'am, please don't, but he doesn't have to worry. I'm not going anywhere. I couldn't get to him if I wanted to. There are thirty feet of glass and a sheet of ice and a referee and a rulebook between me and the only person in this building I want to touch.
I just want him to see me.
I just want him to look up.
He doesn't look up.
He drops his stick.
It clatters on the ice and my whole body goes cold and then his gloves are off and then his fist is moving and there's a sound I will never, for the rest of my life, get out of my head. A wet, blunt, awful sound. Skin on skin. Bone on bone. The sound of a person I love putting his hand into the face of a person I hate, and the cost of it written on his face before the punch has even landed.
Delaney goes down.
The crowd loses its mind.
Garrett gets one more in before the linesman has him, and I see his shoulders heaving, and I see Logan grab the front of his jersey, and I see Garrett's eyes, and his eyes are not in his face. His eyes are somewhere else entirely. His eyes are looking at his father.
I knew.
I knew.
I knew the second the words left my mouth in that dressing room. I knew when I watched his hands flex on the doorknob. I knew when I felt him stiffen against my forehead, that flicker of something dark passing through him that I didn't name out loud because I was so busy trying to give him an out. I knew. I knew what I was handing him. I knew what kind of bomb that name was, and I lit the fuse anyway, and I told myself I was protecting him.
What a thing to tell yourself.
Protecting him.
What a beautiful, useless, self-serving little story.
The ref skates to center ice. Raises his arm. I can't hear the call over the crowd but I don't need to. I know what a fighting major looks like. I know what a game misconduct looks like. I have spent enough nights in enough rinks to know exactly what just happened to my boyfriend's night, and to his weekend, and probably to the next game on the schedule, and possibly to whatever scout from whatever team was sitting in section 104 with a clipboard tonight, because I saw them too. I saw all of them. I sat in that dressing room and made him a promise about NHL futures and draft stock and we can do that, right? and twenty-three seconds was all it took.
Twenty-three seconds, and one sentence from a man who should not get to have sentences anymore.
And one stupid, brave, terrible decision from me to hand Garrett a name.
I press my back against the cinderblock and I make myself breathe.
In for four. Out for six. The thing the campus counselor taught me, the thing I told her was condescending the first time she suggested it, the thing that has, embarrassingly, worked every single time I've used it since. In for four. Out for six.
I cannot fall apart here.
I cannot fall apart in a tunnel with a security guard six feet to my left and a building full of cameras and a man in section 112 who I have never met but who I would recognize anywhere because he has my boyfriend's jaw. I cannot fall apart because Garrett is about to walk down this tunnel and he is going to need someone, and the someone he needs is not the woman whose past just cost him a game. The someone he needs is the girl who told him in his bedroom, months ago, that she didn't want to be the reason he changed.
I close my eyes.
In for four.
Out for six.
I think about him sitting alone on a bench in some concrete hallway right now with his head in his hands. I think about his right knuckles. I think about the look on his face when he passed me, the way he didn't stop, the way he couldn't, the way he kept walking because if he'd stopped he would have broken and there were cameras everywhere. I think about how he passed close enough for me to brush my fingers against the back of his jersey and how that small contact almost ended me.
I think about the fact that I am the reason he is sitting on that bench.
Not Delaney. Not Phil. Not any of his teammates, not the linesman who didn't catch what was said.
Me.
I gave him the name.
I gave him the name and I told him a beautiful sentence about not asking you to defend my honor and I told him another beautiful sentence about protecting yourself and I believed every word of it, I really did, I believed it the whole way through, and what an unbelievable luxury it is to believe something like that. What a luxury to think that knowledge is neutral. That information can be handed over like a piece of mail. That you can love someone and tell them a thing and walk away and pretend the thing is now just sitting there, in his hands, separate from him.
I love him so much I cannot breathe sometimes.
And I, of all people, of all people, should have known what a name does inside a body.
