Rafe doesn’t smile. “Ollie.”
My jaw locks. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, voice roughening. “I just… I can’t feel you. Not the way I used to.”
It isn’t a fight. That’s what makes it worse. If he yelled, if he accused, if he threw something at the wall, I could grab onto that. I could argue back. I could defend. I could do something.
Instead, he’s just telling the truth, and the truth sits between us like a closed door.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because it’s all I have.
Rafe’s jaw flexes. “Yeah,” he says, too flat. “Okay.”
He sounds polite, controlled, like we’re coworkers who stumbled into personal territory and need to retreat fast before we say the wrong thing.
I nod, throat burning. “Okay.”
We talk for another five minutes about schedules like it’s a business meeting. How many games I have. How many cities he has. What day he’s flying. What day I’m flying.
Transactions.
Fragments.
When we hang up, my room feels colder.
A week later, Rafe forgets to reply for a full day. It shouldn’t matter. We miss each other constantly now. We miss calls, texts, moments. I tell myself it’s normal. It’s the tour. It’s the League. It’s life.
But today, it lands wrong, because I’m already raw.
Because I send him something small—just a photo of the sunset outside the arena, orange bleeding into pink over the city—and he doesn’t respond. No heart emoji. Nopretty. Nomiss you. Nothing.
I tell myself he’s sleeping.
I tell myself he’s on a plane.
I tell myself he’s nursing a brutal hangover in a hotel bathroom somewhere, blinking against light and promising himself he’ll slow down tomorrow.
And more significantly, I tell myself that it’s fine.
Then that night, scrolling mindlessly in bed, I see it. A photo posted by some radio station. Rafe in the middle of a group of people I don’t recognize. He’s laughing, head tipped back, surrounded by warmth. Someone has their arm around his shoulders like they belong there.
He looks… held.
My stomach twists, and something ugly flickers through me before I can stop it. It isn’t fear he’ll cheat. It’s fear he won’t need me. It’s the sharp realization that I’m keeping our marriage in a locked room… and resenting him for living outside it.
I hate myself for it immediately, because what kind of man does that? What kind of husband builds a cage and then gets angry when the person he loves breathes air?
The next morning, at practice, the whispers start.
It’s not loud or even obvious. Just the kind of comments that drift through a locker room when guys think they’re talking about nothing.
Front office meetings that run long. My agent checking in more than usual. Teammates making jokes about “business,” about how nobody’s safe, about how you can play your heart out and still get moved like a piece on a board.
“Hope you like snow, Marshall,” one of the vets says with a grin that might be harmless or might not.
I laugh like it’s funny. My stomach drops anyway.
My agent calls later, just to “check in.” He asks how I’m feeling, how my body is holding up, how I’m liking my minutes. It’s too casual. Too timed.
