Page 10 of The Rest of the Story
“Come home,” Brody said. “Please.” He ran his fingers through Lawson’s hair, the move so identical to how sweetly Lawson had carded his fingers through Brody’s hair all night that Brody had to have known. He had to know that Lawson had stayed awake, on guard against the darkness and Brody’s nightmares, all while shielding Brody from his own agonies.
We drove in a caravan two blocks to Lawson’s house, me leading the way in my Jeep, Brody, Hazel, and Owen in their truck. On the way out the door, Owen eyed my old Wrangler and then elbowed Brody, who’d made a home for himself under his dad’s arm and against his side. “I see why you picked a Jeep,” Owen gently teased.
I let Brody show his parents around Lawson’s house. He’d been there more than I had, and he knew where the towels and the spare toothbrushes were kept. Kathy had texted, telling me her old captain, Dr. Hailey Stanton, had flown in last night from Indiana and was ready to meet with Brody as soon as possible. I texted her Lawson’s address and told her to come now.
We set up in Lawson’s family room, the three of them like ducks in a row on one leather sofa, me perched on the edge of a recliner with my feet flat on the ground. Put me on springs and I’d launch myself through the roof. Adrenaline was still beating like a drum through my muscles, filling me, fueling me, though the crash was coming up hard. Not yet, not yet. I still had miles to go and a thousand things to do before I could crawl back to Shea’s side and never leave again.
Dr. Stanton arrived twenty minutes later as I was refilling everyone’s coffee and brewing a fresh pot for her. She had as equally an impressive resume as Kathy’s. They’d been on the same Olympic teams, had won the same world championships. Her gold medals clanked when she held them in one hand. She was also warm, and kind, and she radiated that soft and gentle kind of welcoming that you don’t usually find in hypercompetitive athletes, even after they’ve retired. She made me want to sink into the sofa and start spilling my story, starting when I was fifteen and going right up to now.
“Please, call me Hailey,” she corrected when Owen called her “Dr. Stanton” and thanked her for coming. “And I’m happy to be here, and to help. Right now, what I want to do is listen. My philosophy is, the more you try and push something away, the greater control it has over you. Pushing something away gives it power, and power sows the seeds of terror. So when you’re clenching around something awful, and when you’re holding on and holding on, trying desperately not think about the past or what happened, all of your pain magnifies, and that’s when both terror and shame are given free rein to grow. Eventually, that terror, and the shame, and the pain, all feel like they’re strangling you. But when you confront that terror, and when you turn around and say to the pain that you’re not afraid any longer, you begin to break the stranglehold that all that darkness has over you. Talking is the first step of that journey. So I’d like to listen, Brody, to what you’re willing to share with us this morning.”
Brody sucked the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth. His feet started shuffling against Lawson’s carpet.
I felt like an intruder. I had no reason to be there, none at all. I rose and tried to slip out of the room.
“Morgan.” Brody’s voice stilled me. “Stay?”
“I don’t think I should be here for this.”
“I need you,” he said. “Please.”
With a voice like that, with a face like that, with a plea like that? I headed back to the recliner, but Owen scooted to one side and made space for me next to his son. That broke my fucking heart again, for the thousandth time in a single day.
I sat, and Brody leaned into my side. He was holding his mom’s hand, but he turned to look at me. Our eyes locked.
Brody and I had shared a lot of looks throughout the season. Laughing looks and serious looks, looks of boisterous joy and heady triumph, fierce concentration and never-give-up grit. Early on, during one of those looks that passed between us, Brody had decided he wanted to live, that he didn’t want to die anymore. When, how, where, I might never know. But something had happened that made him choose us, and living, and if he’d found that reason in any part of me, then he was welcome to excavate my soul for as long as he needed, in case he found another answer buried within me for him alone.
His gaze dropped, and he spoke to my chest for the first half an hour. His voice was almost disembodied, like he was reciting something that had happened to another man’s life: Coates, and how he’d latched on to Brody like a vicious tick. The mental fuckery, the domination. The put-downs. The shouting. The name-calling.
