Todos los capítulos de My Pathetic Obsession With The Hockey Boy : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

CherylThe dispatcher's voice kept coming through the phone on the carpet, asking me to confirm the address again, but I stopped listening. Training kicked in from somewhere I didn't know I had. Three years covering hockey injuries on the ice, watching trainers work on players who went down hard, absorbing more than I realized.I rolled Carlson onto his side, careful of his head, clearing space around him in case his stomach turned. I kept two fingers pressed against his throat, counting his pulse against the seconds ticking on my phone screen. Too fast, but steady enough to hold onto."You're okay," I said, low, close to his ear. My voice sounded much calmer than I felt. "I've got you. You're going to be okay."I don't know if he heard me. His eyes stayed unfocused while tremors rolled through his body in waves, easing for a few seconds before hitting harder. I kept talking anyway, a steady stream of nothing and everything. His name, reassurances, the sound of my voice. It was the on

CherylI found him at the clinic instead of the ice, sitting on the same bench where he carried me the day of the arena attack, his head bowed low enough that his hair fell forward over his face. The room smelled the way it always did: sweat, antiseptic, and something metallic underneath. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed faintly, far too bright for the moment we were about to have.A trainer hovered near the doorway checking a clipboard, and I waited until she stepped out before I moved. Whitman had already come and gone, his voice low and tense in the hallway a few minutes earlier, saying something about dehydration, rest, and a follow-up if it happened again. Nobody said the real word out loud. Nobody dared.I closed the door behind me and turned the lock.Carlson didn't look up. "Cheryl, I'm fine. You don't have to...""I know you're using drugs."The words came out steadier than I expected, no hesitation, no softening. His head snapped up, and for the first time since I kn

CherylThe room went quiet in the particular way it does after someone says something they can't take back, both of us still holding onto the truth of what he just handed me, neither of us sure yet what to do with the weight of it.I thought about Amara's voice in the coffee shop that morning. You help them anyway. Even if they hate you for it. That's what love means. I hadn't let myself hear the word love in that sentence when she said it, pushing it aside as a hypothetical, a stand-in for something safer. Sitting here now, with Carlson's hand still trembling in mine and his eyes raw from admitting the thing he spent two years burying, I couldn't push it aside anymore.I wasn't going to let him drown. Not to Richard, not to Derek, not to whatever version of himself he built to survive both of them.Underneath that certainty sat something I wasn't ready to name yet, something that went further than friendship or loyalty or even the years of fantasy I wrote into a journal I never meant

CherylMy apartment had turned into something between a war room and a disaster zone. Sticky notes covered every flat surface. Three browser windows were stacked open on my laptop, with printouts of program brochures fanned across the kitchen table like evidence in a case I was building against my own helplessness.Discreet rehab facilities. That was the search that started this, typing into a blank bar at two in the morning with hands that hadn't fully stopped shaking since I watched Carlson come back to himself on his dorm room floor. The results multiplied faster than I expected once I understood what "discreet" actually needed to mean for someone like him. Not just private. Insulated from press, insulated from scouts, and insulated from a father with the money and motivation to find out exactly where his son disappeared to the moment his stats dipped even slightly.I read through admissions pages until the words stopped meaning anything. I waded through confidentiality clauses,

CelesteI stood in Megan's doorway for a long moment, letting the words settle into something I could actually process instead of just feel.Cheryl was building a case against me.Not a journal entry. Not a hurt feeling scribbled somewhere private and never meant for daylight. An actual case. Evidence. It was the kind of methodical, patient work Cheryl had always been better at than anyone gave her credit for, the same skill she used to break down three years of game tape into something Coach Whitman couldn't ignore.She was using it on me now."Come in," Megan said, stepping back to let me pass. "Sit down. You look like you're about to fall over."I didn't sit. I paced the length of her small living room instead. My mind cycled through everything Cheryl could possibly have: the arena attack, the burner accounts, whatever she and Amara had pieced together from the security gap. I was careful to make sure nobody traced back to me.The betrayal of it cut deeper than I expected. I spent