I should have known better than to give him one in the middle of a hockey game.
The goal horn goes off. Wrong end. Their bench, their crowd, their goal. I don't even flinch. I knew it was coming the second I saw the ref's arm go up. I knew it the way Garrett knew it. I knew it the way everyone in our jerseys knew it.
3-3.
The clock will run out. They'll get the point. We'll get the point. Garrett will get a suspension hearing and a sit-down with his coach and a phone call from his agent and possibly an entry in some scout's notebook that says temper, ungovernable, see recent game at St. Anthony's. He will sit in his bedroom tomorrow morning with his right hand on a bag of frozen peas and he will not be okay. He will pretend he's okay. He will not be.
And the worst part. The worst part. The part I have to stand here in this tunnel and look at because no one else is going to make me look at it.
He will not blame me.
He will not.
I know him. I know him the way I know his shoulders in a faceoff circle. I know him the way I know the cadence of his breath when he's almost asleep. He will not blame me. He will not even let me blame myself out loud. He will take my face in his hands the way he did in the dressing room and he will say Wellsy, no, don't you dare, and he will mean it, and he will spend the entire rest of the night managing my guilt instead of his own.
Which means I am going to have to carry it by myself.
That's fine. That's fair. That's exactly fair.
I open my eyes.
The clock is at eleven seconds and counting. The puck is in the corner. They're running it out. The St. Anthony's bench is on its feet but not celebrating, not really, they know they were getting beat, they know what just happened wasn't hockey. Even their faces look a little embarrassed. Even theirs.
The horn goes.
It's over.
Garrett's teammates skate past me one by one on their way to the tunnel, heads down, sticks dragging. Logan meets my eyes for half a second on the way past and his face does something complicated, something that means I've got him and I'm sorry and don't worry all at once, and then he's gone.
I stand against the cinderblock and I wait.
I have a thousand things I want to say to him. I have an apology that I will not deliver because he won't let me. I have a hand to reach for. I have a forehead to press against.
I have a name I should never have given him, and I do not know how to take it back.
I do not know if I would, even if I could.
That is the thing that scares me most.
Garrett
The stairwell smells like cold concrete and old sweat and somebody's dip spit in a Gatorade bottle on the landing above me, and for a second when the door clangs shut behind me I think I might actually be alone.
Forty-five seconds. That's how long I get.
I make it down four steps with my duffel slung over one shoulder and my hoodie up over my still-wet hair and my right hand throbbing through three layers of athletic tape, and I let myself think, just briefly, just stupidly, that maybe I'll make it to the bus. That maybe I'll get to sit in the back row with my forehead against the cold window and let Tuck pretend to scroll his phone next to me and not say a single word the entire ride home. That maybe Wellsy will be there when I get off, in the parking lot, in her coat, and I won't have to look at her face under fluorescent lights, just the soft yellow of a streetlamp, the kind of light a person can hide in.
Then I hear the door at the top of the stairs open.
And I know.
I know before I hear the footsteps. I know before I smell the cologne, the one he's worn since I was nine years old, the one that lives in the lining of my old hockey bags whether I want it to or not. I know because of the way my body goes tight from the back of my neck down to the soles of my feet, this Pavlovian full-body brace I've been doing since elementary school whenever Phil Graham walks into a room I'm already in.
I keep walking.
"Garrett."
I do not stop.
"Garrett, hey. Hold up."
I hit the next landing. I do not turn around. My duffel knocks against my hip. The bag of ice I've got rubber-banded to my knuckles shifts under the tape and a cold trickle of water runs down the inside of my wrist and into my sleeve.
Footsteps behind me. Not fast. He's not chasing me. He never has to chase me. He's always known I'll stop.
I hate that I stop.
I stop on the next landing, halfway between floors, where the stairwell makes a little square of nowhere, no exit door, no window, just concrete and pipes and a buzzing fluorescent tube overhead. I do not turn around. I face the corner where the railing meets the wall. I make him talk to my back.
