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The audio on his phone plays on repeat as Macklin stares at his phone screen. His father’s voice comes out from the shitty speaker.
“Macklin handled it the way I expected him, which he was inconsolable after the game. He was upset. He was upset at himself. He was upset at the results, you know.”
His heart pounds in his ears as the words register. This isn’t the first time Dada has told the media information about him that he’d prefer for no one to know about - and it certainly won’t be the last.
He was inconsolable, that’s true, he had started tearing up on the bench, and the pain in his eyes and in his heart hadn't stopped even after getting his silver medal, and being handed that stupid plushie. As soon as the team had made it into the locker room, Mack truthfully had broken down.
He hadn’t cried that hard since he was a child. Back when his parents were still Mama and Dada, and he couldn’t pronounce Aiden correctly. When he was little, he used to have these serious tantrums. Aiden called them his "Mack Moments", these huge major freakouts where he'd either go completely silent, or he'd lose his absolute mind.
He would lose all self control, throwing things, yelling, and even once, he had hit his mom in the face. He remembered the look on her face, the fear and panic immediately morphing into worry for her baby. The guilt, though he had only been about 5 years old, had been cemented. Mack knew he could be violent, hockey had primed him for it, but he didn’t like it.
The shame after every outburst, after every smash against the boards, and every time he saw his mom make that hurt face was enough to make him feel guilty for weeks.
Even now, he felt ashamed about his reaction to the Olympics. The clips of his face smushed into his helmet as he cried on the bench. The clips of him standing in line in between Toews and Harley, the apprehension and hurt written on his face.
When he got off the ice and into the locker room, he crumbled inward. He had stood there at his stall, eyes welling up with tears.
Sidney had tried to comfort him, telling him, “You did good kid. I’m proud of you.” Any other time, Mack would have been receptive to the praise. But in that moment, all he could do was stiffly nod, and pretend that he wasn’t breaking.
The pretending lasted all of thirty seconds.
The second Crosby stepped away, Mack's vision blurred completely. He sat down hard on the bench in front of his stall and folded forward, elbows on his knees. His chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped steel cables around his ribs and pulled.
He heard voices around him. Equipment clattering onto the floor. Trainers moving through the room. Someone laughing at the opposite end of the locker room, the sound immediately swallowed by the heaviness hanging over everyone else.
Canada wasn't supposed to lose. Not like that.
Not after months of preparation and years of expectation. Not when he'd imagined this moment since he was a kid shooting pucks in the driveway.
Not when he had spent years picturing what Olympic gold would feel like. He had imagined standing on the blue line with a medal around his neck while the anthem played through the arena speakers. He had imagined looking into the crowd and finding his family. He had imagined calling Aiden afterward, hearing the excitement in his voice, hearing Dada tell him how proud he was.
He had never imagined this.
A hand settled on the back of his neck.
"Mack."
He didn't look up.
"Hey."
Another squeeze.
"I know."
That was the problem.
Everyone knew. Everyone knew exactly how much this meant to him. Everyone knew how badly he wanted gold. Everyone knew he'd take the loss personally. The tears came harder.
Not because they were comforting him, but because they weren't angry. Nobody was blaming him. Nobody was telling him he should have done more.
That would have been easier. Instead, they were kind. And kindness always seemed to crack him open. After all, it had with Will.
Will had always been annoyingly good at seeing right through him. Most people saw the confidence first, the interviews, the jokes, the way Mack carried himself. They saw the first-overall pick, the kid everyone talked about like he was destined for greatness. Will saw the parts underneath all of that. The anxious and insecure parts. The parts that stayed awake at night replaying every mistake over and over again until he couldn't tell the difference between reality and his own self criticism.
A few months ago, after a bad game, Mack had spent nearly an hour ranting. He'd complained about his decisions with the puck, about missed opportunities, about how he should've been better. Will had listened quietly before finally interrupting him.
