CHAPTER NINETEEN
JONAH
Because it waslife and not some fucking Hallmark miracle movie, Alexio didn’t ask for me, and I didn’t rot in the waiting room until he changed his mind. Eventually, I got tired and hungry and sore, and Vanya managed to convince me to go home. He tried to insist on staying at my place, but in that moment, I just wanted to be by myself.
I needed a good, hard cry and…I didn’t know what. A shower. Probably some food. A shot of moonshine made in the wilds of Appalachia that would knock me unconscious for seven days?
It was hard to tell.
Instead, I slept. Sort of. It was more like drifting in and out of consciousness, but the only thing I managed was compartmentalizing enough to show up for morning practices and evening games. We had two that week, then a two-day stretch of nothing before the first playoff game of the season.
It was at home, which was…something, I guess. And it was against the Fury, which was something even more because it meant playing against Micah. We hadn’t spoken since I’d textedhim to let him know our dad was settled, and he didn’t ask how I was.
The distance between us felt like a fucking canyon, and part of me wanted to do something about it because in this moment, I wanted my fucking brother to be there for me, but I also didn’t want to ask for help.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it.
If I tried, I was going to fall apart.
Vanya managed to coerce a key out of Tucker, and I came home two nights in a row to find food on my counter and a text on my phone letting me know that I needed to eat. I sent him back a heart, but the food went into the fridge, and the only thing I was able to choke down was a protein shake so I didn’t collapse on the ice.
Nikos had no updates about Alexio except that he could see light and shadows and movement, and that was increasing each day that his swelling went down. So…it was something. But there was no telling where that something would plateau.
Head injuries were tricky, and I couldn’t pretend to understand what he was going through. I’d never been seriously injured on the ice. I’d never really lost anything.
But the pain of him shutting me out was killing me.
The night before our first game against the Fury, there was a knock on the door, and I didn’t bother getting up from where I was rotting on the couch. I had a giant cup of chamomile tea cooling between my hands, a vague hope of settling my stomach before the morning, and I wasn’t in the mood to be plied with platitudes or attempts to feed me.
Then I heard the lock click, and my heart twisted in my chest because there was the sound of a white cane tip hitting the wall and then the thud of someone hanging it on the hook next to mine.
Only one person did that.
My chin wobbled as my brother got closer. “Are you on the couch?”
“Mhm,” I managed.
He didn’t ask me where I was. His footsteps shuffled closer, and then his hands touched my legs and traced their way up to my torso, and eventually landed on my shoulders. “Jonah” was all he said.
And that was when I lost it. For the first time since the accident, I cried. I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. The sobs trapped in my chest were raw and painful and ugly, and came out in a harsh wheeze as Micah tucked me against his chest and held me.
“Tucker told me everything.” There was a strange note in his voice I couldn’t read.
Fuck. Was he mad at me?
“You could have told me. Jesus, Jonah, I would have been here. I would have…”
“I’m sorry,” I managed to get out.
“No. Shit, I—no. I’m just saying that I know I have whatever going on, but I would have been here. I heard about Zeki and…god, I didn’t know you two were that serious.”
I sniffed and swiped my sleeve under my nose before pulling back and scrubbing the tears off my face. “A few people know. We weren’t really telling anyone yet. I think both of us wanted to wait until playoffs were over. I’d barely seen him over the last few weeks. Since, you know, we decided we were something.”
His hands found mine, and he squeezed my fingers the same way he used to do when we were little and our mom was being insufferable.
I took several breaths. “He won’t let me in to see him.”
“So?”
