Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Haydn

Was I an idiot for believing she was ready? Or is this just the crisis before the calm—the storm passing—and we’re finally on our way to the happiness we’ve been chasing? God, I want to believe it’s the latter. That this move, this next step, is what cements us. That it’s the foundation we’ve been building toward for years.

The road stretches out ahead, a dark ribbon of asphalt illuminated by my headlights, but inside the car, there’s nothing but silence. Just the low hum of the engine and the faint sound of Ophelia’s breathing. She’s been quiet since we left her apartment. Too quiet. And there’s something about the way she’s sitting, her body turned slightly toward the window, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, that feels like she’s slipping away.

I glance at her, catching the far-off look in her eyes, and it hits me in that place where love and worry live side by side. She’s here. Physically, she’s right next to me, but there’s this distance between us, like she’s already halfway out of reach. I grip the wheel tighter, forcing myself to keep my eyes on the road, even though all I want to do is stop the car, take her face in my hands, and ask her to tell me where she’s gone.

Back at her apartment, watching the movers pack up her things, I was so sure she’d change her mind. Every time she glanced around, I could see it—that hesitation, that flicker of doubt. She was memorizing everything. The cracks in the walls, the faded paint on the doorframe, the way the light hit her favorite corner of the room. Like she was saying goodbye to more than just the space, like she was saying goodbye to a part of herself.

And I thought, this is it. She’s going to call it off. She’s going to tell the movers to stop, to put everything back where it was, to leave her life untouched. Hell, I even braced myself for her to turn to me and say, “Haydn, I can’t do this.” Maybe even something worse—maybe even, “Haydn, I can’t be with you anymore.”

Not because she doesn’t love me. I know she does. I see it in the way she smiles at me when she thinks I’m not looking, in the way she leans into me when she’s tired, in the way she reaches for my hand even in her sleep. But love isn’t the problem. The problem is her guilt. The kind of guilt that doesn’t let you breathe, that wraps around your chest and squeezes until you can’t see straight.

Fucking survivor’s guilt.

That’s what they call it, but that word doesn’t come close to explaining what it’s done to her. “Guilt” makes it sound like something small, something you can brush off or talk through in therapy. But this? This is an ache that’s carved itself into her bones, a shadow that follows her everywhere she goes. It’s the voice in her head telling her she doesn’t deserve happiness, that she shouldn’t have made it out of that car alive when Keane didn’t.

Her love. The man she thought she’d spend her life with. The man who lost his life while she survived.

It’s been haunting her ever since. Every breath she takes feels like a betrayal. Every moment of joy is followed by the crushing weight of knowing he’ll never have that again. And as much as I’ve tried to love her through it, to remind her that she’s still here for a reason, there are moments—moments like this one—where I wonder if it’ll ever stop pulling her under.

I exhale slowly, my grip on the wheel loosening as I force myself to focus on the road. On what’s ahead. Not on what’s behind us.

Because we’re doing this. She didn’t stop the movers. She didn’t back out. She’s in this car, heading to my house, our house. And maybe that means we have a chance. Maybe that means she’s ready to try.

But as I glance at her again, at the way she’s curled into herself, her body so still it’s almost unnerving, doubt creeps in. What if I was wrong? What if she’s not ready? What if this move isn’t the start of something, but the beginning of the end?

No, don’t jinx it. It’s the beginning. You know what the past does to her.

And I do. I’ve been trying to understand her guilt, working through it with my therapist—still surreal to admit. I started therapy for her, for us, because I wanted to be the kind of man who could carry some of her pain without flinching, without letting my own insecurities twist it into something about me.

But the process has forced me to face things I’ve been running from my entire life. I’ve spent hours talking to a stranger about the ghost from her past, trying to understand why she clings so tightly to it, why she can’t shake the feeling that she doesn’t deserve happiness.

And maybe I get it now, at least a little. Survivor’s guilt is this constant, relentless ache, a feeling that somehow she’s betraying Keane by choosing a future he can’t be part of. In her mind, he’s frozen in time, perfect, untouched by life’s imperfections. And here I am, real and flawed, asking her to build something new. How can I possibly compete with that?

But maybe that’s my own baggage talking. My therapist calls it “abandonment issues.” Every time he says it, I roll my eyes, but deep down, I know he’s right. I’ve spent years pretending I don’t need anyone, that being alone is safer than risking attachment.

And yet, here I am, terrified of losing her to a memory, to someone she’ll never truly leave behind. It’s almost ironic—that I finally find someone I’d give my life for, only to feel like I’m constantly standing in someone else’s shadow.

Am I afraid she’ll choose Keane over me?

All the fucking time.

It’s a quiet, persistent fear that lives in the background, whispering that I’ll never be enough, that the love we share can’t measure up to what she had with him. But when I try to put myself in her place, I can understand why.

If I lost her—if something happened and she was gone—I don’t think I’d ever be able to give my heart to someone else. She’s the love of my life. No one else could ever fill that space. So how can I ask her to let go of him, to move on as if he was just one chapter in her story?

