Youâre On Your Own, Kid
Matthew Schaefer x brother!reader
summary: after years of distance, resentment, grief, and misunderstanding, matthew is finally forced to confront everything that went wrong between him and his brother. as old wounds resurface and painful truths come to light, the two of them are left standing in the aftermath of everything they lost â and everything they still might be able to save.
authorâs note: hi <3 this fic is very much for the plot and the angst, and i just wanted to clarify that iâm not trying to disrespect any players at all. iâm also not trying to insinuate that the way i wrote any of these characters is realistic or representative of who they are irl. this is purely fictional and dramatized for the story! basically: it is angst and all for the sake of the fic ALSO: i 100% used AI to help me edit this and clean it up, but i did write it all myself. so please keep in mind that while i did write it all on my own, chatgpt did save me when it came to the grammatical errors and the format of the fic and the scene spacing (so there are things like âjustâ used too often)
warnings: slightly toxic family environment, trauma, sexual assault mention, cancer/loss of parent(s), mentions of unhealthy eating habits, depression, mentions of homophobia, overall just sad shit bro
word count: 7.5k (i know. its a lot. bare with me)
Matthew sat in front of his stall with one elbow on his knee and his phone in his hand, half dressed for warmups, while your voice poured tinny and soft through one AirPod.
The Islandersâ room was loud in the usual ways. Tape ripping. Sticks knocking against the floor. Someone on the far side laughing too hard at something not that funny. The music overhead. The low hum of pregame routine.
But Matthew barely heard any of it.
He just stared at your album cover on his screen and listened.
Youâre On Your Own, Kid.
Then Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Boy.
By the time I Can Do It With a Broken Heart came on, his face had gone still in that way it always did when he was feeling too much and refusing to show any of it. His heart squeezing when you sang She said Sheâd love me all her life/But that life was too short, breaking down, I hit the floor. The direct nod at your momâs death shooting a fiery blow straight to his heart.
Mat Barzal looked over while he was retying one of his skates and snorted.
âWhy do you look like someone just kicked your puppy?â
Barzal nudged his shin with the blade guard on his skate. âSeriously. You look miserable. What is that? Breakup music?â
Matthew pulled the AirPod out slowly, thumb still resting on the screen. He looked down at the tracklist again. mirrorball was next.
Matthew inhaled through his nose. âItâs my brotherâs album.â
Barzal blinked. âYour brother?â
There was an awkward quiet pause, when Gatcomb was standing nearby, already taping his stick, frowned. âWait. Your brother as inâŚ.â
Matthew gave one short nod. âY/n L/n.â
That got more attention than he wanted.
A couple of the guys looked up fully now.
âNo way,â Barzal said, eyebrows up. âLike popstar Y/n L/n?â
Matthewâs mouth tightened. âThereâs only one, so.â
Barzal stared at him for a second. âWhy have you never said that before?â
Matthew shrugged, but it wasnât casual. It was defensive. âNever came up.â
Horvat sat across from him, lacing up one of his skates and said, âThatâs wild.â
Mayfield leaned back against his stall. âSo you guys close?â
Matthew looked back down at the phone.
Your name sat there on the screen, bright and impossible to ignore.
Something in his voice made the room go a little quieter around them.
Barzalâs expression shifted. Less teasing now. âWhy not?â
Matthew let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, except there was nothing amused in it.
âBecause heâs my brother,â he said, âand somehow that made things worse.â
Barzal tilted his head. âThat doesnât answer anything.â
Matthew rubbed his thumb across the edge of his phone. He could already feel the old ache building under his ribs, the familiar one. The one with your name on it.
He looked up at the ceiling once, then back at Barzal.
âIt started when we were kids.â
And all at once he was gone.
You were thirteen and nearing the end of eighth grade the first time the house made you feel like there was no room in it for you.
Johnny was in a mood. He was being mean in that casual big brother way that felt like intentional cruelty disguised as innocent, brotherly love.
The fight had started over nothing, which is how the worst ones always start.
You had said something sharp back to him after heâd knocked over one of your notebooks and laughed at the pages full of lyrics and crossed-out lines and badly drawn melodies written in margins.
Heâd shoved your shoulder. Youâd shoved him back.
And then he said it, red-faced and sneering.
A mean, ugly comment about you being gay.
The room had gone dead quiet after. Not because anyone else was there, but because you stopped moving, fear and hurt freezing you in place.
