Unloved: Chapter 41

The entire week has been hell, and Coach Harris is currently busting our asses at Thursday evening practice, but I can’t wipe the stupid smile off my face. Even when Garcy—Roman Garcia, a sophomore defenseman—checks me a little roughly into the boards.

Usually, that’s Kane’s game, but he’s currently getting the dressing down of the century from Assistant Coach Johnson. It’s bad enough that even Holden is wincing from where he lingers close to his defensive partner.

The two have grown closer—as close as I imagine Toren Kane will allow the kid. Still, Holden follows him around like a golden retriever trying to befriend a Doberman.

Either way, I’m riding a temporary high. My grades are improving, thanks to shedding the impossible math credit for the semester, and all my homework and tests are done and graded. I feel good about my test in biology, as does Ro. I haven’t seen her since Monday, and the three days of short text conversations and her being relatively busy have made it a little harder to focus, mostly from the shift in my routine.

Or, because after coming in my pants like a teenager in her bed, and the most awkward tutoring session of my life, we haven’t talked about our relationship.

Maybe, if I can wait until she’s not tutoring me anymore, I’ll ask her on a date. All I really have left are finals before I pass and skip right out of probation.

I shake my head a little at the thought. Ro likes me, likes me. I need to show her that I’m not a party boy or “the school slut” everyone believes I am. I can be serious and smart, like her.

“One more time, and we’re done for the day,” Coach Harris calls before nodding to the other two assistant coaches, as well as their two student interns, to finish out the practice. “I’ll see you boys tomorrow. Freddy, a word?”

A couple of the guys over the callout, but there are no nerves with Coach anymore. After watching him back up Ro in my adviser meeting, defend me, and believe in me enough to do so, I feel more than comfortable with him.

“Yes?” I ask, hard stopping on one leg by the bench and pulling off my cage.

“You’ve got a visitor, demanding to be let into my private practices.”

“Who?” I ask, sweat that has nothing to do with the hard workout starting to bead at my temple.

“Your dad.”

My stomach drops and I have a little wave of nausea as my fists tighten in my gloves.

Coach Harris watches my every move, but so does Bennett, currently parked on the bench while his tandem works the last exercise.

I don’t talk about my dad, but it’s not hard to make the connection—especially with how often my dad is begging for a media interview, anywhere he can get it. Just so he can call me his son, making a fucking mockery of the term, before tearing my technique and skill to shreds on a national stage.

Sometimes I can’t tell if he wants me to succeed like he seems to push me for, or he’s only setting up as many hurdles as he can, desperately wishing for me to fail.

“Okay,” I say. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

“He’s insistent. Nothing I can’t handle, but I need you to tell me how you want to deal with this.” Very subtly, Harris’s eyes flick to Bennett and back to me.

, because out of the three NHL legacies on this team, Max and Rhys aren’t the only golden father-son pair. Bennett and his dad have a privately strained relationship, easy to see if you’re around them long enough. Bennett’s dad wouldn’t dare show up to a practice, while Max Koteskiy would have a red carpet rolled out for his appearance.

Coach doesn’t know how to handle my dad, because in the three years I’ve been here, he’s never shown up on campus.

He’s waiting for my lead.

“I’ll take care of it,” I say, waiting until Coach Harris nods, giving me permission to cut out early.

“Locker room,” he calls, crossing his arms. “You’ve got twenty minutes tops, Fredderic.”

I can barely hear him over the rush of blood in my ears as I stomp down the tunnel into the locker room.

“Your little peewee coach needs some backbone if he sent you here to deal with me.”

Having only heard his voice through a phone for three years now, the sound of it in person is crippling enough that my knees go weak, and I have to grab the wall for support.

We don’t look alike—something that used to bother me as a kid. I wanted to be his twin once upon a time, before his poison infected everything around me, until the decay ate all the good in my life.

His skin is tan and damaged, like he’s been drinking on a beach in Miami for the last three years—and maybe he has. His hair is a mix of gray and blond, brighter than mine in a way that immediately negates the serious persona he’s trying to create with the cheap, ill-fitting suit. I’m taller, a fact I bothers him even now, especially as I nearly tower over him with the extra inches my skates and my pads give me.

Flat brown eyes slowly take me in from across the room, so opposite the bright green of my own. Does he see And yet I don’t want him to think of her. He doesn’t even deserve the memory of her.

“What are you doing here?”

