“Then what are you?” she snaps. There’s color in her cheeks now, high and hot. “Because from where I’m standing, it feels like you’re either on my side or you’re not, and I can’t tell which one you’re choosing.”
I stop walking.
She takes two more steps before she realizes I’m not beside her and turns back, arms wrapped tight around herself, breath puffing in the cold.
Her eyes are bright. Not with tears. Not yet. With fury.
“You kissed me,” she says. The words land between us like a dropped blade. “You kissed me, Declan. In the dark. In the rink. You walked me to my door and kissed me like you meant it.”
My chest tightens. “I did.”
“Yeah?” Her laugh is brittle. “Funny. Because then I watched you stand there in a room full of cameras and let someone else kiss you like you belonged to her.”
I feel that one all the way down to the tape on my hands.
“It’s not like—”
“Don’t,” she cuts in. “Don’t say it’s not like that. I saw it. I saw her hand on your face. I saw you not move. I saw your father look at you like you’d done your trick properly.”
I flinch at that more than I did at the country club.
“It’s complicated,” I say, hating how weak it sounds.
She stares at me like she can’t believe I chose that word. “Do you know what you looked like?” she asks, voice going softer, more dangerous. “You looked… tame. Like a pet. And I’m supposed to trust the guy who stands still while someone elseputs a leash on him, but then hides in the dark and follows me home?”
“I didn’t follow you from there,” I say. “I saw you in the lot, yeah. I should’ve come over. I didn’t. I’ve been trying to make up for that every night since.”
“By watching me from the bushes?” she asks. “That’s your grand plan?”
I take a step toward her before I can stop myself. She doesn’t back up, but her shoulders go stiff again, and I halt.
“Talia,” I say, low. “If I hadn’t been here tonight, he would’ve—”
“I know what he would’ve done,” she snaps. “You think I don’t know? You think that’s new to me?” Her hand cuts the air, furious. “My whole life is built around avoiding guys like that. Rerouting, pretending, calculating so I don’t have to depend on anyone else to step in, because no one ever does.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
No one ever does.
The anger drains out of me, replaced by a cold, sick feeling in my gut. This isn’t just about a drunk frat guy on a Saturday night. This is old. This is a wound that never healed.
I look at her—really look at her—and realize that the exit checks, the flinching, the way she scans every room isn’t anxiety. It’s memory.
“And then you show up,” she says. “You and your quiet and your stupid big hands and the way you stand between people and the door.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t look away. “For five seconds, I thought… I don’t know. That maybe I could breathe around you. That maybe if you said you were there, you’d be there.”
“I was,” I say. The words scrape out. “At the rink. In the truck. Tonight.”
“In the dark,” she corrects. “Always in the dark. You sit with me in a coffee shop when it’s safe. You walk with me when it’s just the team. But the second she’s there? The second it costs you something? I’m a ghost.”
“That’s not—”
“Pick a lane, Declan,” she says, voice low and fierce. “Either I’m someone you want in the dark and the light, or I’m not. You don’t get to have it both ways. I won’t be the thing you hide in the corner while you play the good son for the cameras.”
Her chin trembles, but she holds it high.
“I won't be your dirty secret,” she whispers. “And I won't be another cage you walk into.”
That word again.Cage.It hits like a slap.
