Unsteady

My hands are shaking.

Considering there is nothing on the table, albeit a misshapen mug from my mother’s limited foray into pottery, I clench my fists as I wait.

This is ridiculous. A bad idea.

Except I know this is the right choice.

After waking to a pounding headache and an exhausted Bennett slumped against my bedroom wall where he’d kept watch over me all night, I was tormented to a replay of the evening.

I think I’m in love with her.

Good god. But fuck, if it wasn’t true, at least somewhat.

Give me two more weeks of her snappy attitude and smoky giggle and I would be.

Immediately after he finished telling me what I did—and said—I reached for my phone and sent an apology—arguably too quickly and desperately. And, like all my messages since her last one, it went unanswered. If she’s still receiving my texts, I’m sure I look insane. Maybe she thinks I am, considering we were only hooking up in her eyes and I told the girl I was falling in love with her.

Bennett hadn’t been willing to let it go—so, I told him. He looked angry the entire time, but that’s a usual expression for the controlled goalie.

But then, he hugged me. Tight. Loving.

His eyes were wet with tears as he looked at me and said, “If you’d told us, told me, we could’ve helped. Things would’ve been different.”

I knew that was true as he said it, but still, I told him not to tell anyone else on the team. Bennett could know, he should have known from the start, but this wasn’t just for everyone. This pain is my own, as is who I choose to share it with.

But… there is one more who deserves to know.

“Chto eto?” The gruff Russian is still chipper as my father pads down the last step into the kitchen. “What’s this?” he repeats in English, finishing off the top button of his shirt.

He’s dressed for work—which for him means an interview, a press event or something for my mother.

“Do you have a minute?”

I watch as he measures the expression on my face, perhaps even my body language. He’s always been good at that, one of his strengths in the league. His face turns stern and he nods.

“Do we need your mother here?”

“No.” I shake my head. Mostly because no matter how I try to hide, she knows everything. “Just you.”

He sits at the table without prompting. I’m at the head, where he takes the side closest to me.

“Do you want a coffee?” I ask, suddenly desperate to stall.

He shakes his head, waiting patiently.

My parents and I have always been close. I think if I’d chosen to go anywhere else in the world for school, they would’ve found themselves moving there. And… I’ve never minded it. It was a saving grace when I was hurt, even if it was hard to see through the pain.

“My son,” he whispers, his hand patting mine before mimicking my posture almost exactly. Not intentionally, but because we are made of the same materials. Like a replica of his youth—is that what he sees?

My son. My son. My son.

It plays again, like that permanent scratch on a record, a glitch in my memory that brings an immediate headache. I try to play Sadie’s songs in my head, looping the Oasis song again and again.

Still, I can’t get the goddamn words out.

“I’m not okay,” I shove through my lips.

“Vchistuyu,” he whispers, a sad smile stretching across his face. It’s a word I don’t recognize from my partial, limited Russian.

“I don’t know that.” I shake my head, my throat catching.

“Finally.” He smiles but it’s watery. Between him and my mother, the intensity of emotions in this house has always been welcoming. After the hit, it was stifling. Now… now it is starting to feel like home again. “It means finally, Rhys. You’re going to tell me what’s going on now. What is hurting you?”

My brow furrows as I look up at him. “How did you—”

“I know I am not your mother.” He raises his hand to silence my protests. “But along with her, you are the most important thing in my life. I would bleed myself dry if it meant I could take your pain for you. Now, tell me.”

So I do. Working all out of order, because I know what is going to be hardest to say.

I tell him of the panic attacks at night, the night terrors that Mom had to shake me awake from multiple times. I tell him about starting the sleeping pills prescribed to me, how it made me lose memory, or how one minute I’d be in the kitchen making lunch, and then suddenly I’d drive nearly to the harbor—that it scared me enough to stop taking them and just deal with the nightmares.

I’m honest when he asks if I still have them. I do.

I tell him about the panic attacks on the ice when I first started back, and his face looks distraught with the details. I know it’s because I didn’t ask for his help, that he knows I was hurting and scared and alone—only I wasn’t alone. So, I tell him that too, about Sadie and her music and everything else about her that brings me some kind of peace.

He smiles at that, his eyes wet as he stays silent and lets me get it all out.

And then, I tell him why this is the first time he’s heard it.

“In the hospital,” I begin, looking at my hands splayed on the oak. “I couldn’t really see anything or remember much that I could. But I could hear you, over everyone that was there, I kept hearing you.”

I could still smell that harsh antiseptic mixed with metal, my hands trying to pat down and rub at my unseeing eyes, when a nurse had to hold them down. My mother was crying; I could just faintly tell because the loudest noise was my father’s sobbing yells.

My son! My son—help him. Please.

And then, I can’t live without him. Not my son—he can’t do this to me.

It wasn’t some grand hurtful thing, and it would take more than two sessions of therapy to understand it, but his screams haunted me. I’d never seen my dad upset or afraid before. And when I was at my highest point of fear, the calm, steady presence of my father wasn’t there—just panic.

So, I keep everything to myself. Because I love my dad, and I never want to hear him like that again.

I tell him all of this before I work up the courage to look at him.

His eyes, so like my own, are shining as tears drop down his face.

And then, he’s moving, his arms around me before I can blink, trapping me to my seat in a fierce hug.

“My son,” he whispers into my hair, and this time there isn’t a bolt of fear or panic that rushes my spine. Just warmth. “I’m so sorry, Rhys. Prosti menya, pozhaluysta.” Forgive me, please.

“You didn’t do anything—”

“I did,” he says, holding me somehow tighter, before letting go and settling back into his seat. The lump in my throat is still there, hard enough to swallow through, so I don’t reach for the coffee that I desperately want. “I should have been there, should have stepped back to see what it was you needed. But seeing you like that, the blood on the ice, the way your body gave out—”

I stop him with a hand and he nods.

“It’s still too hard to think about it. Makes my head swim.”

“Because you can’t remember it?”

I nod.

“Thank you, Rhys. For telling me everything, for letting me in.” He clears his throat and wipes away the tears from his cheeks before meeting my gaze. “Listen to me closely. I don’t care if you toss your skates in the trash tomorrow, I don’t care what you choose to do for the rest of your life as long as you’re happy.” He chuckles and relaxes back into the chair.

“If you’d picked up a basketball all those years ago, I’d be courtside for the rest of my life with one of those big foam fingers. If you take up a paint brush, I’ll buy every piece that we have walls for. If you use that big brain of yours for engineering or law—I’ll do whatever I can to show I support you until my last breath.”

“I want to play hockey. I do,” I insist, because I know I still want this—it’s just buried beneath panic and pain.

“Still. This”—he gestures widely—“this life we have, it’s nothing without you safe and happy. That is all I want. I love you, son.”

Tears form at the corners of my eyes and I try to hold them back. “I love you.”

There is a long stretch of silence, as something new settles into my bones. The numbness is still there, but it isn’t overwhelming. It’s… it’s just there.

“Let’s go to the rink today,” he offers just as my mother descends the staircase, dressed in slacks and a nice shirt. He goes to her instantly, like it’s muscle memory and I wonder if he felt this all-consuming craze for my mother like I do with Sadie.

I shake my head. “You’ve got things to do today—and I do too. But, this week?”

He smiles and nods. I do the same.

It feels a bit more like I’m really home.