Page 172 of Dear #47, You're the Worst
“Go.”
We push off, hauling the heavy sleds. I stacked them with thick metal plates, so every stride burns. At the blue line, we stop and pivot back to center. The starts and stops are brutal, the sleds yanking against us.
My lungs are on fire by the end.
Silas doesn’t even wait for me to call it. He pushes off again, relentless. By the time we finish a full set, my legs are shaking, sweat dripping into my eyes.
Jett drops to his knees, bracing his hands on them. “Bet you wish you’d just talked now.”
“We needed the cardio.” My chest heaves, heart pounding.
Silas shakes his head. “You dragged us here for a reason. Spit it out.”
“Later.” I tug at my straps. “One more set.”
Jett groans but he sets up again. That’s him in a nutshell. He’ll complain, he’ll crack jokes, but when it matters, he’ll do it anyway. Jett has always been that guy. Loud, reckless, the friendliest face in the room, a fuckboy without shame. But he was also the one who kept us alive when Dad died, smiling through it so Silas and I didn’t see how much it wrecked him.
Silas is the opposite. Moody, gruff, with eyes that cut through everything. He never says much, but when he does, you listen. Growing up, he’d sit in the locker room, daring anyone to test him. He still does. He’s a wall.
We finish another round, and I unstrap, bent over and gasping. Sweat soaks through my shirt. Jett sprawls on his back on the ice, arms wide, dramatic as hell.
“God, I missed this,” he says. “Just us.”
That hits me harder than I expect. Just us. It has been too long since we were only brothers and not teammates with the weight of the world on us. Too long since we remembered how the rink saved us after Dad died. We’d sneak in before school, skate until our legs gave out, and collapse on the bench in silence. That silence was safety.
“Remember Dad yelling from the stands with that busted thermos of coffee?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Jett says instantly. “He’d scream like every scrimmage was the Cup Final.”
“Best part of the day,” Silas adds quietly.
The words hang between us, heavy.
“After he died… this was all we had,” I say.
“Yeah.” Jett huffs a humorless laugh. “I hated feeling like I had to be him. Like I had to hold it all together. I was a kid too.”
“You held it together,” I tell him. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have made it.”
He shakes his head. “And you, Hunt, you ate up Mom’s bullshit until she turned on you. Silas had to live with her for five more years. None of us got out clean.”
Silas shrugs. “I stayed at the rink. Pretended she didn’t exist.”
The truth of it settles on me like a stone. Jett’s grin, Silas’s silence, my temper. We all built armor to survive. None of it saved us.
“I keep waiting for Juliet to see it,” I admit. “To realize I’m not okay. That I’m just a mess in a jersey.”
“She already sees it,” Silas says flatly. “And she doesn’t care. That’s the difference.”
Jett pushes himself up, smirking. “She looks at you like you hung the moon. She’d fight anybody who tried to hurt you. Including Mom.”
The words stick deep.
We sit there for a long time, sweaty and raw, saying things we’ve never said before. For once, I don’t feel like I’m carrying it all by myself.
When we finally leave the ice, I feel lighter. Not fixed. Just less alone.
We clomp off the ice, skates grinding against the rubber mat in the tunnel. None of us bother unstrapping the sleds from where we ditched them by the boards. My shirt sticks to me, sweat cooling fast in the drafty corridor.
