Page 105 of Pucking Forbidden

“After she walked out, everything went to hell. My dad blamed us. He screamed at my brother and me, telling us we were the reason she couldn't stand to be in the house. He was already barely staying sober before she left, but after that door slammed? He completely lost his grip on the bottle. And when he drank, he needed someone to bleed for it. My brother was four years older than me. He took the brunt of it for years. He’d step right in front of me, shield me from the worst of the beatings. Take the punches until he was black and blue, just so my dad wouldn't touch me.”

I swallow hard, the metallic taste of old memories flooding my mouth. “But the second he turned eighteen, he couldn’t take it anymore, just like Mom. He packed his things and left in the middle of the night. No goodbye and no note. He said he’d always be there for me, but apparently I wasn’t enough of a reason for him to stay either. I was thirteen, and suddenly, I was the only target left.”

I feel Hadley’s chest heave against mine.

“The next five years were a fucking nightmare,” I mutter, my hands curling into fists against the sheets. “The abuse, the bruises…the cigarette burns on my back. There were nights I’d lock myself in my room, wedging a chair under the doorknob. I’d just sit there in the dark, trembling, waiting for him to pass out or break the door down. I had to get random jobs under the table wherever I could just to make enough cash to keep from going hungry, because he’d drink or gamble away every dollar that came into that house. We barely kept the utility bills paid. The only reason we weren’t kicked out of the house was that it was my late Grandpa’s and already paid off.”

I pull a deep, ragged breath into my lungs. “I tried to keep to myself. I hid in the shadows. Wore long sleeves in the dead of summer. Mrs. Clay…she lived next door. She noticed. She saw the bruises on my arms and legs and noticed how skinny and dirty I always was. She started cornering me after school, forcing me to come into her kitchen to eat. She’d help me with my homework, feed me until I stopped looking like a skeleton, and she supported my love for hockey. Slowly, over those five years, she became the only stable, safe thing in my entire miserable life.”

I hold my breath, waiting for her reply. Half-expecting her to tell me she wants to leave after hearing how fucked-up my life has really been.

“She was there for you when no one else was,” Hadley murmurs.

“I never had plans to go to college, Hadley. I knew I couldn’t afford it. And my grades weren’t nearly good enough for an academic scholarship because I was too busy working just to survive. My dreams of playing for the NHL? I thought they were impossible. I was always too busy working and taking care of my old man to get onto the school team or any elite travel teams that actually had a chance of discovery by scouts. I wasn't like the other guys.”

My voice starts to accelerate, a sudden edge creeping into my tone as the faces of my teammates flash through my mind. I fight to get the next words out.

“I wasn’t like Jensen, or Zander, or Carson. Those guys…they were NHL-bound from high school. They had the financial backing and the support. Even now, they have futures after hockey. I have…nothing.”

The words hang in the air like soot settling over the clean white sheets.

This is the moment. This is the part where the illusion shatters.

I’ve laid the rot out in the open. I’ve shown her the broken, ugly foundation of the man holding her. Now comes the part that’ll make her leave. The part where she realizes the man she thinks is so strong is just a collection of old scars and inherited wreckage. I brace myself for the shift, waiting for the sudden stiffness in her posture. The quiet, polite way she’ll try to pull back and find space between us.

I wait for the hammer to fall.

The silence drags out, stretching between us until it feels like a physical distance, heavy and suffocating in the dark.

“Hey,” Hadley’s voice cuts through my panic. She shifts, rising up on one elbow so she can look down into my face. Her warm hand cups my jaw, her thumb sweeping over my cheekbone. “Julian, look at me. Keep talking to me. I’m listening. I want to know everything about you.”

“You don’t understand.” My eyes moisten with tears as I try to look away from her, but she refuses to let me go. “I’ve always just had myself when it comes to someone taking care of me. Except for her. I owe everything to Mrs. Clay. Every single thing, and I’m terrified that…”

“Tell me,” she insists.

“At the end of my senior year,” I begin, the raw emotion tearing at my throat. “Mrs. Clay surprised me. She signed me up and paid for me to attend a major NAHL tryout camp. She didn’t have a lot of money of her own. She lived on a fixed pension, but she sold her own jewelry, pieces gifted to her by her late husband, just to afford the entry fee and the bus ticket for me. That was my big break. I made the roster for the North American Hockey League. Spent a year there. Got scouted for an NCAA college team. Played two years in college before I got an AHL contract at twenty-two, and finally moved up to the Night Hawks at twenty-three. Dad died of alcohol poisoning the year after I left, and I couldn’t sell that house fast enough. It was never my home. Not really. Mrs. Clay gave me the closest thing to a home I’ve ever had. I owe my entire life to that woman…and I’m terrified she’s hiding how sick she really is from me.”

Silence settles over the room again, but this time, it’s not heavy. It’s soft. Hadley stays frozen above me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears as she absorbs the full scope of my reality.

Slowly, she leans down, pressing her forehead against mine.

“Julian,” she whispers. “What happened with your mom, your dad, and your brother…none of it was your fault. You were a child. You did not deserve to be abandoned, and you did not deserve to be hurt.”

I close my eyes. Her words are sweet, and I want to latch onto them, but…the truth is, I don't believe her.

For nearly twenty years, I’ve carried the quiet, unshakable conviction that the rot started with me. I spent my childhood convinced that if I’d just been better, quieter, or less of a burden, Mom would have stayed. If I weren’t so weak, my brother wouldn't have had to ruin his own body to shield mine. There’s a part of me that still thinks the beatings and the abandonment weren't injustices. They were just the tax I had to pay for existing. Hearing Hadley say I didn’t deserve it feels like listening to a language I don’t speak.

“Did you ever try contacting your brother?” she asks, her tone gentle.

I shake my head against the pillow, a hard, cold knot tightening in my chest. “No. He left. He knew where I was. He knew what Dad was doing to me. If he wanted me in his life, he would’ve come back for me. He never did.”

“Oh, Julian…”

“I wasn’t worth staying for,” I mutter. “I’m not worth keeping around.”

“That is not true,” Hadley exclaims, her grip on my jaw tightening. “Julian, look at me. That is a lie your father beat into you, and it is not true.”

I look at her, but I can feel my eyes going distant. The old defensive armor clicking back into place. I’m not listening. I can’t let myself believe her. Believing her means lowering my guard, and lowering my guard means getting destroyed when the end finally comes.