Then there was the incident in the showers at the arena downtown. Coates had kept Brody out for a bag skate, alone, and by the time they were done, no one was left in the dressing room. When Brody went to shower, the hot water had been turned off, and he was freezing and blue in his lips when he was finished. Coates had swiped all the towels, and he waited for Brody with his own sweaty practice jersey. “Put this on,” Coates had said. “You look cold.”
He’d turned from supposedly sweet and trying to be helpful to cruel in an instant, pinning Brody to the shower wall while he jacked off on him. It wasn’t about desire; it was about power. He took a picture after, of Brody shivering and vulnerable with Coates’ jersey hanging off his slender shoulders and brushing the tops of his come-stained thighs.
Coates then texted that picture to Brody, and he told Brody that he’d send it to everyone else, everyone in the world, spread around the league that Brody was a cock-sucking faggot who got on his knees for his captain and would do anything to make the team. Didn’t matter that that wasn’t close to being true. He’d told Brody,
I own you. I own you forever.
Brody fought back, as much as he could, until fatigue wore him down. Coates was too ruthless, too merciless, and the more Brody struggled against his dominion, the more Coates seemed to enjoy fucking Brody up. “He wasn’t ever able to, you know,” Brody said. His voice was hoarse, his words clenched and tight. “He kept trying, but he never could. And then Shea was there. Shea figured out something wasn’t right. He glued himself to me. That just pissed Coates off more. He kept texting, kept saying he would finish what he’d started.” He took a deep breath in, held it. “And then you showed up.” Brody’s eyes flicked to mine.
When Hailey asked about what led Brody from A to B to C—when he’d made his decision, when he’d written out his two notes, one for his parents and one for Shea, his new best friend, his guardian angel—
I couldn’t. I couldn’t listen to those details. Brody spoke with the determination of a man wanting to be exorcized, freed from the agonies of what Coates had inflicted on him. The least I could have done was listen, but Icouldn’t. My mind whipped to a dozen other things, turned his voice into a buzz saw, mashed up the words so I could stare at my hands and not hold on to this memory in that dark corner of my mind forever. If I did, if I heard, if I listened to Brody’s voice lay out how he’d planned on erasing himself, and if I allowed my brain to think about my life, Shea’s life, Lawson’s life, the team’s lives, and Owen and Hazel’s life, without Brody, I’d splinter into a billion pieces.
His words moved around me like I was inside of a tornado, feeling the force and the fury, but all I heard was a roar.
I rose again, moved to the corner, shoved my hands in my pockets, and chewed my lip to shreds. Owen slid into my spot and wrapped his arm around Brody’s waist, and Brody folded into his dad’s side the exact same way he must have when he was three years old and his dad was his original superhero who could make everything wrong in the world right.
Owen would do it again, I had no doubt. No doubt in my mind, at all, that between Owen and Hazel, and Lawson on his way, and Shea waiting to wake up, and Hailey Stanton’s expertise, and the whole team at his back, that Brody would recover. He’d move through this pain, climb out of this darkness, and find the path he’d been walking before Coates slammed into his life. He’d get back on his feet, this time stronger, with the nightmares scoured from his bones and these ghosts burned out of his mind, and he would befree.
We all would be free.
Thirty-Two
Hailey stayedwith Brody and his parents long after I made my goodbyes. I told Brody I needed to get back to Shea, who would be waking up soon, and Brody did a shuffle step and asked me if he could come see Shea, and that he wanted to talk to him about everything.
Put a guy with a shattered femur and orders to keep his heart rate down in a room with his best friend who had a soul-breaking secret to share? I bet the surgeon wouldn’t like that, not one bit, but I told Brody to come to the hospital with his parents when Hailey said it was okay.
My adrenaline was fading fast, but I had enough dragging through my veins to drive back to the hospital and haul myself up to Shea’s room. He was right where I’d left him, still tucked in bed with my hoodie, my sleeve and my wrist cupped around his cheek. Amelia and John were spooned together and asleep in the room’s second bed, facing Shea so they could open their eyes and see their son the first moment he stirred. I was honestly surprised Amelia hadn’t tied bells to Shea’s wrist to wake her if he moved.
