Page 124 of The Assist
“Gone where?”
“Back home. She just texted after she drove off.”
Mum exhales like she knows exactly what that means. “Did something happen between you?”
“Only everything.” I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. “It’s all gone to hell, Mum. Someone leaked pictures of us. There are articles. Social media’s tearing her apart, calling her unprofessional. And now the team’s investigating. She went to talk to the GM this morning, probably tried to fix it, and then she just left.”
“She’s protecting herself,” Mum says quietly. “Trying to breathe before it drowns her.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But she shouldn’t have to do it alone.”
“Neither should you.”
I pause. There’s a silence between us that carries weight. Years of things we haven’t said. Of phone calls I should’ve made. Moments I should’ve reached out. I never really let her in, not since Dad started being a prick. Not since I started holding everything so tight I forgot how to let it go.
“She believed in me,” I say, voice cracking. “Even when I didn’t have faith in myself. Even when I acted like a selfish prick. She still saw something good in me.”
“She’s not the only one,” Mum says.
I choke a laugh. “You’re biased.”
“I’m your mother. I’m allowed to be. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
I lean back against the wall. “I don’t know what to do, Mum. I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You can’t fix it all at once,” she says. “You just have to show up. Keep being the man she saw in you. The one who stayed when things got hard.”
“What if I’m not that man?”
“You are,” she says firmly. “You’ve just never let yourself believe it.”
I press my fist to my chest like it might keep everything from spilling out. “I love her, Mum.”
“I know.”
“And it’s not just about her. She makes me feel like I matter. Like I’m more than just goals, the speed and hype.”
“Because you are,” she says. “You always were.”
It hits how starved I’ve been for that kind of affirmation. How little of it I ever got from Dad. From coaches. From anyone who didn’t have something to gain from me being a machine on the ice.
But Mia? She never wanted anything from me exceptme.
And I let her walk away thinking she had to handle this on her own.
“Mum?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to be the reason she walks away from the job she’s worked her whole life for.”
“Then don’t be.”
I blink. “It’s not that simple.”
“No, it’s not,” she agrees. “But if you love her, you don’t let the world paint her into a villain and stay silent. You stand beside her. You fight with her.”
I nod slowly. “I’m scared.”
