“Yes, he knows about my ADHD. Not just the parts people laugh at.”
Another pause.
“No, he doesn’t treat me like I’m broken.”
His fingers loosened on my shirt, then gripped again.
“He helps,” Jace said. “Not in a fixing me way. He just stays when I get hard to be around.”
I had to close my hand into a fist against the counter.
Then Cal asked something that made Jace’s expression change.
His shoulders went up again.
“Because it’s complicated,” Jace said.
Cal’s voice sharpened.
Jace winced. “He’s my coach.”
No soft way to say it. No angle that made it smaller.
The phone went quiet.
Jace stared at the floor while his father spoke. His face moved through defensiveness first, then shame, then the hard acceptance of somebody hearing exactly what he already knew.
“I know,” he said. “We’re not pretending that part doesn’t matter. We talked to attorneys. Both of us. We’re going to disclose it before someone else finds out.”
Cal spoke again.
“Ownership. Management. The people who need to know first.” Jace rubbed a thumb across his eyebrow. “No, not the whole team tomorrow morning. Jesus, Dad.”
Another pause.
“Olivia knows there’s someone. She doesn’t know it’s me. Vanessa doesn’t know it’s him.”
The guilt in that sentence landed between us.
I felt it. I deserved to.
Cal’s reply came softer. Jace’s face changed with it. His mouth pressed tight, and for a second he looked like the boy from the photos in his dad’s house, too much responsibility in his eyes and a hockey stick in his hands.
“I hate that I hurt people,” he said.
Cal answered.
Jace let out a shaky breath. “That is not as comforting as you think it is.”
Another reply.
This time Jace laughed for real, small and wet. “Yeah, okay. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be.”
He listened for a while.
Then his gaze found me again.
“I love him,” he said.