Johnny had looked almost surprised by the stillness on your face, like maybe heâd expected you to hit him or yelling or something louder than what he got. Understanding the reason behind your stillness, he began apologizing.
âShit. Y/n. Iâm sorry. I didnât realize⌠Wait. Youâre actually gay? I didnât know. Iâm sorry.â
Instead youâd just bent down, picked up your notebook, and walked away.
Matthew had been seven at the time. Too young to understand the impact of what had just happened, only old enough to understand that it had happened.
He remembered standing in the hallway, watching you pass him.
Your expression had been blank, but you were crying. Neither of your brothers knew the process and confidence it took to come to terms with your sexuality at that age. Your face was blank in the way people get when something hurts too much to show.
He remembered that now, in flashes, with the kind of shame that you feel later in life and feel even more guilty over.
A month later, you were at the dining room table with your computer open in front of you, headphones on, building something out of sounds Matthew didnât understand. There were loops laid on tracks, fragments of layered vocals, keyboard chords played and replayed until they turned into a shape only you could see. He never realized how much of a science music is, the language of it.
Matthew had wanted you outside with him, simple as that. He wanted you to play hockey in the driveway with him. He wanted your undivided attention. He wanted, without knowing how to name it, for you to act like a brother the way brothers were supposed to.
So heâd run to your mom in the kitchen and complained in the merciless nagging way kids do.
âY/n wonât come outside.â
Your mom hadnât looked up from where she was drying a dish. âThen go ask Johnny.â
âHeâs not busy,â Matthew had argued. âHeâs just on his computer making music thatâs never going to be good anyway.â
Your hands had stopped moving over the keyboard, raising to your sides, eyebrows furrowed in and mouth agape.
Your mother had given Matthew a look. âYou know hockey isnât his thing.â
âBut I want him to play with me.â
âPlease? Just make him come outside for a little while.â
And because your mom was tired and trying to keep peace in a house that often made peace impossible, sheâd called you in that voice that meant she was done arguing before the argument even started.
Out into the driveway, squinting in the afternoon sun, holding the stick wrong. Matthew remembered being excited for about five whole minutes before excitement turned into impatience which quickly became the innocent cruelty of a child who wants to be good at something in front of someone who isnât.
You missed the pass he sent. Miffed completely on your own shot, losing your balance trying to stop it.
And Matthew, all his never ending energy, sharp and fast limbs, and feelings that were too big for his small body, had laughed and said, âGod, you suck.â
Youâd looked at him then.
Not mad. Just tired. Too tired for a boy at only thirteen.
Then another month passed.
You came home with a B minus in one class.
It should have been nothing. In another family maybe it would have been. In yours, it became something bigger than necessary.
Your mom stood in the kitchen holding the paper while you stood across from her in your damp swim jacket, chlorine still clinging to you from practice, your backpack sliding off one shoulder.
âA B-minus?â she said.
âYou need to do more than fix it. You need to focus.â
âNo youâre not! No swimming until you bring it up.â
âBut swimming is the onlyââ
Her voice rose just enough to cut through yours, calm in volume and somehow harsher for it.
âNo. Why does everything have to be an argument with you? Why canât you just be more like your brothers?â
Matthew remembered being in the next room and hearing the silence after. He hadnât understood the sentence then. Not really. He understood the words, but not the impact it would have on you.
Looked at her with something quick and raw in your face: hurt, disbelief, maybe both, before schooling it so fast it almost looked like it had never been there.
âAll right,â youâd said.
A week later, all of you were at the dinner table.
Johnny talking. Matthew practically bouncing in his seat while he told some story about hockey practice, about a drill heâd done right, about a coach praising his shot. Your mom was smiling at him, and his dad was listening, and the whole table was full of a warmth that somehow curved around you instead of reaching you.
You were moving peas around your plate with the side of your fork. Not eating. Just rearranging.
Your mom noticed eventually.
âHow was your day?â she asked.
You looked down at your plate. Then up.
And in a voice so calm, you said, âI think I should go live with Dad.â
For a moment, time stopped.
Matthew remembered his own spoon halfway to his mouth. Remembered your mother going pale. Remembered Johnny saying your name.
Remembered not understanding that there are sentences that split a family open even before anyone answers them.
Back in the locker room, Matthew stared at the floor between his skates.
No one said anything for a moment.