"No," I say. "We have an agreement. I don't win, you don't talk to me."
"Clearly, this is an exception."
His voice. God, his voice. It is the same voice that asked the waitress for more bread at my eighth birthday dinner. It is the same voice that told me to get up, Garrett, get up when I took a knee to the temple in the state quarterfinal when I was fourteen and saw two of everything for twenty minutes afterward. It is the same voice that has lived rent-free in the back of my skull for as long as I have had a skull. Calm. Reasonable. Friendly, almost. The voice of a man who is incapable of being wrong because he has decided he isn't.
I close my eyes.
In for four. I don't know where I learned that. Wellsy probably. Wellsy definitely.
Out for six.
"Move," I tell him.
"No, hang on. Just listen."
He sighs. I know that sigh. That sigh is the sigh of a man getting ready to give a speech he's been workshopping in his head since the second period.
"I'm proud of you."
The word lands in my chest like a fist.
I don't mean to turn around. My body just does it. Some old, stupid, six-year-old part of me that has been waiting for that sentence its entire life turns me around before my brain can stop it, and I am suddenly face to face with him on a concrete landing under a buzzing light, and I hate how good he looks. I hate that he looks good. I hate the camel coat and the open collar and the salt-and-pepper at his temples that magazines call distinguished. I hate that he is smiling at me. I hate that the smile is small, and warm, and that it almost reaches his eyes.
"What?" My voice comes out flat. Stripped. I can hear myself starting to shake under it and I do not have the energy to hide it.
"That was some tough old-school hockey." He chuckles. He chuckles. Like we're at a steakhouse. Like we're on a porch. "Hell of a right hand, kid."
Hell of a right hand.
There is a small, sick, awful place in my chest that lights up at those four words like a Christmas tree.
I shove it down. I shove it down so hard I think I might bruise an organ.
"I just got suspended," I say. "Two games."
"Yeah, that is not ideal."
He says it the way you'd say yeah, that's a steep parking ticket.
"But hey, it happens, right? You get worked up. You lose your cool. Part of the game."
He's moving as he talks. Not fast. Not threatening. Just slowly, slowly closing the distance between us on the landing, the way you'd walk up to a horse that's already spooked. I do not back up. I will not back up. I plant my feet on the concrete and I stand there and I let him come.
"But shit will rain down, though. NCAA will be on your ass, but don't worry." A small wave of his hand. Easy. Generous. "I'll call the Bruins. I'll take care of this. No one will keep Phil Graham's son off the ice."
And there it is.
Three sentences in, and there it is. The thing he came down here to say. The thing he was actually proud of. Not the punch. Not the old-school hockey. The I'll take care of this. The I'll call. The reminder, gentle as a knife behind the ear, that everything I have, every inch of ice I have ever skated on, every coach who ever returned a phone call, every showcase, every camp, every scout, every Bruin, traces back through one name and one name only, and that name is on the back of my jersey, and it isn't mine.
Something in me cracks.
Not loudly. Not all at once. Just a small, hairline thing, the kind of crack you don't notice in a windshield until the cold hits it and it runs all the way across.
I think about Hannah in the tunnel.
I think about her fingertips on the back of my jersey.
I think about the sound my fist made on Delaney's jaw and the voice in my head that sounded like this one and how, for a half-second on the ice, I let myself enjoy it.
I am so tired.
"So that's it, huh?"
It comes out before I know I'm saying it.
"Excuse me?"
"As long as I have Graham on my back, I can just beat people up with no consequences for the rest of my life?" My voice is rising. I cannot make it stop rising. "Like you."
A pause. Half a second. The smile doesn't leave his face but something behind it shifts. Recalibrates. He's a smart man. He has always been a very, very smart man. That is the worst thing about him.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do."
"You know," and his voice is still even, still warm, still reasonable, "I don't remember you complaining about being a Graham when you landed the best coaches. When you got on the best teams. With the best equipment."
