I sit back on the bench, towel draped around my neck, sweat cooling on my skin, and let myself exist in it. The noise. The laughter. The easy weight of belonging. No spirals. No dread. No searching the room for what’s missing. Just this moment, earned and solid, wrapped in the certainty that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
When PR taps my shoulder, I know what’s coming.
The walk to the interview area feels longer than usual, but I’m steady. Cameras flash and a reporter shoves a mic toward me, breathless with excitement.
“Big win tonight. Talk us through that first goal.”
I do. I talk about the play, the pass, the way we stuck to our structure. About the team. Always the team. Another question. Then another. Hockey, hockey, hockey.
Then it shifts.
“Callum, there’s been a lot of attention off the ice lately. Fans are wondering, where do things stand now?”
I know what they’re asking. Who they’re actually asking about. I don’t tense or don’t brace. I answer calmly.
“She doesn’t owe me anything,” I say. “I made mistakes. I’m working through them. I’ll wait.”
There’s a pause. The reporter blinks, clearly thrown.
“No pressure on her?” someone else asks.
“None,” I say simply. “She gets to decide what she wants. I respect that.”
The questions move on after that. They always do. But something interesting happens when the clip hits social media later. The response isn’t vicious. It isn’t hungry. It’s kind.
Fans comment about growth. About accountability. About letting someone choose instead of clinging. The narrative shifts, subtly but unmistakably. No one mentions Talia. Not once. She’s not a headline, not a footnote. Just gone, like noise that finally lost its power.
Back in the flat, long after the adrenaline fades, I sit on the edge of my bed and let the stillness in. My phone is face down on the table. I don’t check it. I don’t need to but I do think about Rose.
About the way she looked at me in the park, all clear-eyed, careful, brave. About how she walked away not because she was broken, but because she was strong enough to choose herself. Loving her like this hurts in a way that’s clean, almost holy. And I understand something I should’ve learned years ago. Love isn’t about being chosen at all costs. It’s about becoming someone worthy of the choice.
I lie back, staring at the ceiling, the echo of the crowd still ringing faintly in my ears. Tomorrow, there will be another practice. Another game. Another chance to show up the right way.
Whatever happens with Rose, I’ll keep playing honest hockey, living honest days, waiting without grasping.
This is who I should’ve been all along.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ROSE
Healing doesn’t arrive like a revelation.
There’s no moment where I wake up and feel fixed, whole, or certain. No dramatic exhale where everything suddenly makes sense and the fear dissolves. It’s slower than that. It creeps in sideways, disguised as small choices and honest thoughts I don’t immediately run from.
What I notice first is that I don’t feel hollow anymore.
The ache is still there, it’s like a low thrum under my ribs, a bruise I keep pressing just to see if it hurts, but it isn’t consuming me. I can sit with it now without folding in on myself. I can breathe through it. I can go hours without replaying the same moments on a loop: Talia at the door. The headlines. The way my trust fractured so cleanly it felt like it shattered all at once.
I’m still cautious. Still guarded. But I’m standing again. That has to count for something.
Clara and I sit on the floor of her flat with takeaway cartons balanced between us, the TV on but muted. Neither of us is paying attention to it anyway. She keeps stealing my fries. I keep letting her.
“You’re quieter,” she says eventually, not accusing. Observant. “In a different way.”
I shrug, picking at the edge of the cardboard box. “I think I’m tired of being loud inside my own head.”
She hums softly. “That tracks.”