Barzal was the one who finally broke it. âSo⌠what? You guys donât talk just because he went to live with his dad?â
Matthew shook his head once.
âNo.â He stood and reached for his helmet. âItâs deeper than that.â
He jammed his phone into the pocket of his suit pants and got to his feet. âWe should head toward the ice.â
The room stirred back into motion around him.
No one pushed for more right away, but Barzal knew him well enough to know that silence like that never meant done. It just meant later.
The tunnel to the ice was cold and bright.
The crowd was a low roar beyond the walls. Matthew adjusted his gloves, rolled his shoulders once, then stepped out into the wash of arena light for warmups.
His legs knew what to do. That was the comfort of hockey. The mercy of it. On the ice, you didnât have to understand anything. You only had to move. Barzal skated up beside him while they circled the zone.
âSo what happened after he left?â
Matthew took a pass, snapped it back. âHe got famous.â
âThat usually helps sibling relationships.â
Matthew gave him a look that said ânot ours.â
He looked away and the second memory opened up.
You were sixteen when you came back to visit in November, all long limbs and expensive clothes and the kind of exhaustion that made you look older than you were.
You had been in the industry for a year by then, technically, but not really. Not the way the world would soon understand it. You were still on the edge of becoming a story too big for the family that made you.
That night, everyone crowded around the television for the Grammy nominations. The house was loud in that anticipatory way family houses get around good news, like everyone had decided joy in advance and was just waiting for word to celebrate outwardly.
The broadcasterâs voice came through clear and polished.
âFor Album, Song, Record, and Best New ArtistâŚâ
âSingle Soon, Y/n L/n!â
The living room erupted. Your mom gasped and covered her mouth. Johnny shouted. Your stepdad let out a stunned laugh. Your assistant grabbed you around the shoulders, jumping up and down screaming. Everybody was talking at once.
Everybody except Matthew.
He was at the kitchen table, arms folded, staring down at a homework packet he wasnât reading.
You looked around through the excitement, realized he wasnât there, and stepped into the doorway between the living room and kitchen.
âHey,â you said, still half laughing from the shock of it. âWhy arenât you celebrating with us in here?â
He didnât look at you at first.
Then he did and there was something dark and young and kind of hurt in his face.
âBecause itâs not worth celebrating.â
You blinked. âMattâŚâ
âItâs just another excuse for you to leave.â His voice shook with the effort of keeping it hard. âCongratulations on being some big, amazing popstar so you never have to see us again.â He shoved back from the table so fast the chair scraped, bolted out the front door, and disappeared into the cold.
A minute later the family could hear the hard, repeated thunk of pucks hitting the practice net outside.
You stood in the kitchen doorway for a long time, staring at the empty space heâd left behind.
That February you won every category you were nominated for.
Twelve Grammys in one night at only sixteen years old. You were the youngest artist ever to take that many home and the first and openly gay male artist to be nominated for that many categories and sweep them all. It was cultural reset, according to the press. A once in a lifetime star born in the 21st century.
You stood at the microphone with your suit glittering under the lights and your hands visibly shaking.
When you accepted the award for Best New Artist, you thanked your dad. You thanked your family.
And then, smiling out at a room that adored you without knowing you at all, you said, âAnd to my little brother Matthew, who told me a few years ago that my music was never going to be good anywayâŚâ
Even some people in the house laughed watching from home.
Matthew didnât. He just felt his face go hot with humiliation and grief and something else he would only later recognize as guilt.
Warmups blurred around Matthew.
The San Jose Sharks came out onto the other end of the ice, a wash of teal and black sliding into a tight and intimidating formation.
Matthewâs eyes tracked the logo on one playerâs chest without really meaning to.
âSharks would be his home team,â he said.
Barzal glanced over. âBecause of California?â
âYeah. He moved to Northern California when he went to live with his dad. His dad went to college out there.â
Barzal nodded. âWell, surely your relationship got a little better after the Grammys, right?â
Matthew laughed once, humorless and dry.
He took another puck, fired it into the net harder than necessary.
âAfter the Grammys, his career blew up overnight. Like insane overnight. Stadiums. Press everywhere. Every award show. In a new country every other weekend. Every time I turned on a TV or opened my phone, there he was.â
He circled back, stopping hard enough to spray ice.
