Prologue
Some people are naturals at happiness. They slip into it the way other people slip into a pair of jeans or trust funds: easily and entirely unfairly.
I am not one of those people.
Take right now, for instance. I’m standing in my kitchen watching Petra Montgomery fold fresh tortellini with the kind of care that makes you wonder if there’s anything she can’t perfect through sheer force of will. Her blonde hair catches the late afternoon light streaming through windows that finally have curtains worth closing, and I’m hit with that specific brand of disbelief that comes from realizing your life has somehow become better than you had ever imagined.
The apartment smells like fresh garlic and tomato sauce. Petra hums something Russian while she works—probably Tchaikovsky because even her unconscious soundtrack operates at a higher cultural level than my conscious playlist choices. She’s wearing one of my old New York Sentinels t-shirts and nothing else, which is doing things to my concentration that would violate several workplace safety regulations if this were an office instead of domestic bliss.
“You’re staring,” she says without looking up. I can hear the smile in her voice.
“I’m appreciating,” I correct as I lean against the counter. “There’s a difference.”
She glances up. “Is there?” Her blue eyes catch mine with a look that makes me forget hockey exists.
I’m supposed to have a witty comeback here. Something charming and self-deprecating that makes her laugh while simultaneously proving I’m worth keeping around. Instead, my brain short-circuits because, as I said (and it bears repeating), Petra Montgomery is inmykitchen wearingmyshirt, making dinner like we’re the type of couple who does this regularly, like this is our life now.
Over the last few months, I’ve learned that happiness is less a possession and more of a streaming current. You can cup your hands around it, but try to contain it too tightly, and it seeps through the cracks, gone for good.
The playoffs are on the horizon, and I’m playing the best hockey of my career. My hamstring finally remembers how to be a functional body part instead of a vengeful enemy. The team’s gelling, my contract situation looks promising, and I’m dating a professional ballerina who somehow thinks I’m worth her time. Everything isperfect.
Which is exactly why I’m terrified. Hockey taught me how to take a hit, but happiness is the first thing that ever made me flinch.
Petra sets down her knife and crosses to me, flour coating her fingers as she reaches up to put her hands around me. I love when she does stuff like this.
“What’s that look?” she asks, studying my face with the intensity she usually reserves for analyzing choreography.
“Nothing,” I say, because explaining that I’m waiting for the universe to remember it made a clerical error in bestowing this happiness upon me would kill the mood.
Then I add, “Just thinking about how lucky I am.”
She smiles. It starts small then blooms across her entire face. “We both are lucky, Liam.”
Later, after dinner, we’re tangled together on the couch watching some forgettable Netflix series while she traces absent patterns on my chest. Her breathing has settled into the rhythm of someone completely relaxed, completely here, mine in a way that feels both permanent and impossible.
This is happiness, I think. This moment, this life I’ve stumbled into despite being qualified for none of it. This feeling of having found something worth keeping, something that makes all the injuries and setbacks and humiliations feel like necessary detours leading here.
But here’s the thing about being a professional athlete who’s spent his career getting blindsided by hits he didn’t see coming: you develop an instinct for knowing when something’s about to go sideways. A sixth sense for the moment before everything changes. And lying here in my finally-adult apartment, holding the woman who taught me that strength and grace aren’t mutually exclusive, I can feel it—that looming pressure that precedes a catastrophic storm even when the sky still looks clear.
This isn’t where our story begins. That would be too easy, too much like the rom-coms where damaged people fix each other through the healing power of love and good timing.
No, our story starts months ago when I set out to find the perfect birthday present for a six-year-old.
Chapter One
Sometimes I think my life’s a cosmic joke, only no one bothered to let me in on the punchline.
I’m seated in a plastic chair clearly engineered by someone with a vendetta against the human hip bone, watching highlights of last night’s game on a wall-mounted TV. The New York Sentinels won without me. Again. And honestly? The bitter little voice in my head—the one that sounds suspiciously like my mother when she’s disappointed—keeps whispering that maybe they’re better off that way.
I used to be Liam LeClerc, rising star. Now I’m just Liam LeClerc, question mark. The comma between who you were and who you’re becoming is the loneliest punctuation mark in existence. It promises continuation but guarantees nothing.
The training room smells like industrial-strength disinfectant and broken dreams, which feels fitting. I shift in this torture-device of a chair, and my hamstring—my stubborn, vindictive hamstring—fires off another sharp reminder of why I’m here instead of out there on the ice with my teammates. Eight months. Eight months of this endless two-step between hope and reality, between the player I was and the player I’m starting to think I might never be again.
You’ll get back out there soon,everyone says, their voices heavy with the kind of forced optimism usually reserved for terminal diagnoses. Nobody believes it anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I ever did.
The cold therapy machine attached to my leg hums like it’s trying to sing me a medically inspired lullaby, but all I can hear is the sound of opportunity slipping away. On the TV, some rookie with perfect teeth and a cooperative hamstring beams into the camera, rambling about howgratefulhe is for the chance to contribute. The kid hasn’t earned his place yet. Hasn’t learned that hockey, like anything worth loving, will find new and inventive ways to break your heart.
I’m so lost in my spiral of self-pity that I don’t notice Dewey Carter until he’s practically on top of me.