"With the best bruises." It punches out of me. "Right? Easy to write it off when your kid plays such a violent sport."
He stops moving.
He's three feet from me now. The buzzing fluorescent overhead makes his face look slightly green at the edges. His hands are in his coat pockets. Always in his coat pockets, my father. He's never had to use his hands in public. He has people for that. He had me for that, for a long time, and didn't have to lift a finger.
"I did what I had to."
"That's fսcking bullshit." My voice cracks on the last word. I hate it. I keep going. "And you know it."
"I don't want to hear what a terrible dad I was for making you tough." His voice has cooled, just a touch. Just enough that you'd notice if you knew him. I know him. "For wanting you to have the best."
"Oh, fսck you."
The words come out of me like they've been waiting twenty-one years to be said in this exact order.
"You don't want the best for me. It was never about me."
"Of course it was!"
And there it is. There's the temper. There's the small flare in his eyes, the same flare I have spent my whole life watching for, the one that used to mean get out of the kitchen, Garrett, get upstairs, the one I am holding inside my own jaw right now like an inheritance I never asked for.
"You're about to play for the Bruins. I made that happen. You can hate the name on the back of your jersey all you want, but it doesn't make you better than me."
A pause. He lets it land. He has always been very good at timing.
"It just makes you ungrateful."
I cannot breathe for a second.
I am twelve years old in the garage. I am fourteen years old on a hotel room floor. I am nineteen years old in a parking lot after the worst game of my freshman year and he is leaning into the driver's side window of my car and using this exact voice. Ungrateful. I know this word. This is one of his words. He sharpens them and he keeps them on a shelf and he takes them down when he needs them.
I think about Wellsy in the dressing room.
We can't let him win. It gives him power.
I think about Wellsy in the tunnel, her palm flat on the cinderblock.
I think about my right hand.
"I will never be like you."
I say it quietly. I say it to the concrete between us. I say it more for me than for him.
"You already are."
I look up.
He is smiling.
Small. Almost sympathetic. Like he's just done me a kindness. Like he's just told me the time.
Something in me goes very, very still.
It is the same stillness I felt on the ice. The terrible quiet, the moment after I dropped the gloves and before my hand moved, the half-second of dead calm before the worst thing. I feel it now and I do not move my hands. I do not move my hands. I keep my hands at my sides. I keep my hands at my fucking sides.
That's for you, Wellsy.
That one's for you.
"Stay the fսck away from me." My voice is steady. I do not know where I am pulling it from. "Stop calling. Stop coming to my games."
I take one step backward toward the stairs.
"We're fսcking done."
I turn.
I make it three steps down. Four. I am almost to the next landing. I am almost out of this building. I am almost in a parking lot with Wellsy waiting in the dark and a car ride home where I can press my forehead against a window and not be here anymore. I am almost.
And then he speaks again. Quieter this time. Conversational. The way he says things he wants me to hear without having to defend.
"This isn't about hockey, is it?" His tone transformed to something taunting/
I stop on the step. I shouldn't. I do.
I do not turn around.
"What?"
"Tonight." He hasn't moved. I can hear him perfectly in the concrete. "On the ice. That wasn't a hockey thing, was it? I've watched you play angry your whole life, kid. I know what your angry looks like. That wasn't it."
The stairwell goes very small around me.
"You don't drop the gloves on a guy in the last twenty seconds of a tied road game because he's checking you hard. You don't. Not you. Not the kid I raised."
I do not breathe. I do not breathe. I do not breathe.
"So I'm just wondering," and I can hear the smile in it now, faint, curious, the smile of a man who has found a loose thread and is rolling it between his fingers, "what he said to you."
A pause.
"Or who he said it about."
The fluorescent buzz fills my whole head.
Don't turn around. Don't turn around. Don't turn around. Don't say her name. Don't say anything. Don't give him anything. Not one syllable. Not one breath. Not the way her name feels in my mouth right now begging to be defended. Don't.