âThereâd be birthdays where he was on the other side of the world. Iâd get a happy birthday text. Heâd try to call. Iâd decline it.â
Barzalâs brows lifted. âYou declined his calls?â
Matthewâs jaw flexed. âYeah.â
âBecause he changed.â He looked away. âAnd not totally for the better.â
That wasnât the whole truth, and he knew it.
The whole truth was that fame had made you shinier and less reachable, yes. But it had also made him feel abandoned in a way heâd never quite gotten over. Every missed call was a chance to make you feel some fraction of what he had felt.
And then came the years that broke everything open.
He was fifteen the first time you showed up unannounced at one of his high school games.
You were twenty one by then. World famous in an impossible way that made you come off as untouchable. Security when you needed it. Dark sunglasses indoors to hide your face. The kind of famous that made people stare before they even realized why.
He saw you after the game with the family, standing there with one hand in your jeans pocket, trying to smile at him like this might be normal, like you hadnât become someone who lived in headlines and hotel suites and cities with names too glamorous for the rest of them.
And he walked right past you.
Not because he didnât see you. He did. He walked past you, jaw locked, shoulders tense, and ignored the quiet way your face changed.
That same night, the whole family went back to the house.
There were snacks and blankets out because your mom had wanted everyone together, wanting comfort and some semblance of normalcy.
Then she sat all of you down and said the sentence that split your world in half.
Everybody fell apart differently. Johnny cried openly, immediately. Matthew too, because he was still young enough that grief was simple in its shape. Your stepdad held her hand so tightly his knuckles whitened. You went to her and hugged her and for one suspended second, Matthew thought maybe all the old anger had been stupid, because family was still family when it mattered.
Later, during the movie night that none of you were really watching, your phone buzzed.
âI have to take this.â
Matthew watched you go with a new and furious certainty hardening in his chest.
Mom tells us she has cancer and he only cares about himself.
That sight rooted itself in him right there. It lived in him for months. Years, maybe.
He didnât know then that the call was with an oncologist. One of the best in North America. That your assistant had spent hours arranging it. That you stood at the top of the stairs speaking in a voice that silently broke while you asked about treatment plans and clinical options and who they could call and how fast they could move.
He only knew you left the room.
And Matthew had always made a religion out of your habit of leaving.
February of 2024 smelled like antiseptic and stale coffee.
The hospital room was too bright and then not bright enough and somehow unbearably ordinary for a place where the worst thing in the world was happening.
When the doctors told them she was gone, Johnny folded in half with the force of it. Matthew sobbed with his whole body. You were crying too, but in that strange, silent way that looked almost strained until you turned and walked down the hall because you couldnât break down in front of anyone, not wanting to upset them even more.
Matthew had watched you go even then.
Only later⌠months later, through some conversation with your assistant and then your dadâs old texts and then one awful moment when Johnny put pieces together aloud, did Matthew learn the truth about that phone call the night sheâd told you all she had cancer.
You had been trying to save her. You had cared enough to leave the room because caring in otherâs views was making you frantic.
It knocked something loose in him.
Not enough to fix anything, but enough to ruin the version of you heâd been leaning on.
During a line rush, Barzal coasted near him and said quietly, âIt sounds like he cared to me. He probably just didnât want you seeing him like that.â
Matthewâs mouth pulled tight.
âI wasnât all that nice to him after that either.â
Barzal didnât say anything.
Matthew already knew where the next memory would go.
You were twenty three at the time of the 2025 NHL Draft.
Matthew had known you were coming because his dad told him. Had told him with that careful voice adults use when they suspect one of their kids is already angry and donât want to set off the rest of it. He was seated with Johnny, his dad, and the ache of his motherâs absence like another person at the table.
Then you came in, suit dark and elegant, face thinner than he remembered, your eyes searching until they found them.
You walked over and stopped just short of the table.
âMind if I sit with you guys?â
Johnny lit up instantly. âYeah, of course.â
His dad gestured to the empty chair beside him with quiet affection. âSaved your spot for you.â
Matthew looked at you and felt something hot and ugly rise up in his throat.
Because there you were. Clearly late, but looking beautiful, famous. All together, impossible to ignore.
Because you still got to belong. Because part of him had always believed that leaving should have cost you the family, and every time it didnât, he resented you more.
When his name was called first overall, the whole room exploded around him.
He hugged Johnny andd his dad. The moment was everything heâd dreamed of and nothing like it, because your mother was not there to see it.
He turned to you, giving you a curt nod because he could not bring himself to do more, then walked to the stage and pulled on the Islanders jersey with hands that only barely fit.
