My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Forty-Eight

The date arrives in early November, quiet and unremarkable on any calendar but Mara's own — the anniversary of the miscarriage, a date she's marked privately, alone, for five consecutive years, always finding some reason to keep herself too busy to fully feel it, always managing rather than actually grieving.

This year, for the first time, she doesn't have to manage it alone.

She mentions it to Adrian a few days before, carefully, unsure how he'll receive the information, unsure if there's even a right way to bring up a date like this one.

"I want to be there," he says immediately, no hesitation at all. "Whatever that looks like. I don't want you carrying that day alone anymore, not when I'm right here and finally, actually available to carry some of it with you."

"I don't know what 'being there' looks like, honestly. I've never had anyone to share the day with before. I don't have a ritual or anything. I just usually try to get through it."

"Maybe we could build something," Adrian offers, gentle. "Not because getting through it alone was wrong, before. You did what you needed to survive, and that was enough, for as long as it needed to be enough. But now — maybe we could make it into something else. Something that actually honors what happened, instead of just surviving past it."

They spend the days leading up to the anniversary talking through what that might actually look like, tentative and careful, neither of them entirely sure how to build a ritual for grief this specific, this private. Selene, when Mara mentions it during their weekly call, offers a suggestion that ends up shaping the day more than either of them initially expects.

"What if you planted something," she says. "Not as a memorial, exactly, nothing that has to be permanent or heavy. Just something living, something that grows, as a way of marking that the loss happened, and that you both survived it, and that something can still grow out of even the hardest years."

The idea takes root immediately, and on the morning of the anniversary, Mara and Adrian drive out to a small nursery on the edge of the city, spending nearly an hour looking through options before settling on a young maple tree — nothing dramatic, nothing that draws attention, just something that will, over years, grow steadily taller in the small backyard of the house Adrian's been looking at, the one they've started, tentatively, discussing as a possible future home together.

They plant it themselves, working in comfortable, quiet silence for most of the afternoon, both of them getting genuinely, cheerfully dirty in a way that feels good, grounding, entirely unlike the careful, composed grief Mara's practiced alone for five years.

"I never really let myself think about who it would have been," Mara admits, sitting back on her heels once the tree is finally settled into the ground, dirt still under her fingernails. "I couldn't. It hurt too much, imagining specifics. I just let it stay abstract, a loss without a shape, because giving it a shape felt like it would break something in me I couldn't afford to have break."

"You don't have to give it a shape now, if you don't want to," Adrian says, gentle, settling beside her. "There's no right way to do this."

"I think I want to, actually. For the first time." Mara looks at the small tree, still slight and vulnerable-looking against the November sky. "I think about that spring a lot, differently now than I used to. Not just as the worst thing that ever happened to me. As something that was also, briefly, real. Something that existed, even for a short time, and mattered, and was loved, even though I never got the chance to actually meet them."

Adrian is quiet for a long moment, something raw and grieving crossing his face. "I wish I could have been there. For any of it. The knowing, the loss, the grief afterward. I know wishing doesn't undo anything. But I wish it anyway, every single day."

"I know you do." Mara takes his hand, dirt-stained and warm. "I used to think, for a long time, that telling you would just add your grief to mine, make everything heavier without actually helping either of us. I don't think that anymore. I think grief shared is different than grief doubled. I think it's actually lighter, somehow, having you here with me today, even though it hurts in ways being alone never quite let me feel."

They sit together by the small tree for a long while, the afternoon light slowly fading, both of them quiet, both of them present in a way that feels, for the first time in five years, like actual healing rather than just careful management of an old wound.

"Thank you," Adrian says, finally, "for letting me be part of this. I know it took real trust, after everything, to let me in this far."

"I wanted you here," Mara says, simply. "I think I've wanted that for longer than I let myself admit, honestly. Grief like this isn't supposed to be carried alone. I just didn't have anyone to carry it with, for a long time. Now I do."

They mark the day quietly after that — a simple dinner at home, nothing elaborate, just the two of them, present with each other and with the specific, complicated grief of the day, neither of them trying to rush past it or force it into something neater than it actually is.

Selene calls that evening, checking in gently, and Mara finds herself, for the first time, telling her about the tree, about the quiet afternoon spent planting something living in honor of something lost.

"That's beautiful," Selene says, quiet, genuine emotion in her voice. "I'm glad you had that today. Both of you."

"Me too," Mara admits. "I didn't know grief could feel like this. Not lighter, exactly. Just — less alone. I think that's different than I expected."

"That's what love actually does, I think," Selene says. "It doesn't erase the hard things. It just means you don't have to carry them by yourself anymore."

Mara sits with the observation long after they hang up, looking out the window toward the small backyard where a young maple tree now stands, slight and vulnerable and, with time, going to grow steadily taller, a small, living testament to a loss that finally, after five years, has somewhere real to belong.

She thinks about the years ahead — the tree growing, their own life together slowly, steadily taking shape around it, whatever family they eventually build together someday, however that comes to look — and feels, for the first time since a stairwell six years ago, genuinely, fully at peace with everything that's happened, not because the pain is gone, but because she's finally, truly, no longer carrying it alone.