Page 34 of Beautiful When He Breaks

He laughs softly and shifts forward, planting his feet on the floor. Our eyes meet again, and there it is, that same impossible softness from earlier. He smiles a little, tired and grateful and beautiful enough to be cruel, and says, “Thanks for staying.”

My throat tightens around things I will absolutely never say out loud if I can help it. “Thanks for staying” sounds so small for all the ways I’ve already built my life around that sentence.

“Always,” I answer before I can stop myself, then I leave his room.

I step into the hall quietly, pull his door nearly shut behind me, and keep walking.

Because that’s what I do. I keep walking. I keep showing up. I keep loving him from the space beside him because, right now, that’s the only place I’m allowed to stand.

10

Eli

The first day I leave Mila with someone else feels wrong before I even get out of bed.

Nothing actually goes badly—that’s the stupid part. Mrs. Alvarez arrives five minutes early, wearing a soft cardigan and a calm smile that makes everyone in the room unconsciously lower their voices.

She’s divorced, in her sixties, raised her own kids, and has references so glowing that I’m half convinced she could calm a riot with one look. Even Killian, who distrusts almost everyone by default, had only managed a reluctant, “She seems competent,” which, in his language, is basically a standing ovation.

He does his usual intimidating thing for the first ten minutes, standing there with his arms folded. Mrs. Alvarez doesn’t even blink at him. She just pats his forearm once and tells him he worries like a man who was made too responsible too young, and I swear to God, I see Killian short-circuit for half a second before he recovers.

So, nothing goes badly. That should make me feel better, but all morning my chest feels packed too tight. I keep checking the time. I keep asking if she’s okay, then hating myself for it because Mrs. Alvarez is clearly competent, kind, and patient. My daughter is not being abandoned; she’s being looked after by a woman with grown children and solid references, while I go to classes and football training.

Julian told me that if I wanted Mila to have a normal routine, I’d have to survive the first day I let somebody else help. Killian told me, in his usual soothing manner, that if I hovered one more time, he’d physically remove me from the room. All of them were right in different ways, which is irritating as hell.

I’m already half-cooked from stress when I step into practice. The field looks the same as always, the air smells the same, the guys are loud in the same way they always are, but something in me stays split down the middle.

Part of me is lacing up cleats, adjusting pads, and listening to Luca run through the warm-up plan. The other part is back at the Sin Bin, counting the ounces in Mila’s bottle and wondering if she’ll cry when she wakes up and I’m not there. If Mrs. Alvarez will think I’m an idiot for labeling everything twice and wondering if somebody will send me a photo just to prove she’s okay, or if asking for that would make me even more unhinged than I already feel.

I miss the first change in the drill because I’m two beats behind, and Coach actually has to repeat himself. That alone should earn me a blistering public teardown. Usually, if I’m off by even half a second, he’s on me immediately, voice cutting across the field in front of everybody because football doesn’t give a shit about what’s happening in your personal life.

But today, he just looks at me for a moment, says, “Matthews, lock in,” and moves on. No shouting. No humiliation. No extra laps. The lack of it feels almost stranger than the thing itself would have.

I catch Luca’s eye a few minutes later, and he looks away too fast. Then I see Julian jogging back into position after the rep, sweat already darkening the collar of his shirt, and he gives me a quick nod.

A tiny, ugly little realization slides into place at the base of my skull: they said something to Coach.

The thought warms and humiliates me at the same time. I’m grateful. I also apparently need people running interference so I can survive the first day of football practice after becoming a dad.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about being this overwhelmed. Gratitude and humiliation start sharing the same oxygen until you can’t always tell which one you’re breathing.

Still, I get through practice. Barely and not gracefully, but I get through it. My routes are a step messier than usual, but I stop missing cues after the first third of practice and settle into the rhythm enough that my body remembers what it’s built to do.

Hit. Block. Adjust. Move. Catch. Listen. Repeat.

For an hour and a half, I’m a football player first, a father second, and a man with a legal folder full of trauma-shaped paperwork somewhere under his bed third. It doesn’t fix anything, but it gives my brain somewhere else to go for a while. By the time Coach blows the final whistle, I’m exhausted enough that the buzzing panic in me has dulled to a more manageable murmur.

The locker room after practice is the same loud, humid chaos it’s always been. The first thing I do after showering is check my phone. There’s a text from Mrs. Alvarez with a photo of Mila asleep in the duck-print sleeper she put her in after lunch, one tiny fist up by her cheek, and a caption that says:

Mrs. Alvarez: She took her bottle well and is down for a nap. She has very strong opinions about being burped.

I stare at the picture longer than necessary, relief hitting so fast it almost makes me stupid. Then guilt follows, because relief seems to be my body’s favorite way of making me feel terrible lately.

I dry off, pull on my boxers, and stand in front of my locker with my towel around my shoulders, staring at the clutter inside. The weirdness starts because I know Jules is somewhere in here, and my body has apparently decided that the last few days weren’t enough of a mindfuck, so now we’re adding this on top.

This. These strange, sharp little stutters inside me whenever I look at him too long. That stupid warmth low in my stomach when he says Mila’s name. The way I keep noticing his hands, his mouth, the tattoos climbing his body. Then there’s that quiet, creeping awareness that something in me shifted the night he stood in my room with Mila against his shoulder and the lamplight catching on his skin.

I’ve been trying not to look at it too directly because I’ve had enough upheaval for one lifetime, not to mention that looking at it means asking questions I’m not ready to answer.