In his draft speech, he talked about his mom and how he was playing for her.
After the after party, all of you went out for dinner. The restaurant was loud, crowded, glossy. Everyone celebrating him, the first overall pick, the future. Cameras had finally vanished. For a moment, it was just family.
Matthew noticed you werenât eating much, not really touching anything but rather playing with your food.
He was already angry and exhausted by the mere nearness of you, the wrongness of you in the same room as all his grief.
So he said the cruelest thing he could think of in the moment.
âWhat? Sad there was no way for you to make everything about yourself for once?â
You looked up sharply, hurt flashing across your face before you could hide it.
âYou knowâŚâ you said slowly, quietly, âyouâve been a dick to me for the last few years and I donât understand why. Was it because I went to live with my dad? When I started making music that people actually liked? Why?â
âIt doesnât matter.â
Then he stood. âIâm not hungry anymore. Letâs just go.â
Outside the restaurant, the night was crowded with people from the draft. Prospects. NHL stars. Names anyone who follows the hockey world would have noticed immediately. Bedard. Crosby. MacKinnon. Tkachuk.
You didnât seem to notice a single one of them.
You followed him out onto the busy street and said, âNo. Seriously, Matthew. Why do you hate me so much?â
He spun around so fast it made even Johnny jump at the sudden movement.
âBecause all you do is leave!â
People nearby went quiet, watching the chaos unfold in shock.
âYou left us to live with your dad! You left us to be a popstar! You left us when we found out Mom had cancer. You left when she died and now you want to show up like this and pretend weâre okay? Weâre not!â
You stared at him, eyes widening, tears instantly filling to your brim.
And then he said something unforgivable:
âMom would never forgive you for this,â he snapped. âShe would hate you.â
Your whole face changed. Not dramatically. It was almost worse, because it went very still.
You swallowed and looked to the left. Nodding a couple times like you were trying to understand an unearthed truth you had not expected to hear from him. One tear slipped down the left side of your face.
âAll right,â you said, voice breaking. âI wasnât aware thatâs how you think of me. I⌠umâŚâ You breathed in shallowly. âIâm just gonna go then.â
You turned and started walking toward the hotel.
Matthew, still furious, shouted after you, âGo ahead. Do what you do best and leave.â
You didnât turn around, but he saw your shoulders shake once before you disappeared.
He thought about that almost every night afterward.
Matthew scored once and assisted on another, and the crowd chanted and the room was all victory afterward, all adrenaline and noise.
But once the media was done with him and the congratulations had all been handed out, he sat at his stall again, phone in hand to finish your album.
Now that he was listening for them, the references were everywhere.
A line about a hospital hallway.
A lyric about your motherâs perfume on an old sweatshirt.
A line that sounded suspiciously like the driveway back home, the cheap net, the smack of a puck against plywood.
A song that turned the dinner table into a haunted house.
A bridge that all but said his name without saying it.
He sat with his elbows on his knees and let track after track rip something open in him.
He opened older headlines, reading them in the harsh white light of his phone:
Your dad dying from cancer, only a year after you lost mom.
Your stadium show attacked by a homophobe.
You injured in the aftermath, then almost killed in the car accident the morning after while driving to the hospital to visit victims from the attack. Your fiancĂŠe dead. You alive.
Photographs of you leaving a club disheveled and glassy-eyed. The world chewing on your pain before it knew it was pain. No one, but you, knowing you had been assaulted in the club bathroom.
Then being diagnosed with the same type cancer that had killed your dad. Three months later: remission. Recovery. Another false positive headline about you âbeating cancerâ with the kind of language people use when they want to turn suffering into something uplifting for their own convenience.
He scrolled and scrolled until the room blurred due to tears he didnât realize had welled in his eyes. It felt, reading it all together, less like your life and more like an indictment.
As if the universe itself had taken aim and the world had looked at you, deciding that not enough bad things had happened yet.
He put the phone in his pocket and walked out of the room hollowed out. Near one of the concession stands in the quieter part of the arena, you were waiting for him.
No security visible. Just you in a dark coat, sleeves tugged over part of your hands, expression tired enough that for one insane second all he could see was thirteen year old you at the dinner table moving food around a plate.
You looked up. For a second neither of you moved, then he walked over.
Your voice was gentler than he expected.
The silence after was unbearable.
