"It is awful. But I'm a professional hockey player. I should be able to handle some asshole teammates without falling apart." I laugh again, that same hollow sound. "I should be tougher than this. Instead, I'm sitting on my nursery floor having a breakdown with my daughter's nanny."
"You're allowed to struggle with this. You're allowed to admit it's hard."
"Am I?" I turn back to her. "Because it feels like weakness. Itfeels like I'm being a pussy about something I should just handle like every other guy in the league handles shitty team dynamics."
"You're not weak, Tyler. You're not weak for being hurt by people deliberately trying to hurt you. You're human. And what they're doing is cruel and calculated. It's designed to break you down."
Her words hit deeply in my chest, and suddenly, I'm fighting back tears.
"I'm so tired," I admit. "I'm tired of pretending it doesn't bother me. I'm tired of being alone all the time. I'm tired of dreading something I used to love more than anything."
Nora doesn't offer platitudes or false solutions. She sits there next to me, our knees touching, Harper sleeping against her chest. The silence between us feels understanding. Like, she gets that there's nothing to say that would fix this.
"Four days," I say finally. "Four days until I have to go back there."
"You'll survive it."
"Will I?"
"Yes." She says it with such certainty, I almost believe her. "You'll survive it because you're stronger than you think. And because you have a reason to come home now."
She glances down at Harper, and I follow her gaze to my daughter's sleeping face, peaceful now after all that screaming.
"Yeah," I mutter. "I do."
We sit here for another twenty minutes, neither of us moving, both of us existing in the quiet dark. My knee is still pressed against hers, and I'm aware of every point where we're touching. Eventually, Nora stands and transfers Harper to her crib.
I stand too, stretching muscles stiff from sitting on the floor. We're both in the doorway, the hallway beyond us.
"Thank you for listening to me bitch about my job."
"Anytime." She pauses. "I mean it. If you need to talk, if practice gets bad, whatever, I'm here."
Something loosens in my chest that I didn't know was woundthat tight. I've spent a year not saying any of this to anyone, carrying it around like something I didn't deserve to put down, and she just sat here on a nursery floor in the middle of the night and held the weight of it without flinching. "Even at three in the morning?"
"Especially at three in the morning. That's when the worst thoughts happen."
"Goodnight, Red."
"Goodnight, West."
I head back to my room, but sleep doesn't come. I lie in the dark, thinking about what I said, about admitting out loud how miserable I've been for a year, about Nora sitting next to me without judgment or pity.
The house only feels like home when she's in it.
The realization settles over me as the sun starts to lighten the sky outside my window. Not a sudden epiphany. A quiet truth I can't ignore anymore.
This house was just a rental before. A place to sleep, eat, and exist. But now, with Nora down the hall and Harper across from her, it feels like somewhere I want to be, instead of somewhere I have to be.
And that should terrify me. Should send me into a panic about crossing lines and all the reasons this is a bad idea.
But lying here in the pre-dawn quiet, all I can think about is the way she sat next to me on the nursery floor. The way she listened without trying to fix anything or tell me I was overreacting. The way her knee pressed against mine like an anchor.
The way she called me Tyler instead of West for the first time when she said I wasn't weak.
Four more days before I have to face Reaper, the team, and all the shit that comes with it.
But at least I'll have somewhere to come home to.Someoneto come home to.