“Here to see my son skate. Check on his progress. I’m the one paying for this stupid school, right?” He raises his hands out to the sides and smiles—our one similarity. The fucking Fredderic grin and smile lines:

I to be just like him once. It makes me nearly sick to think about it now, about how much time I wasted on him when I could have been by her side.

“Funny,” I deadpan. “I’m on scholarship.”

I sit and start to undo my laces. I want him gone before a single skate leaves the ice.

One of the papers called him “Dallas’s Biggest Regret” in giant bold letters after his second contract renewal. I remember because Archer laid the paper right next to my breakfast and winked at me before slipping to the corner of the kitchen to inconspicuously sip his coffee when my mom came in.

She laughed louder than I’d heard in a while before kissing the top of my head and ruffling my too-long hair, reading it aloud before I even had to ask her what it said.

I’m sure John Fredderic was the of a lot of people, but none more than my mother and me.

“I’m bringing some coaches for other teams in to watch you practice. I want you to set up some of your fancier shit, speed it up, show off—”

“Coach runs closed practices.”

He ignores me entirely. “And I spoke with your adviser and teachers about the math drop—”

“What?” I freeze then, disbelief running through me.

“That pretty Mrs. Tinley thinks it’s a bad idea. That you’re taking an easy out. Your adviser seemed to blame some girl—”

“You’re not allowed to know my business with the school. That’s the rule.”

He smiles. “No, you signed that exception form during registration. I assume you thought Elsie would be around, that it was for her, but…” He shrugs, like he’s discussing the weather and not delivering blow after blow.

“Why can you not leave me alone?” I’m breathless, like I’ve gone nine rounds in the ring instead of having a conversation with my father.

“Honestly, son—”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

My voice is dangerous, a little too loud as it echoes around the empty locker room. I huff, slip off my skates, and yank off my pads, running a hand through my sweat-damp hair, trying to calm down.

His voice only rises to match mine. In the same way he has to be the at everything, he has to be the loudest in the room.

“I’m your goddamn father, whether you like it or not, Matthew. Whatever poison that spun in your head all those years is garbage.”

Biting down on a scream, I barely manage to speak.

“Shockingly, John, she never said a fucking bad word about you. Those were games.” I pull a gray T-shirt on, not bothering with a shower now. I want out of here as fast as possible. “Even Archer bit his tongue whenever brought you up, more of a man than you’ve ever been.”

John snorts. “Right. Innocent little Elsie, always playing the victim so some older scumbag would rescue her? Do you call Archer your daddy, too? Or was that an Elsie-specific term—”

I’ve got him pinned to the wall before I can blink, hands on his throat.

I want to stop—I Is someone yelling? Is it me?

“Freddy?”

Holden’s voice.

. Thank it’s not—

Kane is behind him, standing toward the exit with his arms crossed like some strange bodyguard, somehow keeping both my father in here and the rest of the team out.

“Get the fuck out of here before I kill you.”

My father scrambles to his feet, darting a nervous glance at the scarred defenseman still in his gear and skates, bringing him to a roughly terrifying six eight—all hulking darkness with the stillness of a hunter with its prey in its sights.

“I begged her to get rid of you,” John snaps, straightening his ugly plaid suit coat and heading for the exit. “And look at this—somehow you become an even bigger disappointment with every breath.”

I wish his words rolled off me by now, but they don’t.

They never do—it doesn’t matter how much I smile or laugh at my own expense; my heart is exposed like a second skin, no armor. Every word hits like an arrow to its target until I’m bleeding out on the locker room floor.

I don’t waste a second after he’s gone before changing and storming out, ignoring my two teammates while praying they never bring this up again.

I slam the door to my bedroom a little too hard, wanting to apologize one moment, then kicking it the next.

I can’t think like this. I can barely breathe.

Flashes of me in this same fucking boat at age six, twelve, fifteen—over and over, with my mom to sit beside me and coax me back to normal. But she’s not here. I to face it without her. Without anyone, because I have no one—

I’m dialing before I can think twice about it, the line ringing long enough that I’m almost sure she won’t pick up.

And yet, when she does, I almost wish she hadn’t.

“Hello,” she whispers, her voice airy and trembling.

“Ro?”

At the sound of my voice, I hear her curse under her breath. A door shuts, and there’s a few soft inhales and rustling before: “Freddy?”

“I need you to talk to me, princess.” I shove the words through my mouth even though it feels a bit like vomiting razor blades.

