Noah’s expression shifts slightly then. Not pity. It’s sadder than that.
“Owen,” he says carefully, “your mother stayed because your father abused her. Not because she loved you too much.”
The air thins around me, so I look away immediately. Some disgusting little corner of me has always wondered if she could’ve escaped sooner if I hadn’t existed at all.
Noah studies me for a long moment before taking a slow sip of beer.
“You know everybody thinks I’m naturally calm, right?”
I blink. “You are calm.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I work at it.”
The bluntness of the answer makes me sit up slightly.
“I had a sister. We were close. When Natalie and her husband died in a car crash, I thought I was going to lose my damn mind.” There’s an old exhaustion underneath the evenness of his tone. “One second, I was living my normal life. The next time I was helping raise a grieving kid while trying to figure out how to survive my own grief at the same time.”
Vivian Metcalfe. Coach’s wife.
Right.
I’d almost forgotten that Noah stepped in and helped raise her after the accident.
“I remember being so angry all the time,” Noah admits. “At the driver. At the universe. At myself because I couldn’t fix any of it.”
I frown. “The driver was Molly’s uncle, right?”
“Arthur, yeah.”
Damn.
I knew that part of the story, but hearing it out loud still feels brutal.
Noah nods slowly. “Try navigating that emotionally.”
“How the hell did you?”
“I didn’t. Not at first.” He gives me a tired half smile. “I focused on hockey too much. Slept too little. Snapped at people I loved. Thought keeping everything buried made me strong.”
That lands a little too hard.
“One day, Viv asked me if I was mad at her.” Noah looks down at his beer bottle. “That about ripped my heart out.”
My chest twists painfully.
“So I got help,” he says simply. “Grief counseling first. Then regular therapy after I realized half my issues weren’t actually about grief at all.”
The honesty of it catches me off guard.
Noah laughs quietly at my expression. “What? You think emotionally stable people just wake up like this?”
“A little.”
“Absolutely not.” He points at me with his bottle. “Everything good in my life came after I stopped confusing emotional suppression with strength.”
The noise of the bar swells around us again for a moment. Somebody cheers loudly near the dartboards. Glasses clink. A waitress laughs. And sitting here across from Noah, an old wound inside me slowly starts to unclench.
“You know the difference between you and your father?” Noah asks eventually.