I clamp my teeth together so hard my jaw aches.
"Goodnight, Phil," I say.
It is the first time I have ever called him that out loud.
I take the last flight of stairs two at a time. I do not look back. I shove the door at the bottom open with my shoulder and the cold parking lot air hits me in the face like a bucket of water and I keep walking, keep walking, keep walking, and somewhere behind me, several floors up, on a concrete landing under a buzzing light, my father is standing very still with his hands in his coat pockets and a small thoughtful look on his face.
He has found his loose thread.
I do not know it yet.
But I will.
Hannah
The parking lot has emptied out.
It's the kind of emptiness that happens slow, then all at once. The Briar families went first, clusters of them in the home-team colors, dads in alumni jackets, moms with thermoses of coffee, kid brothers in oversized jerseys that swallow their hands. The St. Anthony's contingent followed, smaller, quieter, more pleased with themselves than they had any right to be after a tie. The press cleared out twenty minutes after that. The last of the rink staff cut through ten minutes ago, two guys in matching jackets crunching across the pavement, one of them whistling, neither one looking at me.
And then it's just me.
Me and a flickering sodium light at the far end of the lot, and Garrett's car parked under it, and my breath fogging in front of my face every time I exhale.
I should be cold. I know I should be cold. My fingertips have gone that ugly off-pink that means I've stopped registering temperature properly, and my nose has that wet, runny ache that comes from standing in December air too long without moving. But I can't feel any of it. There is too much else to feel, and it's all happening in my chest, and my fingertips will have to wait their turn.
I lean against the passenger door.
I cross my arms.
I wait.
I have been waiting almost an hour. First the locker room. Then the coach's office, I assume. Then somebody else, somebody longer, somebody who took more out of him than a meeting with a coach should take. I know without being told. I know because of the time. I know because of the heaviness sitting on my shoulders even out here in the cold, like something in that building hasn't been able to let him go.
I know because of the way I've spent the last twenty minutes praying.
I'm not even religious, particularly. My mother dragged us to a midnight mass twice when I was a kid and that was the extent of it. But I have been standing here in a parking lot under a flickering sodium light praying in a way I haven't prayed for anything in years, and the only word in the prayer is please, and I am not even sure who I am asking, or what for, or what I would do if anyone answered.
The door at the side of the building opens.
It's him.
He has his duffel slung over one shoulder. His hoodie up. His head down. He is walking the way he walks when his right knee is bothering him, which it isn't, which means tonight it isn't his knee. He sees me when he's still twenty feet out and his pace changes, not faster, not slower, just different, like the sight of me made the air around him weigh something.
Neither of us speaks.
He stops two feet from me. Drops the duffel. It thuds against the pavement, the soft, exhausted sound of a bag that has been carried too long.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
His left cheekbone is a little pink, from where, I don't know. Maybe someone's glove on the way off the ice. Maybe nothing. Maybe he washed his face too hard in the locker room. His eyes are red at the rims, and his hair is wet, and there is a small white streak of dried sweat at the temple where the towel didn't get all of it.
He looks at me like he hasn't been allowed to look at me in years.
Neither of us speaks.
I don't know how long we stand there. Long enough that the sodium light flickers again. Long enough that a car door slams somewhere two parking lots over, faintly, in a different country. Long enough that I count three breaths of his and four of mine and a small white cloud of his exhale drifts forward and brushes my cheek before it dissipates.
He breaks first.
"Hey." It comes out hoarse.
"Hey."
He swallows. His Adam's apple moves under the collar of his hoodie.
"Can we go home?" he says. "Please. I just. I want to go home."
His voice is so quiet I almost miss the word please.
I want to say yes. I want to say of course, baby, let's go, and unlock the car, and let him fall into the passenger seat, and drive him back to the house with the heat on full and one of his playlists low. That's what he's asking for. That's the version of me he's hoping is standing here. The one who lets him have the silence. The one who doesn't make him do this in a parking lot.