Running a hand through my hair and rubbing my eyes where they’ve started to burn, I wait for something—anything. Ro can make this better, I just need…

I don’t fucking know what I need, can’t fucking think through the beating in my skull, but she’s the only thing I to need.

“Freddy, are you okay?” she asks, still whispering.

“Did I wake you up?” I look back at my phone to register just how late it is. “Fuck, I don’t even— I hate to ask, but can you talk to me until I calm down? I can’t fucking talk about it.”

My words are harsh, but my tone is aching. Can she hear how desperate, how pleading I am through the speaker?

“Matt,” she whispers, a gentle mumble of my name that makes my next breath come a little easier. “Hey, I need you to breathe, okay?”

Obeying her commands is easier than anything I’ve ever done in the last twenty years of desperately trying to do the right thing and failing repeatedly—but I can feel myself spiraling, the self-hatred growing, the need for her reassurance.

“Do you think I’m a bad person, Ro?”

My voice catches and I cough, desperate to cover exactly how much I’m breaking now. I spin away from the door and walk tight circles around the cluttered floor.

“No,” she breathes. “Hey, hey. No, Matt. You’re a good person. The best. You’re—you’re incredible—”

“Can I come over?” I ask, my voice shaking, because just hearing it isn’t enough. And I don’t care how pathetically needy it is.

She’s so silent for so long, and my stomach sinks, the swimming sickness returning to my gut.

“Freddy,” she says, and the change of name, the tone of her voice—

, a knife to the stomach would’ve hurt less. “I can’t— I—”

“God— Sorry.” I bite my lip. “Of course you’re busy. I’m sorry—please, ignore me.”

“No, Matt, I can—”

“Everyone’s really busy right now and I’m being selfish.” I nod, agreeing with myself as the words come out. My shirt is sweat soaked and sticking to me, making my thoughts scatter until I can pull it off over my head.

I pull the phone back to my ear frantically, breathing heavy.

There’s another sound, and then a deeper voice, muffled and far away.

Ro says, “I’ll be right there,” but it’s not to me. It’s to him.

I’m too frantic already not to blurt out, “Is that Tyler?”

She pauses. And then, “Freddy—”

“Fuck. I’m sorry. I… I shouldn’t have called. I’ll let you go.”

I don’t to let her go. But she’s with Tyler, the fucking super genius who doesn’t sleep around and is older, smarter, less wild.

I feel so goddamn stupid.

My entire body sinks down to the floor, head tipping back to rest against the door with a bitter laugh, my knee bouncing.

“Matt, stop.”

“Don’t,” I rasp, eyes burning as I drop the phone into my lap. If she says something, I don’t hear it over the thrumming of my heartbeat in my head and the trembling starting to take over.

“

are “I’m sorry, Ro,” I say, my breath still heaving as I pick the phone back up. I’m sure she knows I’m crying, can fucking tell by the sound of my voice alone. But she stays quiet as I continue. “I don’t know why I called you. I’m fine. You’re busy—everyone’s busy right now with finals and no one has time for this kind of shit. Sorry, I should go.”

She tries to say something, but I hang up before I can hear another word.

My texts to Bennett, Rhys, and Holden are all unanswered in the group chat. Even Toren Kane, who keeps removing himself from the group while Holden keeps adding him back, is silent.

I touch Archer’s contact, the photo in the center of him with me on my signing day with Dallas.

But opening our texts is just a scroll through a year’s worth of unanswered check-ins. My fingers hover over the keys.

But I can’t.

When I was younger, my dad took me to Vegas for a game—and then a casino and strip club. It made eleven-year-old me queasy and uncomfortable, especially how he and his friends were with the girls, who looked so sad.

I was too scared to tell my mom, so I used a phone in the gas station next door and called Archer on the number he’d made me memorize.

Archer flew to Vegas that night to come and get me, still dressed in his pajamas. We ate at a twenty-four-hour diner, and after I apologized for making him come to my rescue, he looked across a full spread of breakfast food, burgers, and pies, and said, “Anything you need, Matty, I’m always a phone call away. Always.”

It was easy then, to shed the shame I’d been carrying like a second skin, leaving it behind with the neon lights as Archer took me home.

Now, it’s hard. The shame I carry is protection as much as it is a prison.

There’s a desperation to use that get-out-of-jail-free card once more, but after six months of silence it’s unfair to him. He shouldn’t have to deal with this version of me.

I ball my shirt in my hands and throw it hard across my messy room before closing my eyes and letting myself sink further into the shadows of my self-hatred. It’s like greeting an old friend.