Outside, a door shuts, followed by the soft drum of laughter rolling toward the elevators. I rub the heel of my hand over the taped wrist Riley wrapped and think about all the ways wanting turns into losing when you’re not careful. The helplessness is the worst part—it has its own gravity. I hate gravity. It pretends it’s law when really it’s just a habit the world refuses to break.
I pick the phone up because empty hands make louder thoughts. The screen wakes obediently, and with it, the part of me that’s a fool for hope.
There’s a knock and my pulse leaps like it’s got springs. I’m moving before sense catches up, crossing the carpet in three strides that feel like a bad idea wearing good shoes. I open the door on a breath I don’t take.
It’s not Riley.
It’s Collins with a plastic bucket of ice and a grin sharp enough to shave with. “Cap,” he says, leaning into the doorframe like we’re frat brothers and not a man trying to have arelationship with self-control and a child who’s never met it. “Boys are doing a poker thing. You in? Or you got, like, a hot/cold compress situation to attend to?” His eyebrows do gymnastics. Subtlety dies on the hallway carpet.
“I’m out,” I say, because if I sit at a table tonight, I’ll lose money making bad bets on the only hand I want and don’t have. “Get some sleep, rookie.”
He snorts. “Grandpa hour. Copy that. Hey—uh—about the trainer jokes.” His mouth twists, sheepish for once. “I’m an idiot. It was an idiot thing to say.”
It takes the sting out of the barbs still lodged under my skin. “True on both counts,” I say. “Good night.”
He salutes with the ice bucket and peels off down the hall. I shut the door with more control than I feel and lean my forehead against it for a count of five, long enough to choose not to break my phone over the curve of my own stubbornness.
The phone buzzes before I can decide who I’m going to be next. Once. Twice. I look down, ready to ignore another group chat meme.
Riley:Jason. We have to talk—now.
Everything in me stills, then accelerates. The room narrows to the little white bubble of her name on black glass. I don’t feel my feet move, but I’m already turning the handle.
Chapter 5
Strictly Business
Riley
Midnight rain needlesthe windshield like it has a grudge. The wipers thud a two-beat that sounds like a warning—don’t. Headlights smear into white snakes on blacktop, and my knuckles go bone-pale where they choke the wheel.
“Repeat it back,” I say, because if I let silence grow, memory will crawl into it. “Protocol on road days.”
In the passenger seat, Jason slouches like a billboard for bad decisions, wrist neatly wrapped in the tape I trust more than I trust him. He skims a look at me, then the glass. Water sluices in sheets. “No extra bag skates. No heroics. Ice after games, stim before practice, mobility twice a day, and you get to boss me around even when I’m already doing the right thing.”
“You’re never already doing the right thing,” I say. The heater coughs lukewarm air; my damp cuffs drink it without gratitude. “Finish the list.”
He tips his head, mouth curving. “Hydrate, sleep, no ‘recreational’ bar fights.”
“Remove the air quotes unless you want me to staple them to your face.” I signal and slide around a truck throwing a wall of spray. The tires hiss. The car shivers. “And you text me if the wrist changes—tingling, numbness, sharp pain, loss of grip. Any of it.”
“Yes, Coach,” he says, and the word lands softer than it should, like he meansRileyand doesn’t want to hand me that weapon.
I keep my eyes on the road. “You’ll wear the extra padding. You’ll tape between periods if I say so. You won’t argue in front of Coach, PR, or anyone with a badge that unlocks the press room.”
“Am I allowed to argue in front of the vending machine?” he asks. “It knows my secrets.”
My mouth twitches before I can stop it. I iron it flat. “No arguing with appliances. Or me.”
The rain thickens, a gray curtain dragging across the world. The dash paints his profile blue-white: strong nose, stubborn mouth, eyes that flatten to dangerous when he’s dared. I told myself I could do this—be near him and not let the past pick locks. I can. I am. It just takes both hands on the wheel and every rule I wrote for myself shoved between us.
He watches the wipers, then says, quiet enough to lose under the noise, “You always did like a plan.”
“Plans keep people employed,” I say. “And alive.”
“Dramatic.”
“Accurate.” I catch an exit glow through rain. Ten minutes to the hotel if the roads behave. They won’t. Roads are people. They do what they want.
