Page 188 of Make the Play

I blow out a sigh. “Define okay.”

She hums. That soft, familiar sound that always came before a hug or a mug of cocoa or a long drive with my favorite music.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks.

“No,” I say, then pause. “Yeah.”

She doesn’t rush me, never has. It’s something she does instinctively—leaves space for the things I don’t know how to say.

“You were fighting,” she says eventually. “Hard. Not hockey-hard. Something harder. You were fighting a ghost out there and losing.”

My throat tightens. “It’s not about the game.”

“I know.”

Silence settles between us, warm and weighted. I shift in my seat, pick at the tape around my wrist.

She speaks again, soft as ever. “You’ve only ever looked like that once before.”

I don’t ask when, because I can still see the fluorescent lights of that hospital hallway. My mom standing there with a too-big coat over her shoulders and tears drying on her face. Holding me like I wasn’t the reason Jordan was in a bed down the hall with frostbitten toes and a future he’d never get back.

No one ever blamed me, not once. Not when I fell through the ice. Not when I screamed his name, not when I ran barefoot across frozen gravel and dirt to get help.

But that’s the thing about guilt—it doesn’t need permission to stay.

“I’m not ten anymore.”

“No, you’re not. But you’re still my kid and I can tell when you’re not okay.”

I exhale a breath and let the moment sit.

“You remember that night?” I murmur.

“I remember you crying in my arms,” she says. “And I remember thinking you’d never cry like that again unless something broke you.”

My voice is hoarse. “I’m not broken, Ma.”

“No,” she agrees. “But something’s cracked you open. And whatever it is… you don’t have to carry it alone.”

My jaw clenches. “I don’t know how to let it go.”

“You don’t have to, just don’t pretend it’s not there.”

I nod even though she can’t see me, throat burning and hand aching.

“She’s not here, and I want her to be,” I eventually whisper.

Mom doesn’t ask who she is, I’ve never spoken to her about Zoe in much detail. But she would’ve seen all the press like everyone else.

“Sometimes love shows up like a storm. But when it leaves, it doesn’t take the weather with it.”

I frown. “What the hell does that mean?”

She laughs, low and tired. “It means you’ve always been good at surviving the chaos. You just have to figure out how to survive the quiet, too.”

I close my eyes, soaking in her words. Relishing that she still knows me so well, even though I’ve been such a bad son to her recently. And I listen.

There’s water dripping from the kitchen tap. My knuckles are still bleeding. My heart’s in the hallway somewhere, waiting for a voice that hasn’t come back.

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