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,ourhouse. 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, almostreligiously 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.
