Page 47 of The Official Problem
“No, I mean it.” Julie’s words crackled through the phone, distant and sharp. Every word ground through gritted teeth, each one cutting deeper than the last. “Your priority should have been taking care of Mom. If that meant I couldn’t stay in Paris, you should have told me. I’m a big girl, Matthieu. I would have understood.”
Matthieu wanted to scream—no, needed to—but he swallowed it down. Bile burned the back of his throat.
It wasn’t Julie’s fault. He knew that. Hadn’t it been his life’s mission to shield her from the worst of who their mother really was? To cover the tracks, the evidence, the scars she’d left on him. He’d spent their entire childhood carefully sweeping the mess that was his mother under the rug, hiding the signs of her unraveling. Tending to the late-night breakdowns. Taking the blows, both physical and emotional, so Julie wouldn’t have to.
He’d smiled through the pain, pretending everything was fine, even as he slipped further away. If anything, it was his fault for doing such a good job.
“My priority will never be taking care of that woman.” His voice cracked, bitterness bleeding out like poison. Heat surged through his veins, sharp and sudden. “She never gave a damn about taking care of me.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No, Julie. I do. The shit she put me through growing up. The physical abuse. The emotional blackmail. Always having to tiptoe around her moods…”
“She was sick.”
The words snapped him in two. His stomach twisted. For a moment, the world closed in around him, walls pressing against his chest. Matthieu inhaled sharply, held his breath, then counted down from ten as he exhaled slowly, trying not to shatter. The anger was already surging up, spilling over the fragile dam he’d built. He couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“No, she is sick. She wasn’t always. If she’d loved her children, she would’ve gotten help before things got this bad.”
“That’s unfair.”
“No, what’s unfair is that she gets to forget all of that. That she hurt her child every single day and never has to face it. What’s unfair is that we’re the ones stuck caring for her when she never gave a damn about us. That I have to pour thousands into medical care for a woman who either doesn’t remember me or can’t stand the sight of me. What’s really not fair is how much guilt I feel for even saying that. But I can’t do this anymore.”
The silence on the line made Matthieu wonder if Julie had hung up. Every second stretched like an eternity, the quiet pressing against his ears until it felt like space around him had folded inward.
Finally, she said, “So what? You’re not going to look after her anymore?”
“No. We both know I’ll keep paying for the center. But I’m done pretending to be the doting son. I can’t do the visits. I can’t take the memories they bring up. I can’t be that person anymore.”
“So she’ll just be alone?”
“She has the staff, the other residents… and you, if you still want to be in her life when you get back. I’m done with it.”
That realization should have felt freeing. Instead, it felt like slipping on another mask: the estranged, heartless son. The man who walked away from the only family he ever had. Because while his mother might have been a bad one, at least she stayed. His father hadn’t wanted him at all. Hell, Matthieu didn’t even know if the man was dead or alive, and now here he was, doing the exact same thing. Walking away from his mother when she needed him the most.
“Matthieu, she almost died,” Julie pleaded.
He might as well lean fully into this version of himself. It didn’t matter if Julie hated him—he already hated himself. Maybe things would be easier if she knew him for what he truly was: a complete and utter failure.
So he said it, the most ruthless thought clawing through his chest. “It would’ve been better if she had.”
He heard Julie’s breath catch, then a choked noise, like she was trying not to cry, not to scream. “It’s like I don’t even know you at all.”
The call ended with a click.
EIGHTEEN
KIERAN
Kieran always looked forward to crashing into his bed after long stretches of away games, even if he still struggled to see it as his own.
This particular set of games had been especially brutal. After the game in Montreal, the team flew out west and played back-to-back games against Vancouver, each a hard-fought win, then had their asses handed to them by both of Kieran’s former teams.
The game in Seattle had been especially demoralizing. The home crowd booed Kieran’s return to their ice like he hadn’t played five years for them or had any say in being traded. It threw him off his game all night. By the time the final buzzer sounded, he was the first off the ice and into the showers. He escaped as fast as his skates could carry him, dodging every reporter who tried to intercept him on the way.
Now that he was back in Jersey, all he wanted to do was curl up under his covers and lick his wounds. The only upside to the road trip was that it gave Kieran much-needed time to clear his head. He’d replayed his conversation with Cole over and over, trying to make it mean something other than what it did: that Kieran had to end whatever was happening with Matthieubefore it went any further. Somewhere over Oregon, on the team plane, he finally accepted the truth that Cole was right. Maybe that was why he had played so terribly in that last game.
On the flight home, he’d spent most of his time acting out the conversation in his head, where he told Matthieu no, put his foot down, and took back the offer he never should have made.