The crowd was gone now, seldom for a few arena staff in the distance. The smell of popcorn gone stale.
âI didnât know if youâd stop,â you said.
He looked at you properly then.
You were thinner. Paler. There was a drag to the way you stood, as if your body was still relearning itself after all it had survived. Up close, the famous parts of you disappeared. What was left was just his brother. Twenty four years old and exhausted beyond language.
He hated that this made his chest hurt.
You glanced at him, then away. âI heard you got the game puck.â
Awkward silence vibrated between the two of you.
You exhaled slowly. âI listened to some of the postgame interview.â
You shrugged. âI keep tabs.â
That hit him strangely. He looked down at the floor. âI listened to the album.â
This time it was your turn to go still.
A faint, humorless smile touched your mouth. âYeah. That seems to be my brand lately.â
âYou wrote about Mom.â
You looked off toward the emptying stands. âI wrote about a lot of things.â
âYou wrote about me.â
Your jaw shifted. âSome of it.â
He could feel the old anger in him, but now it sat next to understanding.
âI read the headlines,â he said.
You laughed once. It sounded brittle. âThat mustâve been fun.â
âWhy didnât you tell me?â
He frowned. âNo, I mean all of it. The cancer. TheâŚâ He stopped before the club, the assault. He didnât know if he had the right to say it out loud. âEverything.â
You stared at him a moment, eyes unreadable.
Then you said, very quietly, âBecause every time I tried to be around you, you looked at me like I was ruining the room.â
You looked down at your hands. âAnd because after a certain point, you start feeling stupid for bleeding in front of people who resent you for making a mess.â
You kept going, softer now, like the truth only came out when you didnât look directly at it.
âI know I left. I know that. I know it hurt you. But I was thirteen, Matt. I was drowning in that house.â Your voice shook once. âAnd later, yeah, I got famous and I got busy and I got worse at being there in normal ways. I know that too. But I never stoppedâŚâ You stopped and swallowed. âI never stopped caring.â
Matthewâs throat tightened.
He remembered the phone call upstairs. The oncologist. The months of hating you for something that had actually been love in the only form you knew how to give it.
He said, âAt the draft⌠when I said what I saidâŚâ
You laughed under your breath, a sound with no joy in it at all. âYeah. I remember.â
âI shouldnât have said Mom would hate you.â
Your face changed at that, but only a little. Like the wound was old enough now that touching it no longer bled, it only ached.
âNo,â you said. âYou shouldnât have.â
He nodded, half expecting you to say more. To hit back. To tell him where to go. To finally give him the version of your anger he had always thought he deserved.
Instead you just looked tired.
âIâm sorry,â he said.
The words sounded small in a building this big. Small against the years. Small against the dead.
You looked at him for a long time.
âFor making leaving look easy,â you said. âFor every birthday text from another country. For every call you declined that I shouldâve made in person sooner. For not knowing how to be your brother anymore once the world got loud.â
Matthew looked away. His eyes burned.
âDo you know what the worst part is?â you asked. You smiled without humor. âI kept thinking if one more terrible thing happened to me, maybe it would finally make sense to everybody. Maybe then Iâd stop looking like the villain in all my own old stories.â Your voice went quiet. âBut it just kept happening and it still didnât fix anything.â
In the fluorescent light, you looked less like a popstar than a person apologizing for taking up space.
Maybe that was what that whole year had done to you. Maybe that was what he had helped do.
His voice came out rough. âYou shouldâve called me.â
You smiled weakly. âWould you have answered?â
You nodded faintly. âYeah.â
Without hesitation or though, he said the thing he hadnât known he was coming here to say until it was already halfway out of him.
âYou werenât the only one who got hurt, Y/n.â
The sentence landed between you.
Not as accusation, at least mot entirely.
Just fact. A bruised, imperfect fact.
Your face softened in a way that made you look younger.
âI know,â you said. âI know.â
He couldnât stay after that. Couldnât do whatever came next while standing in the bright public in-between of an arena concourse.
So he nodded once, turned, and walked away. He could feel your eyes on his back all the way to the tunnel.
A month later, you won Album of the Year again.
The Islanders were in Chicago after playing the Blackhawks, and Matthew was at Connor Bedardâs apartment with half the leagueâs under-twenty-five royalty jammed into one space.
Connor. The Hughes brothers. Macklin Celebrini. Will Smith. Matt Rempe. Gabe Perrault. Cole Caufield. Juraj SlafkovskĂ˝. Lukas Reichel. Adam Fantilli.