"You know normal people don't hate themselves this much for having a bad day at work, right?"
At the time, Mack had rolled his eyes and told him to shut up.
Now, sitting alone in the dark, he wondered if Will had been more right than either of them realized.
He remembered sitting in the backseat of his parents' car after a tournament loss when he was ten. He had cried the entire drive home, convinced he'd cost his team the game. His mother had reached back from the passenger seat and held onto his knee.
"You care so much," she'd told him. At the time, he'd thought it was criticism, but now he understood it wasn't, it was an explanation of his behaviours, the way he couldn’t get out of his head.
His mother had never sounded frustrated when she said things like that. If anything, she had sounded sad for him.
As if she already knew that caring the way Mack cared would hurt him someday.
Mack cared too much. He always had. About hockey, about winning and making people proud. About proving he deserved everything that had happened to him. The draft, and the attention. The headlines and the expectations.
Sometimes he wondered if everyone had gotten it wrong.
Not publicly. He'd never admit that out loud.
But privately, in moments like this, when nobody was around and there was no performance to give, the thought crept in anyway.
What if he wasn't enough? What if one day people realized he wasn't the player they thought he was? What if he spent his entire life chasing expectations he could never actually reach?
Sometimes he wondered what would be left if hockey disappeared. The thought terrified him.
Without hockey, who was he?
Not the prospect, and not the star.
Not the kid everyone expected to save franchises and win championships. Just Mack.
And sometimes he wasn't entirely sure he knew that version of himself.
His thumb taps the screen again, replaying the interview. “Macklin handled it the way I expected him—”
He pauses it. The silence feels better, like salt in his staunchly bleeding wounds. His father isn’t wrong. That's the frustrating part.
Dada knew him better than almost anyone. He knew Mack would blame himself. He knew Mack would replay every shift, every pass, every mistake until he drove himself crazy. He knew because he'd watched it happen for years.
He had seen it after peewee tournaments. After playoff losses, after games that everyone else had forgotten about by the next morning. Mack would carry them all.
The issue wasn't the truth. It was that the truth belonged to Mack. Not to reporters, not to fans dissecting clips online and especially not to strangers who thought they knew him because they'd watched him play hockey. People always wanted access to him.Not just his game, him. His thoughts, his feelings and his disappointments. Sometimes it felt like being a person had become secondary to being a story.
His phone buzzes.
A text from Aiden.
You still awake?
Mack stares at it for a moment before replying.
yeah.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Dad's being Dad.
Despite everything, Mack snorts. Aiden always had a way of cutting through the noise.
Another message follows.
He's proud of you, you know.
Mack's jaw tightens.
i know.
The problem was that he did know. He knew his father and his mother were proud. He knew the coaches were proud. He knew that Sidney had meant every word he'd said in that locker room. He knew his teammates were proud. He knew his friends, that Will even though he was American, were proud.
He knew there were probably thousands of kids who would've done anything to be standing where he had stood. None of it changed the result. None of it put a gold medal around his neck. For a long moment, he sits in the dark with his phone resting in his hand.
Then Aiden sends one final message.
You lost a hockey game, Mack. The world didn't end.
Mack reads it twice. Three times.
The knot in his chest loosens just slightly. Not enough to make the hurt disappear, and definitely not enough to stop him from thinking about the game tomorrow, and the day after that, and probably years from now.
Because that was the thing nobody talked about. Athletes never really forgot. People assumed losses faded with time, but they didn't. They just became quieter.
The details blurred around the edges, but the feeling remained. The disappointment, the regret, the wondering. The endless list of what ifs.
But enough to take a breath, and to set the phone down. Enough to remind himself that the silver medal sitting in his room wasn't proof that he'd failed.
It was proof that he'd made it there at all. Proof that he had represented his country, proof that he had stood on Olympic ice, and proof that he had cared enough for losing to hurt this badly.
For the first time all night, Mack lets the audio stay silent.