Wren steps out from the corridor with Atlas a beat behind her, and the costume tears a little at the seams.
She looks steadier than she did when she followed him away—chin up, shoulders set, the careful competence I’ve watched her build piece by piece since she got to Boston.Better, not fine.And better counts.
Atlas does what he said he’d do.He peels off toward the far lane, staking out a spot where she can see him every time she looks up.No nod.No wave.Just a fixed point in a moving storm.
I get it.I also hate that I get it.
Because I know why she needs it.
Because I’m part of the reason she made it back out here at all.
Last night, she didn’t sleep.She curled against me and shook like her bones were making noise.I held her through it.I watched the phone light up and felt her go small, and I wanted to put my fist through the wall because there are only so many times you can tell someone she’s safe when her body remembers otherwise.
Adrian.
His name doesn’t belong anywhere near her life anymore, and yet there it is, like a stain that keeps bleeding through fresh paint.He’s good, too, at getting under her skin and protecting himself at the same time.Too good.No threats that trip easy alarms.Nothing you can neatly hand to a cop without a backstory.Just enough to fold Wren in half with dread and make every room feel like it has a second door you can’t see.
She let me in last night.Told me more than she has anyone else.Not everything—she’s still carrying a piece that hurts to look at—but enough that the shape of it sits in my chest like a blade.
I know.
Kael doesn’t.Atlas doesn’t.
And I’m caught between protecting her and warning them as the ice turns under my skates and Coach blows the next drill to life.
I push off into the neutral zone, backward stride smooth and automatic, eyes flicking up every few seconds to find her at the boards.She’s moving through jobs—checking laces, swapping tape, chirping a rookie who thinks electrolytes are optional.Half the team is a little in love with her, the other half terrified she’ll bench them in front of their mothers, and I don’t blame either group.She’s the kind of person who recalibrates the room by existing in it.
Usually.
Today she’s recalibrating herself every sixty seconds.
Kael whistles a reset.I loop back across center and catch his eye.He does the thing he does—two fingers, tiny flick—captain-code for You good?
I nod, because the truth is too complicated for hand signals.He holds my stare half a beat longer than normal, like he’s reading a line of text I didn’t mean to show him, then pivots to correct a rookie’s footwork.He knows something is off.Kael always knows.He’ll wait to name it until he’s sure.
Atlas, meanwhile, is pretending to focus on his lane and not on Wren.He fails.His attention tracks her like it’s magnetized.He’s not subtle—never has been—and for once, I’m grateful for that.If anything breathes wrong within ten feet of her, he’ll feel it first.It should make me less tense.It doesn’t.
Because part of me wants to be the only one who feels it first.
I cut through two cones and glide past the glass, tapping it twice with my stick without slowing down.Wren looks up, that small tired smile angling one corner of her mouth.The muscles in my back unknot by a millimeter.
“You good?”I mouth.
“Better,” she says.
Better counts.I cling to the phrase like it’s a bannister in a dark stairwell.
We switch to a mini-scrimmage and I let my body eat the ice—start-stop, edgework clean, ankles soft, stick light until it isn’t.Kael threads a pass through traffic and I take it on the fly, clipping the post high and left.The clang ricochets through the arena.A rookie hoots.I point my stick at him like “next time, watch and learn,” and he laughs.Control the energy before it controls you—Dad’s old mantra stuck in my head like an unwanted anthem.Some habits pay rent.
I steal a glance at the boards.
Wren is there, hip against the cart, attention fixed on the ice.Except—I know that stare.It’s the one that looks like presence but is actually a guard dog at the door.
Her drawer is shut.Her phone is inside it.I watched her put it there like she was putting a match in a bucket of water.It won’t stop the smoke from finding her.
The puck flips to my line again.I shoulder past a defenseman who should be heavier than me but gets turned into air, muscle and muscle memory working like friends.We cycle twice and Kael buries a shot top shelf, dead center.Our bench bangs sticks.Coach says nothing, but I see the approval in the set of his mouth.
And then—
