Chapter 69: The Health Confrontation

A knock came on my apartment door just before midnight.

I knew it was Cassian before I even got up.

I opened the door and found him standing there with his jaw tight, his hair still damp from a late shower, and his eyes fixed on me like he had already decided he was done being patient.

My stomach tightened.

“Cassian.”

He walked in without answering, shut the door behind him, and turned to face me in one sharp motion. The room felt smaller the second he started breathing in it.

“I talked to the trainer,” he said.

I went still.

I folded my arms and kept my face level. “You should not have.”

His eyes flashed. “I needed to know.”

I said nothing.

He took one step closer, then another, until there was barely any room left between us. He looked angry, yes, but there was something else under it too. Something raw, the kind of look he got when his temper was covering fear.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

I kept my voice even. “Cassian.”

“No.” His jaw tightened. “Do not start trying to protect me from the answer now.”

I looked at him for a second too long.

He saw it.

Of course he did.

His face changed immediately. “I know it is bad, but I want to hear how bad it is from you.”

I did not answer.

“You told me the other day that you could play through it, you made me believe it wasn’t all that bad.”

I rubbed a hand once over the back of my neck and looked away for half a second because his stare was too direct and too close and too much like the one he used when he wanted me to tell him the truth even if it hurt.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” I said.

His laugh came out short and bitter. “You didn’t want me to worry.”

I looked back at him.

He was staring at me now like he was trying to keep himself from shaking. “You are unbelievable.”

“That is not helpful.”

“Neither is lying to me.”

I crossed the room toward the kitchen because I needed the space, then turned back to face him. “I was not lying.”

He gave me a flat, disbelieving look. “You were absolutely lying.”

“I was trying to manage it.”

“Manage it?” His voice rose just enough to cut. “You have been skating on it for months and you call that managing?”

I did not answer fast enough.

Cassian’s expression hardened. “How bad is it? You’ve still not answered that.”

“It is manageable.”

He stared at me. “That is not what I asked.”

I said nothing.

His hands flexed at his sides. “How bad?”

I held his gaze. “Bad enough.”

He looked away for a second, then back at me. “Yet, you kept playing,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

That question landed harder than the rest because it was the one I had already asked myself too many times to count.

I looked at him and did not lie. “Because we were winning.”

Cassian’s eyes flashed. “That is not enough.”

“It was enough then.”

“No, it was not.” He stepped in again, closer now, voice rougher. “You could have said something.”

“And done what?”

“Let the team help.”

I gave a short laugh without humor. “You think that would have stayed in the room?”

He said nothing.

The silence told me he knew exactly what I meant.

I went on, quieter now. “You know what happens when something like this gets out too early. They sit you, they protect the asset, they call it caution, they call it rest. Then suddenly the season becomes the thing you miss instead of the thing you finish.”

Cassian’s jaw tightened hard enough to hurt just looking at it.

He looked at me with that same fire he got when he was angry at a ref and could not do anything about it. “You do not get to make that choice alone.”

“I already did.”

“That is the problem.”

He looked like he was trying to hold himself together by muscle memory and not much else. I could see the fear in him now.

“If you keep playing like this,” he said, voice low and strained, “you are going to make it worse.”

I held his stare. “I know.”

“Then why are you still doing it?”

I did not answer right away.

Cassian’s expression changed when he figured it out before I said it.

He took a small step closer, then another, until there was almost no space left between us. “Torin.”

I looked at him.

His voice was quieter now. “Why are you doing it?”

I should have said for the team. That would have been true. I should have said for the playoffs. Also true. I should have said because I wanted to finish what we had started.

Instead I said the thing that had been sitting under all of it.

“Because hockey is what I’ve been doing all my life. If I stop it, I don’t know what else I would do.”

Cassian went very still.

I kept my eyes on him. “Also, this team deserves everything I have left, I don’t want to be the one who pulled back when we were this close, I don’t want you to look at me and see me quitting.”

His expression shifted, fast and sharp. “I would never have thought that.”

I laughed once, small and tired. “You say that now.”

“I am saying it now.”

I reached for him before I could talk myself out of it and caught his waist, pulling him in close. He did not resist.

Cassian looked up at me with his jaw still tight and his breathing a little uneven. “You could end your career for this.”

The words were softer than before, but somehow worse.

I looked at him, then admitted the part that had been sitting right there under my ribs since the trainer told him. “I know.”

His eyes held mine, and for a second all the anger in him seemed to buckle under the weight of what he had learned.

Then he shook his head once. “No, I don’t think you know. You keep talking like this is some price you just pay.”

“It is a price.”

“No.” His voice cracked on the word, and that was what finally made my chest tighten all the way. “It is your career.”

I did not answer.

He stared at me, then said, sharper now, “If you end your career for this, I will never forgive you.”

I held him by the waist and looked at him for a long second. The fight in him was still there, but now it was tangled with fear, and that scared me more than the anger had. Cassian did not bluff about things that mattered. If he was saying this, he meant it.

I lowered my voice. “It is not just this.”

His expression changed.

I kept going because he needed the truth, not the polished version. “It is us, it is everything we have built. It is the season, the team, the fact that I have spent months trying to protect all of it and keep playing because I did not want to drop any part of what we have earned.”

Cassian’s jaw clenched. “That is not love.”

I looked at him.

“It is sacrifice,” he said.

I stared at him, still holding him close, and knew he was right enough to make the room go very quiet.

My grip tightened at his waist before I could stop it.

He looked up at me with those same bright, furious eyes and said, “Love is not you destroying yourself because you think that is what people you care about deserve.”

The silence after that was heavy.

I kept my forehead close to his, not touching yet, because I needed a second to think before the conversation turned into something we could not take back.

He did not move away.

Neither did I.

Cassian’s hands were still on my shoulders, fingers tight enough to show how much this had gotten under his skin.

“You came here to fight me,” I said quietly.

His voice softened by a fraction. “I am angry because I love you, and because I’m worried out of my mind.”

The words landed in my chest like a hit I had not braced for.

I looked at him, really looked, and the room went still in the way it only did when the truth finally pushed through everything else.

Cassian’s eyes were wet now.

He was furious at the situation.

At me.

I lifted one hand and brushed it once along his jaw. That made his breath catch.

“I know,” I said.

His face changed at the touch, anger softening just enough to let the rest through.

Then I pulled him closer and rested my forehead against his.

“I am not choosing this over you,” I said.

Cassian’s breath left him in one rough exhale.

I kept my hand at his jaw and said the part that mattered most. “I am trying to get us through the playoffs in one piece.”

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again. “And if it breaks you?”

“It will not.”

“You do not know that.”

“I know I have you.”

His expression changed so fast it almost hurt to see. The anger was still there, but now it had nowhere clean to stand. He looked at me like he wanted to fight, kiss, and trust me all at once.

I held him tighter.

“That is enough,” I said.

His mouth opened, then closed again.

Finally he looked at me and whispered, “That is not enough if you lose yourself.”

I did not answer immediately.

I touched his forehead with mine and said the only thing left that was true.

“Then do not let me.”

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the anger had not gone, it had simply changed shape.

His voice was low when he said, “I am serious, Torin.”

So was I.

I nodded once. “So am I.”

He stayed there, close enough that I could feel every breath, every shift in his body, every ounce of the frustration still simmering under the surface.

Then he reached for me and held on like the argument had finally reached the only place it could end.