I almost give it to him.
But.
"Garrett."
He closes his eyes.
He doesn't open them again right away. Just stands there, hood up, breath fogging, eyes closed, like a man getting ready to take a punch.
"Wellsy. Please."
"I know." My voice wobbles. I make it not wobble. "I know you want to go home. I know. And we will. I promise. But not yet. Okay? Not until you talk to me."
"I don't have anything to say."
"Yes, you do."
"I don't, Wellsy."
"You do, Garrett."
I am crying. I didn't notice it start. I notice it now because my voice is doing the thing my voice does when there are tears moving down my face, the small wet catch at the back of my throat. I do not wipe my face. I let him see it. He needs to see it.
"You do," I say again. "And I do. And if we get in that car, and we drive across town, and we walk into your house, and we go upstairs, and we get into your bed, and we don't say a word about tonight, I am not going to sleep. I am going to lie there for six hours with my eyes open. And you are too. And we are going to wake up tomorrow morning and pretend it didn't happen. And the next day. And the next day. And I am not doing that, Garrett. I am not. I have done that before. I have done a whole year of that before. I am not doing it with you."
His eyes open.
He looks at me.
He looks at me, and his face does something terrible, and he opens his mouth and closes it again, and I watch his jaw work, and I watch him swallow whatever he was going to say, and I watch him try to find a different version of it. A safer one. A version that costs less.
"I'm sorry."
It comes out small. Stripped.
"For tonight," he says. "For the game. For- For your night. For making your night this. I'm sorry, Wellsy. I'm so sorry."
"Stop."
"I told you I would try, and I did try, and I-"
"Garrett. Stop."
"I had it. I had it the whole night. I had it. And then he-"
He stops.
He cannot say the rest of the sentence.
I watch him not say it. I watch his throat work around the shape of words he cannot get out. I watch his right hand flex at his side, the tape still on, the knuckles still wrong, and I watch him notice me notice his hand, and I watch him pull it behind his back like a child hiding something broken.
That is when I cry harder.
I have been holding it for two hours. I have been holding it since the dressing room. I have been holding it since I sat in my car at five o'clock this evening with my hands on the steering wheel and a name in my mouth that I had spent four years trying to forget the shape of. I have been holding all of it, every single piece of it, and at the sight of him hiding his right hand behind his back, the last thing in me holding gives way.
"Garrett."
I close the two feet between us. I take his face in my hands. I make him look at me. I make him.
"Garrett. Stop apologizing. Stop."
"Wellsy."
"I was afraid of this."
The words come out before I have decided to say them, and I hear them, and I hate them, but they are out and I cannot put them back.
He goes very still under my hands.
"What?"
"I was afraid this would happen." I am talking too fast, but I cannot slow down, the words are coming faster than my mouth, faster than my breath. "I was afraid the whole night, Garrett. I was afraid in the dressing room. I was afraid the second I said his name out loud. I was afraid in the tunnel. I was afraid before I even got to the rink, sitting in my car at five o'clock with my hands on the wheel, I was afraid. I was afraid my trauma was going to cost you something. I was afraid that giving you that name was going to cost you something. I was afraid it was going to take a piece of you and I gave it to you anyway, and it did, Garrett. It did. It cost you. It cost you the game and it cost you two more games and it cost you whatever scout was sitting in section 104 and it cost you. I knew. I knew it might, and I."
His hands fall away from my shoulders.
I do not register it at first. I am still talking, still apologizing, still going, and then I notice that the warmth on my shoulders is gone, and I look up, and his hands are at his sides, and his face has changed.
His face has changed in a way I do not know how to read for one terrible second.
Then I do.
His right hand drifts up between us, just to the level of my shoulder, and stops there. He does not touch me. He hovers his palm in the air between us, three inches from my collarbone, and his fingers are not quite steady, and he looks at his own hand like it does not belong to him.
"Wellsy."
