"How do you deal with it?" she asks. "Day after day. How do you keep going back?"
"I love hockey." It's the truth, even when it hurts. "I love beingon the ice, love the game, love everything about it except the people I'm currently playing with. And if I quit, Reaper wins. If I ask for a trade, I'm the guy who couldn't handle it. I'm stuck."
"You're not stuck. You're surviving."
"Doesn't feel like surviving. Feels like drowning."
The baby monitor crackles softly from the counter, and we both freeze, waiting to see if Harper's waking up or just shifting in her sleep.
Silence.She settles.
"I should go back to bed," Nora says, but she doesn't move.
"Yeah. Me too."
Neither of us moves.
We sit here at the kitchen table, tea cooling in our mugs, the clock on the microwave showing twelve thirty-two in the morning. The house is quiet except for us, this little bubble of honesty in the middle of the night when all the walls come down.
"Thank you," I say finally. "For listening. For not telling me I'm being dramatic or that I should just deal with it as everyone else does."
"You're not being dramatic. What they're doing to you is calculated and cruel."
"It's hockey."
"It's abuse," she says firmly, leaving no room for argument. "Just because it happens on the ice doesn't make it less abusive. You don't deserve that, Tyler. Nobody does."
Tyler. Not West. Tyler.
The sound of my actual name in her voice does something to my chest, makes it tight, warm, and complicated.
The monitor crackles again, louder this time, and Harper's cry follows immediately after.
"I've got her," Nora says, standing quickly, like she's grateful for the interruption.
"No, I'll get her. You need sleep."
"So do you."
We're both standing now, awkward in the kitchen, the moment from before broken by baby cries and reality.
"Goodnight, Red," I say.
She pauses in the doorway, not looking back. "Goodnight."
Then she's gone, heading upstairs to get Harper, and I'm alone in the kitchen with cold tea and the echo of her calling me Tyler instead of West.
I head to my room eventually, but sleep doesn't come easily. I just lie here in the dark thinking about Nora asking good questions, really listening, offering a perspective that doesn't dismiss what I'm going through. Thinking about how I forgot what it felt like to have someone actually care about my answer when they ask how I'm doing.
The house feels different with her in it. Less empty. Less like a place that I'm just existing in between practices and games.
But she's also going to leave eventually. That's what nannies do. They take care of kids for a while, and then they move on to the next family. This isn't permanent.Sheisn't permanent.
And I need to remember that.
Even when it's midnight, and she's listening like nobody's ever listened before.
Even when she calls me Tyler.