I feel it before I hear it.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
The drawer lights under the smallest sliver of space.The vibration is barely audible under the noise, yet Wren’s whole body tightens like someone pulled a wire inside her chest.
Adrian, I think, and ice water knifes through my veins.
Not shock.Not discovery.Recognition.The pattern is a song I can hum in the dark now: he goes quiet long enough to make hope feel like a thing, then he taps her shoulder from miles away and reminds her that hope is a trick.
Atlas’s head snaps so fast it looks like pain.He finds the drawer, then her face.His gloves flex.He breathes once, twice, like he’s smashing a rage button and waiting for the light to go off.I respect the hell out of him for it.I also want to rip the boards off their screws and hand Adrian his teeth.
Kael slides past the blue line and lands his weight into stillness, the way he does when he’s collecting data.No one else would notice it.I do.He’s inventorying the room, cataloging inputs, readying a decision that will look like it took him one second and actually took him thirty.
Coach kills the play.Guys drift.I coast hard to the bench like I meant to be there, stick braced, pretending I’m thirsty so no one asks why my heart is in my throat.
Wren doesn’t touch the drawer.She sets her jaw and wraps a wrist, steady fingers on someone else’s skin because it’s easier to control pain when it isn’t yours.
“Harper,” I say, soft enough that she can ignore it if she needs to.
She doesn’t look up.“How’s your edge?You were slipping left on the tight turns.”
“I was flirting with slipping left,” I say.“Don’t reduce my artistry.”
The smallest curve of her mouth says hi, I see you trying.The next breath says I can’t do this in front of everyone.
I angle closer without crowding.“I meant—are you...”
“Refill station needs more bottles,” she says.“Unless you want Kael to give a lecture about kidney function.”
“Bold of you to assume he wouldn’t anyway,” I say.
A rookie stumbles and swears.Coach barks his number.Atlas pushes off to reset in his lane.Kael points at me and then to the circle: get your head in or I’ll take it off.I give him a salute that makes him roll his eyes.He doesn’t hide the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth, either.
I skate the next rep angry on purpose—clean footwork, sharper shots, anger as a tool instead of a match.Dad again.“Use it or it uses you.”I hated him for that sentence once.Sometimes I still do.But it works.It gets me through three drills and a line change without screaming.
When Coach finally calls it, guys peel off toward the tunnel, laughing, chirping, the usual chaos fizzing out of their pores.Wren stays by the cart like she’s bracing it, like if she lets go her hands will shake.
Atlas reaches her first, because of course he does.He stops close, not touching.His eyes say I promised and I’m here and tell me where to stand if it helps.Kael takes longer, tying a conversation off with Coach that is half real and half cover.He’s captain enough to know privacy has more value than speed.
I rip my gloves off and follow the gravity that has owned me since the day Wren walked into our facility pretending she wasn’t the bravest person in the room.
“Hey,” I say.“Want a walk to the office?”
“I’ve got post-practice rehabs,” she answers without looking up.“Two defensemen.”
“You can do it there.”
“I can do it here.”
Which is Wren for I am not ready for a smaller room.
Her hand hovers over the drawer.I watch the hover, not the drawer, because last night I promised not to make her feel watched, even when I am.We made rules at two a.m.when the shaking finally slowed.Soft rules, not hard ones, because trauma laughs at absolutes.
We made a safety plan too, the sort that sounds clinical and boring until it saves your life.Code word.Who she texts if she can’t talk.Where the cameras are in the facility.The security office number.My number, Kael’s number, Atlas’s number—even if she hasn’t used the last two yet.The campus escort program.What to do if she sees him.What to do if she thinks she sees him.The difference between those two is the trap, and we named it out loud so it would be smaller.