His voice has gone very, very quiet.
"Are you– Are you scared of me?"
Oh.
Oh.
Oh no.
"What?"
"Right now. Standing here. You said- You said you were scared. You said all night. You're-" His throat works. "You're scared of me, aren't you? You’re–"
"Garrett."
"It's okay if you are." He is talking very fast and very softly, the way people talk when they are afraid of the answer. "It's okay. You can tell me. I won't- I won't do anything. I'll just go. I'll call an Uber. You can take the Jeep and you don’t have to be in a car with me. You don't have to- If you're scared. Wellsy. You can tell me. Please tell me."
"Garrett."
I grab his face. I grab his face hard. Both hands. I pull him down to me and I make him look at me and my voice comes out of me like a thing that has been waiting.
"No. No. Look at me. Look at me, Garrett Graham. Look at me. I am not scared of you. I am not. I could not be scared of you. Do you hear me? I could not be scared of you if I tried. If I sat down and tried for a year I could not get there. No."
His eyes are filling. I watch it happen. He blinks, and the tears do not fall, they sit there at his lower lashes like he is refusing to let them go.
"Then what?"
"I am scared of this." I press my forehead to his. "Garrett. Listen. I am scared of this. Not you. Never you. This. The thing that just happened. The cost. The way my past keeps- The way it keeps-" I struggle to find the words. "Garrett. It is the only thing it has ever done. Do you understand me? The only thing it has ever done in my entire life is take things from people I love. It took my parents' friends. It took their jobs. It took my friends. It just- It takes. That is what it does. It takes things from the people who love me. And tonight it took two games of your season and it might take more and I-"
I cannot breathe right.
"I am scared," I say, more quietly now, more honestly, "that one day you are going to look at me, and you are going to add up the cost. And you are going to realize it is not worth it. And you are going to resent me. And I will not blame you. That is what I am scared of, Garrett. That. I am scared of being a thing that took something from you. I am scared of being the reason you- I am scared of being a price you paid. I am not, I have never been and I will never be scared of you. Do you understand me? I would rather be scared of every other thing in the entire world than be scared of you. You. You are the safest place I have ever stood. Don't you ever- Don't you ever ask me that again."
"Wellsy."
His voice has gone very small.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Don't-"
"I thought–"
"I know what you thought. I know. I'm sorry. I said it badly. I said it badly and I am so sorry. I was afraid this would happen was a stupid way to say it. A stupid, stupid way to say it. I meant the cost. I meant the. Garrett, not you. Never you. Never, never, never you."
"Wellsy."
"Never, Garrett. Never."
"I."
He cannot finish. He breathes, three, four times, and his hands come up, finally, and he puts them on my shoulders, and they are shaking, just a little, just enough.
"You did not cost me anything," he says. "Wellsy. You did not. He did. I did. Not you. Don't you dare carry this. You told me," he says, "you told me you didn't want me to defend your honor. You told me. And I tried. I tried so hard, Wellsy, I tried for the whole game. And I lost it. And that is on me. That is on me. Not on you. Not on your past. Not on the name. On me. Because I am the one who- Who heard him say that about you and I." His voice cracks. "I couldn't. I couldn't let him say that about you and not. I couldn't. I'm sorry. I should have. I should have held it. I should have."
"You are not your father."
It comes out of me before I have decided to say it.
He stops breathing.
I watch it happen. The breath catches in his chest and stays there and he does not let it out. His hands tighten on my shoulders. Not hard. Just present. Just there.
"You are not your father, Garrett."
"Wellsy."
"You are not."