I glance over at her again, catching the way the passing streetlights soften the lines of her face, and I want nothing more than to reach over and take her hand. But something stops me. I don’t want to push her, don’t want to break the fragile silence between us. She’s carrying so much right now, and the last thing she needs is me layering my own fears on top of hers.

So I keep my eyes on the road, forcing myself to breathe, to release the urge to fix everything right here and now. I remind myself that love isn’t a competition with the past. It’s about showing up, being present and patient, for as long as she needs.

My therapist would probably call this progress—learning to sit with the fear, to feel it without letting it take over. It’s strange, really, that I’m doing all this work on myself, digging into my own buried pain, just to be worthy of a relationship that might not even survive her grief.

She’s definitely not my mother.

My mother, who walked out without a backward glance, leaving me and my two siblings alone with a father who was more interested in his next drink than in being any kind of parent.

My mother, who didn’t even say goodbye, just disappeared one day and left us with his slurred words, his volatile tempers, and that hollow emptiness that never really left. I was only four, but even then, I understood what abandonment felt like. I understood that love, or whatever she called it, wasn’t something I could rely on. And it left this wound in me, one I’m still trying to heal from.

Ophelia is nothing like her.

Ophelia is gentle, thoughtful.

Ophelia is someone who carries her own pain but would never weaponize it. She wouldn’t leave a child alone in the middle of the night, wondering why he wasn’t enough to make his mother stay. She wouldn’t hurt the people she loves just to save herself.

But sometimes, no matter how much I try to push it down, there’s this fear—a quiet, persistent whisper that reminds me how easily love can turn to loss, how quickly the people we trust can slip through our fingers.

It’s ironic, really. Here I am, spending hours in therapy trying to make peace with a mother who didn’t love me enough to stay, all while fighting off the constant fear that Ophelia will leave too. I know it’s not fair to compare the two, but that wound runs deep, and sometimes it clouds everything.

And yet, despite the ache, despite the fear, I can’t stop myself from loving her. Even if there’s a part of me that wonders if, one day, I’ll wake up and she’ll be gone too, lost to the grip of her own past.

But then again, she’s worth it. Every uncertain, agonizing second of it. Because loving Ophelia is the truest thing I’ve ever known. She’s the one person who’s made me believe in something beyond my own brokenness, beyond all the parts of me that I thought were too damaged to heal. With her, there’s a glimpse of something more—something I’ve never dared to imagine before. And whatever happens, I know I could never walk away from her.

Just as I think she’s drifted into her own world, she turns to me, her voice soft and almost hesitant. “Sorry for what happened back there,” she says. “It’s just . . . I have this weird feeling.”

Immediately, I’m more alert, my hands tightening slightly on the steering wheel. “Weird feeling?”

There’s something about hockey players that not everyone knows or acknowledges. We’re creatures of habit, almost religiously superstitious. Some people think it’s ridiculous—the rituals, the routines, the things we hold on to for luck. But in this world, where so much comes down to chance, where the smallest twist of fate can make or break a season, we cling to anything that gives us a sense of control.

I have my own rituals before every game—putting my left skate on first, tying my laces in a certain way, tapping my stick against the boards three times. And Ophelia’s “weird feelings”? Those aren’t something I take lightly.

The last time she had one of these feelings, Saint, our assistant captain, tore his Achilles’ on the ice just a few hours later. One wrong step, one miscalculated move, and he was out for the season. Then there was the time we got stuck in that brutal Denver blizzard, trapped on the team bus for hours, watching the snow pile up against the windows like we’d never escape. And right before that, she’d looked at me with those same worried eyes through our video call and said she couldn’t shake a strange feeling in her gut.

And it wasn’t just those times, either. The third incident that comes to mind still makes my skin crawl—a couple of years back, she’d had one of those feelings right before I went out for what should’ve been a regular, uneventful practice. That day, one of the rookies took a wild slap shot that missed the net by a mile and hit me square in the face. I ended up in the ER with a concussion and seven stitches just above my eyebrow. If I’d been an inch closer, I could’ve lost my eye.

So yeah. When Ophelia says she has a weird feeling, it gets my attention.

I glance over at her, trying to keep my voice steady. “Okay . . . what kind of weird feeling? Is it . . . about us? Or something else? Is someone on my team breaking a leg?”

She bites her lip, staring out the window as if the answer is somewhere in the darkness outside. “I don’t know,” she murmurs, almost like she’s talking to herself. “It’s just this . . . this heaviness, like something’s coming, and I can’t stop it.”

Her words settle in the air between us, sinking into my bones. I force myself to stay calm, to breathe. I want to tell her it’s nothing, that she’s probably just anxious after everything that happened today, that there’s no reason to worry. But I know better. Dismissing her instinct feels like tempting fate, and I’ve learned the hard way that fate has a cruel sense of humor.

I reach over, my hand finding hers, squeezing gently. “Hey,” I say, keeping my tone light even though my pulse has picked up. “We’ll handle whatever comes. Together. Okay?”

She turns to me, offering a faint smile, but I can still see the unease in her eyes. And as much as I want to brush it off, to tell myself it’s all in her head, I can’t shake the feeling that she might be right.