The TV was on. Everybody half watching, half talking over it the way athletes do with award shows they claim not to care about and somehow always have on.
Then your category came up and suddenly the roomwent mute.
You walked to the stage looking immaculate and somehow wrecked at the same time. Beautiful in the polished, unreal way celebrities are on television, except Matthew could see now what most people in the room couldnât: the fragility under it. The overcareful posture. The face of someone holding themselves together one breath at a time.
Then you started speaking.
âThis has been the best year of my career,â you said. âAnd the worst year of my life.â
Nobody in Connorâs apartment moved.
Your speech went on, and the longer it did, the less it sounded like an acceptance and more like an apology. Not for the album, but for being alive. For surviving what other people hadnât. For still standing there. For existing where everyone could see you.
Matthew felt something cold slide through him.
Celebrini muttered, âFuck, man. Life has just had it out for that guy.â
Matthew stiffened so hard Connor noticed.
Matthew was already standing. âCan I use your bedroom?â
Connor nodded immediately. âYeah, go.â
He shut the door behind him, suddenly desperate for quiet.
He sat on the edge of Connorâs bed with his elbows on his knees and his phone in his hand, heart beating too fast for someone sitting perfectly still.
He answered so fast he almost fumbled it.
The noise on your end was overwhelmingâmusic, voices, the huge bright chaos of after-award crowds. For a second he thought the connection was bad.
Then your voice came through.
Just hearing you say his name like that did something painful to his chest.
âIâm sorry, I didnât hear the calls. Everythingâs insane here.â
Then, awkwardly, âCongrats.â
You laughed softly. Tired. Disbelieving. âThanks.â
He could hear you moving, a door shutting, the noise dampening as you stepped somewhere quieter.
âAll right,â you said after a second. âWhatâs up?â
Matthew swallowed. He hadnât thought this far.
âUnfortunate for both of us.â
âIt soundedâŚâ He stopped, searching. âIt sounded like you think you have to apologize for surviving.â
The line was quiet for a beat.
Then you said, lighter than the words deserved, âOccupational hazard.â
There was a pause on the other end, and when you spoke again your voice was lower.
âI donât know how to do this year,â you admitted. âEveryone keeps telling me how strong I am and I feel like Iâm made of tissue paper and bad timing.â
âYou donât have to do it alone.â
He heard you breathe in, then out.
âThatâs new,â you said softly.
âYeah,â he said. âI know.â
Then, carefully, like he was crossing thin ice, âI was wrong about a lot of things.â
You didnât answer right away.
He kept going before he could lose his nerve.
âAbout you leaving. About Mom. About the phone call. About all of it, probably.â He rubbed his hand over his face. âI think I was so angry that it got easier to keep making you the bad guy than to admit I missed you.â
The words sat there between you.
He could hear your breath catch.
On the other end, when you finally spoke, you sounded like you were already struggling to hold the tears back.
Matthew looked down at the floor. In the living room outside, somebody laughed at something on television. A hockey game highlight maybe. Life going on stupidly, normally, while his whole chest felt cut open.
âI donât know how to fix it,â he admitted.
âYou probably canât,â you said.
Then you added, âNot all at once.â
Then you said, with the faintest trace of the old dry humor that used to belong to you before grief made everything brittle, âFor the record, I always thought your skating was obnoxiously good.â
Matthew let out a startled laugh.
âYeah. Annoying, actually.â
He smiled despite himself. âYour music got all right, I guess.â
You snorted. âThanks. How generous of you to say.â
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees again.
âIn a hallway at the Grammys hiding from people who want pictures of me crying.â
Then he said, âText me when you get back to your house.â
âSo I know you got there safely.â
You went quiet for just long enough that he wondered if heâd pushed too far.
Then, very softly: âOkay.â
He nodded to no one. âOkay.â
It was strangely hard to end it.
Finally you said, âGoodnight, Matty.â
After the line went dead, Matthew sat there for a long time with the phone still in his hand.
Outside the bedroom door, the apartment noise went on. Connor and the others talking. Somebody raiding the fridge. A burst of laughter.
But in Matthewâs chest something had shifted, small and stubborn and painful.
Not forgiveness. Not yet. Not healing either.
for the first time in years, when you had called back, he had answered.
And for the first time in years, neither of you had tried to make the other one leave.