"You don't–"
"You are not your father. Do you hear me? You are not. You will never be. Not in a million years. Not in a thousand million years. You could try to be him for the rest of your life and you would fail at it every single day because there is nothing of him in you. There is nothing of him in you, Garrett. You hear his voice in your head and you think that means he is in there. He isn't. That voice is a ghost. It is not you. It is not. The man who. The man who just stood in a parking lot for forty-five minutes waiting for his girlfriend to finish having a panic attack about hurting him. The man who took my face in his hands in a dressing room and asked me if I was okay before he asked me anything else. The man who pulled his right hand behind his back two minutes ago because he was scared of what I would see. The man who just now, just now, asked me if I was scared of him, because he would rather walk away from me than risk it. That is not Phil Graham. Phil Graham could not be that man on his best day. He could not even imagine being that man. You are that man. You, Garrett. Without the name. Without the jersey. Without him. You."
He is shaking.
His whole body. Small, fine shakes, the kind that come from holding something in too long.
"I am scared too," he whispers.
"I know."
"I am scared all the time, Wellsy. I am scared. Tonight on the ice when I– When I hit him. There was a half second. There was a half second where I– I liked it. I liked it. And it sounded like him in my head. That's my boy. And I–"
"Shh."
"I'm sorry."
"Shh. Shh. Garrett. Shh."
"What if i–. What if it is in there? What if it–"
"It isn't."
"You don't know-" I don’t let him finish.
"I know. Garrett. I know. Listen to me. A half second is not a man. A half second is not a life. A half second is a body remembering what it was trained to do. That is not who you are. Who you are is what you do with the other twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine and a half seconds in a day. And I have watched you spend those, Garrett. I have watched you. Every day. Every single day for four months. You are more man than Phil Graham has ever been in his entire life. You are more man than he will ever be. You are more man than he can imagine. You are."
I have to stop. I can't.
"You are mine," I say. "You are mine and you are nothing like him and I will tell you that every day for the rest of our lives if I have to."
He breaks.
He just breaks. His forehead drops against mine and his hands come up and he holds my face the way he held it in the dressing room, with that same particular care, like he is touching something he is allowed to and cannot quite believe it. He breathes against my mouth, three, four times, and the tears on his face are wet against my cheeks and I do not know whose are whose anymore.
He kisses me.
It is not the kind of kiss I have ever had before. It is not the kind of kiss anyone has ever had before. It is wet and it is salty and it is slow and it is not about wanting, it is about confirming, it is about checking, it is the kiss of a man making sure I am still here. He kisses me with his eyes closed and his thumbs on my cheekbones and his breath shaking in his chest, and I kiss him back, and I kiss him back, and I kiss him back.
When he pulls away, his forehead stays against mine.
We breathe for a long time.
"I love you," he says.
"I love you."
"I love you, Wellsy."
"I love you, Garrett. I love you."
I let him stay there, foreheads touching, breath mingling, for as long as he needs. Then, gently, very gently, I take his right hand. The bad one. The hidden one. I uncurl his fingers from the fist they have been in since he came out of the building. I look at the knuckles, split, taped, ugly, and I bring his hand up to my mouth and I kiss it. Once. Right across the worst of it.
He makes a small sound. Like a sound coming out of him from somewhere he did not know was open.
"Give me the keys," I say.
"Wellsy."
"Give me the keys, Garrett. I am driving us home."
"You don't."
"I am driving us home. Please. Please let me drive us home. You need to sit down. You need to close your eyes. You need to not be in charge of anything for the rest of the night. Please. Let me."
He looks at me for a long second.
Then he reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and he puts the keys in my hand.
His fingers are cold.
I close mine around them.
"Okay," he says.
"Okay."
"Okay."
I unlock the car. I open the passenger door for him. I put my hand on the small of his back as he ducks in, and he lets me, and he settles into the seat with the slow heaviness of a man who has been on his feet for ten hours, and I close the door behind him.
I stand on the passenger side of the car for one more breath before I walk around to the driver's side.
I look up at the building.
Somewhere in there, on a concrete stairwell or in a hallway or in a town car already pulling away, is a man with the version I have never met, who has my boyfriend's jaw.
I think, very quietly, only to myself: you are not going to have him.
Then I walk around to the driver's side and I get in and I start the car.