My Hockey Heartthrob: A Promise in Overtime

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The call comes together faster than Adrian expects, once he actually decides to make it — a video call arranged for that evening, his parents having apparently cleared their schedule the moment he told them, briefly, that he needed to talk to them about something important.

He sits in his hotel room with his laptop open, waiting for the call to connect, feeling a version of nerves he hasn't experienced since he was much younger, before hockey taught him how to compose himself under pressure. This isn't a press conference. This isn't a game. This is something he's been avoiding, in one careful, diplomatic form or another, for five entire years.

His parents appear on screen together, seated in the same study where the original ultimatum took place five years ago, a detail Adrian notices immediately and finds himself unable to look past.

"Adrian," his mother says, warmth in her voice that Adrian, for the first time in longer than he can remember, finds himself examining rather than simply accepting. "You said this was important."

"It is." He takes a breath, steadying himself. "I need to talk to you about what happened five years ago. About the ultimatum. About Mara."

Something shifts immediately in both their expressions — his father's jaw tightening, his mother's careful composure sliding into something more guarded.

"That's ancient history," Richard says. "I'm not sure what there is to discuss."

"There's a lot to discuss, actually. Starting with the fact that I found out yesterday what happened to Mara after I left her. She was pregnant, Dad. She had a miscarriage, alone, with no family to call, because I abandoned her based on a decision the two of you pressured me into making in about twenty minutes in this exact room."

The silence that follows is heavy, both his parents visibly processing the weight of what he's just said. His mother's hand goes to her mouth, genuine shock crossing her face.

"We didn't know that," she says, quiet. "Adrian, we had no idea—"

"You didn't ask. You never asked what happened to her. You got what you wanted — me, gone from her life, available for whatever arrangement you'd already been planning — and you moved forward without ever once checking what that decision actually cost anyone."

"We were trying to protect you," Richard says, defensive now. "Both of you, frankly. The security assessment was real, Adrian. The threats were real. We weren't manufacturing a crisis to manipulate you."

"I believe the threats were real. I've never doubted that part. What I doubt now — what I should have doubted five years ago — is that abandoning her without explanation was ever actually the right response to that threat. You gave a twenty-one-year-old an impossible choice and called it protection. You never once suggested actual security measures, actual protection that would have let us stay together safely. You just presented disappearance as the only option, and I was young enough and scared enough to believe you."

His mother is crying now, quiet tears that Adrian watches with a complicated mixture of old habitual guilt and something newer, more resolved. "We thought we were doing the right thing."

"Maybe you did. I'm not entirely sure that matters anymore, though. Intent doesn't undo consequence. Mara spent five years alone with a grief neither of us knew existed, because the two of you decided fear justified whatever came after it, and I was complicit in that decision because I didn't have the courage to question you."

"What do you want from us now," Richard asks, his voice tighter than before, defensiveness giving way to something more uncertain. "An apology? Fine. I'm sorry it played out this way. I'm sorry there were consequences we didn't anticipate. But I won't apologize for wanting to protect my son."

"I don't need you to apologize for wanting to protect me," Adrian says, steadier now than he expected to feel. "I need you to understand that the way you did it was wrong, and I need you to actually reckon with that, rather than just defending the intent behind it. And I need something else, going forward, if either of you want to actually be part of my life moving forward."

"What's that," his mother asks, quiet.

"I need you to accept that whatever happens between me and Mara from here — whether we rebuild something, whether we don't — is entirely our decision, made by us, with full information, without any interference from either of you. No more assessments. No more ultimatums delivered in this study. No more arranged anything." His voice is firm, final. "I'm not the twenty-one-year-old who panicked in this room five years ago. I'm not going to make that mistake again, and I'm not going to let either of you pressure me into it either."

His father is quiet for a long moment, something shifting behind his composed exterior that Adrian hasn't seen before — not quite regret, but something adjacent to it, a man confronting the actual weight of a decision he'd spent five years filing away as reasonable.

"I hear you," Richard says, finally, gruff but genuine. "I don't know if I fully agree with everything you've said. But I hear you, and I understand this isn't a conversation I get to argue my way out of."

"That's a start," Adrian says.

His mother wipes at her eyes, composing herself. "For what it's worth," she says, quiet, "I am sorry. Genuinely. I didn't understand, until just now, exactly what our decision cost her. I don't know how to undo that. But I'm sorry, Adrian. I mean that."

Something in Adrian's chest loosens slightly, hearing genuine remorse rather than defensive justification, though he understands, even as he feels it, that one conversation isn't going to undo five years of careful, complicated distance overnight.

"Thank you," he says. "That actually means something to me. But I need this to be more than words, going forward. I need actual change in how the three of us relate to each other, starting now."

"What does that look like," his mother asks.

"Honestly, I don't fully know yet. But I know it starts with respecting whatever decisions I make about my own life, without secret security assessments or intercepted messages or ultimatums delivered behind closed doors. I know it starts with actually asking, rather than assuming, what I need and want."

They talk for a while longer, the conversation slowly, imperfectly moving toward something more honest than the careful, distant relationship Adrian has maintained with his parents for five years, and by the time the call ends, he doesn't feel fully resolved — some wounds, he understands now, don't close in a single conversation, however honest — but he feels, for the first time in longer than he can remember, like he's finally standing on solid ground with his own family, rather than carefully performing a version of peace that was never actually real.

He texts Mara the moment the call ends.

I told them everything. It was hard. I don't think it fixed everything, but it was real, for the first time in five years.

How do you feel? she writes back.

Lighter. Scared, still. But lighter, he writes, echoing, without quite realizing it, the exact words she'd used to describe her own feelings the morning before.

That sounds familiar, Mara replies, and he can almost hear the small, warm smile in it, even through text.

I think we're both finally figuring out how to actually feel things instead of just managing them, he writes back. It's exhausting. But it feels like the right kind of exhausting.

It does, Mara agrees. I think that might be what healing actually feels like. Not peaceful. Just honest.

Adrian sits with her words for a long moment, feeling, for the first time in five years, like healing might genuinely be within reach — not easy, not immediate, but finally, actually possible, for both of them, together.