THEO
The latch clicks shut behind my father and the room becomes the smallest space I have ever stood in.
Maddox is in front of me. My hand is on the small of his back. I can feel his chest plate rising and falling through the team quarter-zip. He isn't breathing fast. He's breathing like a man about to work.
Paul doesn't look at me. He looks at Maddox.
“You piece of shit.”
Maddox's shoulders settle a quarter inch lower.
“Coach.”
“You… in my arena… with my son…”
Maddox's hands stay loose at his sides.
“Easy.”
“Easy?”
Paul's voice cracks on the word. I've never heard it crack. In twenty years of being his son, I have never heard my father's voice crack, and it cracks now because he's looking at a condom wrapper on the carpet and putting it together with my hair and my mouth and the desk and his whole face shakes.
“Theo.” He finally finds me behind Maddox. “Come here. Now.”
My hand stays on Maddox's back.
“Theo. I said come here.”
I can't make my legs move. My body has become a weight. Something in my chest has taken all the air and held it hostage and my fingers are pressed into Maddox's spine and I can feel his heart through the fabric, steady, steady, steady.
“He's staying where he is, Coach,” Maddox says.
“You don't speak for him.”
“I'm not. He's staying where he is and I'm telling you what he already decided.”
Paul's head jerks like he's been slapped.
“You don't get to?—”
“I'm going to say this once.” Maddox's voice has dropped into something I haven't heard from him before. Not the locker-room bark. Not the dominance in bed. Something flatter. Something older. “You have spent twenty years telling this kid he isn't enough. You benched him. You humiliated him. You made him small so you could feel big. I watched you do it for a month and Ihatedit. Tonight, he played the best period of his life, and you couldn't clap. Your own son. And the only thing you can think about in this room right now is how he embarrassed you. That's what you are.”
Paul goes white.
Then red.
“Getawayfrom him.”
“No.”
It happens fast.
Paul comes at Maddox and Maddox turns, perfect timing, perfect angle, and takes the first punch on the pad of his shoulder. I hear the impact. I hear my father grunt. Maddoxdoesn't grunt. Maddox moves Paul off him with a forearm and steps sideways, between Paul and me, always between.
“Coach. Stop.”
“Get… away!”
