Page 155 of Breakaway Hearts

“If one player does something like that, but everyone else on the team has his back and stays silent…you’ve got an entire team of men that aren’t safe to be around, and I’m definitely not the only one it happened to, so…”

“No sports.” Mom understands. “But the boy you’ve been seeing, who has you smiling again…”

I scrunch my eyebrows, wondering if Jason told her, but she looks at me with that ‘a mother always knows’ look.

“He’s on the team with Jason,” I agree, bracing myself for her judgment, not that I think she’ll call me a hypocrite, but she’d be within her rights to.

Instead, she looks at me like she sees, and understands. That I trust him as much as I possibly can, and he makes me happy…I just need to stop expecting him to betray me.

“Your father would have murdered that boy if he was here.”

“I know.”

“I have half a mind to⁠—”

“Don’t,” I ask of her, though I’m sure she wouldn’t really. “He’s taken so much from me; I don’t want to give him anymore.”

She nods, but there’s a sad look.

“What?”

“Nothing, sweetheart.”

“I can take it.”

I probably can’t, but I still want to hear it.

“Aren’t you already letting him take more?” she asks gently. “By making yourself small, giving him the game you’ve always loved, letting him kick you out of your arena? I’m sorry, this isn’t the kind of advice I normally give you, but it’s what your father told me, whenever I let someone else stop me from doing something that brings me joy. ‘Why are you giving them that power?’ he’d ask me. My instinct is to hold you close and never let anyone hurt you again, but then I hear his voice, and I hate that boy for what he did to you, but also for making you miss out on prom and Jason’s scholarship, and supporting the people you love when he’s the one who should be ashamed to show his face.”

I remember the slightly harsher words of the woman at the shelter, when I tried to mirror her ‘I’m not a victim’ mentality, and she told me, in the nicest tone possible, ‘Then act like it, sweetie.’

“I should be at that game.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, sweetheart.”

“But it’s what Dad would say…Not about this particular situation, obviously, because he’d be in jail, but about bullies or when a boy on the team didn’t want me to play with them. I had every right to be there, yet I was letting the assholes win, when they didn’t deserve to.”

“I believe he called them bumholes,” she corrects me.

“Do you mind if I come back next week? Maybe with Jason?”

“Or with your new beau?” she suggests.

“Maybe.”

“Maddie, you definitely don’t have to go to this game, you have nothing to prove to anyone…but if you want to go, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ve got this.”

“I love you.”

“Love you more.”

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Owen

Gloves are off

“Ouf!” All the air exits my lungs when a guy twice my size—and I am not small—shoves me into the boards. I recover quick enough, or at least my body springs back into action before I resume breathing, and we fight over the puck until I finally manage to shoot it to Donovan.