I couldn't answer—because honestly, no one took care of me. I had built my entire life around being the one who took care of other people. The only person who had ever come close was sitting across from me right now.
"Jamie." He said my first name so rarely that when he did, it always landed differently.
"I'm fine," I said. I smiled—the automatic one, the one that managed rooms of people and deflected attention. The one that kept people from looking too closely.
"I know." He picked up his coffee again. "That's not what I asked."
We finished breakfast. He got to the check first. Abbott did that sometimes, paying for breakfast without announcement—as if feeding me was a natural extension of his day. We walked back to the hotel. There was a bite to the air—typical for a Midwestern city in October. We walked close enough that our arms brushed. Once. Twice. I stopped counting after five.
The rest of the day passed in the soft routine of a road trip off-day. Some of the guys went to a movie. Theo dragged Luca to a bookstore. I texted back and forth with Mikkola about the game plan for tomorrow. Abbott read in the hotel room—an actual book, a paperback that he'd packed in his carry-on. Because Abbott brought actual books on road trips.
I watched him read. He didn't notice—or if he did, he let me. He sat in the desk chair with his legs stretched out and the book held at an angle that caught the afternoon light through the window. He was relaxed. His face had the looseness of a man who had stopped processing the world and was just living in it.
That night in the hotel bathroom, I was brushing my teeth and staring at myself in the mirror, thinking about what Abbott said—the way he chose his words, notthe part where someone else takes care of youbutthe part where someone takes care of you.The first version was generic advice. The second version was an offer, disguised as a question.
Maybe I was reading too much into it. I was good at reading rooms and good at reading people. The dangerous corollary was that sometimes you saw things that weren't there. Sometimes the pattern recognition generated false positives. Sometimes the person sitting across from you in a diner was just asking a normal question about your life and the only reason it hit so hard was because you were carrying something you were afraid to face.
I'd made peace with my life. I was thirty years old and a professional athlete—well-liked and well-connected. The team had become my family. I had a best friend who knew what coffee I drank and asked me questions that went more than surface deep.
What more could you want?
The answer came from my body itself, the way physical knowledge precedes conscious thought. What I wanted had a name and a face. He was in the next room, already in bed, probably reading something on his phone with his glasses on.
I hadn't known Abbott wore reading glasses until this road trip. He put them on at night to read. They were simple wire frames, and they changed his face in a way that made my hands unsteady.
I gripped the edge of the sink. The porcelain was cool under my palms. In the mirror, my expression was reorganizing itself, putting a mask on, preparing to walk into a room and be the version of me that didn't want anything it couldn't have.
Except.
This road trip—this room, the dark conversations and the shared bed and the diner. Abbott had saidthe part where someone takes care of you, not as an observation but as astatement of intent. He was telling me that someone existed who would do that job if I would stop pretending.
I was reading too much into it. The only reason it hit like a fissure opening was because my feelings were getting harder to suppress.
I rinsed my toothbrush and turned off the light. I walked into the room where Abbott was, in fact, already in bed with his glasses on, reading something on his phone.
"Goodnight, Abbott."
He looked up, over his glasses. "Goodnight, Hayes."
I got into my side of the bed.
The part where someone takes care of you.
I lay in the dark for a long time and listened to Abbott's breathing.
9
Abbott
Coach Reeves found me in the hotel lobby at 9 AM. He was holding a tablet and coffee. His expression told me he'd already made a decision and was informing me of it rather than consulting me.
"Walsh is sitting tonight. Rest game. You're starting."
"Okay."
"Puck drops at seven. Be ready."
"I'll be ready."
