My gaze cuts across the room.
Dante and Cole are watching.
They don’t move. Not for me. Not for Rylan.
Rylan makes a choking sound.
“REID! LET GO!”
Adrian’s voice. The captain’s voice. It’s the only one that slices through the rage. He shoves between us, hands on my chest, pushing. “Enough!”
I hold it for one more second, drinking in the panic in Rylan’s eyes.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Then I release him.
He collapses to the floor, coughing, gagging, clutching his throat. I step back, chest heaving.
My hands tremble.
I killed the noise.
Finally.
The room is dead silent, except for Rylan’s wet gasps.
“You’re fucking insane, man,” he chokes from the floor. “Insane.”
“What the hell is going on in here?”
The voice cuts through the tension like a blade.
Coach Addison stands in the doorway, face a mask of cold fury. His gaze slides over Rylan on the floor, then to me, breathing hard like I just played three overtimes. His eyes narrow when they land on the bruising already darkening Rylan’s throat. Something in his jaw ticks—not sympathy, exactly. A cold, hard look of calculation.
His eyes lock on me.
Heavy. Final.
“Everyone out,” he commands, voice dangerously quiet. “Now.”
No one moves.
“GET OUT. All of you. Except Reid.”
The locker room empties in a rush of nervous energy. Helmets thunk. Laces scrape.
Adrian gives me one last look—a cocktail of confusion and warning—before he follows the others out.
The door clicks shut, and the silence left behind is worse than the noise.
An accusation.
Coach Addison doesn’t yell. He walks toward me, slow, his footsteps echoing on damp tile. He stops a few feet away.
“You want to tell me what that was?”
I shake my head, still breathing heavy. My hands are fists at my sides.
