Page 62 of Puck Your Charity

But a huge, glaring void still sits in the middle of my chest.

My pack remains incomplete. Victor stays away. He avoids the east wing like a plague zone, treating me like fragile glass that might break if he breathes too loud.

A quiet buzz vibrates against the sofa cushion.

I blink, pulled out of my thoughts. I reach over and grab my phone. The screen illuminates, showing a new text message notification.

I unlock the device. The sender's name makes my eyebrows pull together in surprise.

Elena. Sam’s mom.

I gave her my personal cell number for when I didn't have shifts at the hospital. When I got fired, she promised to text me updates on Sam's treatment since she knew I cared about him.

I tap the notification, opening our chat thread.

Two messages load on the screen. The first one contains a block of text. The second is an image attachment.

ELENA:

Hi Olive. I know you aren't working right now, but I had to share this with you. We got a surprise visitor in Sam’s room this afternoon. Victor came back.

My stomach twists into a tight, anxious knot. I stare at the words, my brain struggling to process the information.

I tap the image attachment to download the photo.

The picture fills my screen. It looks slightly blurry, taken from a chair near the window. Elena clearly snapped the candid shot without alerting the subjects.

Victor sits in the cramped, uncomfortable plastic guest chair next to the hospital bed. He wears a plain black t-shirt andjeans. The snooty, aristocratic ego vanished. He leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees, gripping a red Nintendo Switch controller in his hands.

Sam sits propped up against his pillows, pointing a finger at the television screen with a huge, gap-toothed smile.

Victor looks at the kid. A genuine, relaxed laugh stretches across his handsome face. The cold glare he usually wears is gone. He looks entirely at peace, completely focused on the ten-year-old boy in the hospital bed.

The breath leaves my lungs in a sudden, breathless rush.

I stare at the glowing screen. I zoom in on Victor's face.

No professional photographers flash their cameras to capture a charity stunt for the team's social media pages. He went there alone.

He went back to the pediatric oncology ward. He walked right into the sterile environment that triggered his devastating panic attack, and he sat down to play Mario Kart with a sick kid.

Another text bubble pops up from Elena.

ELENA:

He stayed for over an hour. He didn't make a big deal out of it. He just sat down, apologized to Sam for leaving the other day, and hung out with him. Sam hasn't stopped smiling all day. Thank you for setting this up.

My hands shake.

I drop the device onto the velvet cushion next to my knee.

The ice wrapped around my heart cracks down the middle. The stubborn, defensive anger I carried for weeks shatters into a million tiny pieces.

I judged him harshly. I stood outside that waiting room on the very first day and labeled him an entitled, callous prick. I heard him complain about the smell of bleach and the waste of his freetime, and I wrote him off as a villain. I held onto that hatred like a shield, using it to protect myself from the terrifying reality of his intense, icy stare.

But Victor isn't just a villain.

I have no idea what caused him to sprint out of that pediatric ward looking like he saw a ghost. I don't know what kind of fears hide behind his cold, untouchable mask. We’ve barely spoken two words to each other since I moved into this house. But looking at this photo rewrites the entire narrative. Something terrified him that day. And instead of running away forever, he drove back to the hospital, faced whatever spooked him, and offered a sincere apology to a child he had disappointed. He put in the grueling work to fix his mistakes.