“I won’t stop you,” I mutter, pulling some cash out of my wallet. I hitvendon a chocolate bar. “Do you know why Mattias was so mad tonight?”
Poirier gives me a knowing look.
“What?”
“Don’t give me that, Hearst.”
A cold fist squeezes my heart as he gives breath to my anxieties. Does he know about the sale? My breath hitches, and I wonder who else might know—if this is all going to spiral out of my control, corrupting everything like the Shimmer inAnnihilation.
“I don’t know what went down between you two. Mattias isn’t exactly the chatty type,” he continues, and I exhale a little of the breath I was holding in. He doesn’t know. “But whatever it is, it fucked him up. So did you cut it off with him or what?”
I’m unsure of exactly how much I should say.
“I didn’t cut things off. He did. But I deserved it,” I say finally.
Poirier looks a little surprised, then frowns. “Did you cheat on him?”
I quickly shake my head. “Nothing like that. We were never even together. He just…found out some things about me that I’m not proud of. I’m sure you’ll hear about it sooner or later.” I briefly wonder what Poirier will think of me—if he’ll soon be looking at me with the same disgust Mattias does when he learns what I’ve done. If he’ll remember coming to my office, trying to protect his friend, knowing he was right to be wary.
I tense, thinking about how horrible it’s going to be to air all my dirty laundry on the big screen like that, in front of all of them. I blink those thoughts away. I won’t get cold feet.
“I get it,” Poirier says. Rather than look at him, because I don’t trust my face, I focus overly hard on unwrapping my candy bar. “We all do shit we’re not proud of sometimes. Doesn’t mean you don’t care about him.”
“I don’t know, Poirier. It was pretty bad.”
“Am I wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You still care about him, don’t you? You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
I look up at the ceiling tiles. “Yes, I do care about him, but he doesn’t want me to anymore. He’d probably tell me to leave if he knew I was here.”
To my surprise, Poirier pulls me into a hug. “You two are some real idiots, you know. And I’ve met a lot of idiots.”
To my surprise, I laugh—even though the hug pains me, with how uncertain I am about Poirier’s future.
“Mattias will come around. That old geezer’s too lonely to turn away people that love him. Trust me, I know from experience,” Poirier says.
I freeze. Love? Is that what this is? I’ve never been in love before, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be so painful.
I’m not acknowledging that.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” My voice nearly cracks as I look up at Poirier.
“Has to be. Have you met the guy?”
He has a point.
We make our way back to the waiting area. Some of the team has dozed off and a glance at the clock tells me it’s after midnight. I pull out my phone and doomscroll to take my mind off things.
“Darius Marshall?” a nurse with a clipboard comes through the double doors sometime after two in the morning. She pulls Coach Marshall aside and presumably gives him the update on Mattias’s condition. I strain to hear, but all I can make out is something about his insurance policy, which makes me want to throw my chair through the lobby window. He’s suffering through a head injury and they’re talking about billing.It’s just business, says my father’s voice in my head.
Coach’sface turns uncharacteristically grim. He nods along to whatever the nurse is saying and then he finally makes his way over here. I brace myself. Häkkänen elbows Poirier and Fontenot awake.
“Grade 3 concussion. They’ve admitted him to the hospital to keep an eye on him for a few days. He’s got some minor brain swelling due to what they think is aggravation of a prior head injury, but with some rest he should be fine.”
My stomach unfurls, if only a little.
