He cups the back of my head and presses his forehead to mine. “And this? This doesn’t mean you were wrong to feel things. I…fuck, man. I wish I would have went to Griff right away. Or at least, never asked you to keep the secret. This is my fault too.”
I close my eyes and lean into him, letting myself cry it out fully now, ugly and shaking and uncontained, because for all his flaws, Hughie has always been the one place I don’t have to be composed or impressive or perfect.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper.
“You move on,” he says simply. “You let yourself be pissed and sad and wrecked. And then we figure it out together.”
31
Griffin
I headdown the stairs of our house toward the front door, my normal meeting point for Terry and Mack before practice. I’ve stopped moping and now I’m just pissed. Not resigned, not sad anymore, but genuinely angry.
Angry at Sabrina.
Angry at Connelly.
Angry at Jacob.
Angry at myself.
I have a future…a real future. I have hockey to focus on, and school to finish, and goals that matter. Things I worked my fucking ass off for. Yet somehow that doesn’t ease how enraged I am under my skin.
“You ready?” Terry asks, standing by the door with his bag slung over one shoulder and that serious, almost uncharacteristically clipped tone he’s been using since everything went sideways.
I haven’t actuallytalkedto him about what he’s thinking but whatever’s bouncing around in his head has him really fucking pissed off. He hasn’t smiled once since the blow up.
I nod, trying to make my jaw unclench enough to breathe normally, just as footsteps come from behind me.
I turn and see Connelly on the bottom step, looking like absolute shit. His hair is messy, his posture slumped, eyes flickering with this guilty, haunted sort of look that says he knows he’s in the wrong room at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
He stares at me for a second that feels too long and then, as though that’s the best thing he can scrape together, “Hey.”
It’s low, awkward, and utterly insufficient for the chaos of what’s happened.
I don’t respond. I just turn on my heel like his greeting was never spoken, and I fall into step beside Terry and Mack. Neither of them respond to him either and that makes the weight in my chest lighten up a bit. I’ve been a shit friend, completely fucking ghosting them both, and yet, they still support me in my anger.
Connelly stays on the stairs for a beat longer, shoulders slightly hunched, but there’s nothing left in me to offer. I have no desire to talk to him or hear him out. Even if he argued that he was completely in love with her it wouldn’t matter. He should have told me if that was the case but he didn’t. He fucked my girlfriend, acted like a dick for the start of the season, and then kept it from me.
He’s a shit friend and a shitty teammate.
The ride to the arena feels like driving through thick fog even though the world outside the windows is bright and clear, because the air in the truck with Terry and Mack is stifling in that way where everyone wants to say something but no one dares to open their mouth first.
I stare out the window telling myself that I need to get my head in the game. I’m trying to remind myself that practice will help, that hockey is what I have left, that this season stillmatters, that most of all, I will not let this bullshit derail my future.
When we get to the arena, I get out of the truck and I don’t look at Terry or Mack because I don’t want to see concern in their faces.
I walk through the doors and head straight to the locker room to change into my gear. Then I head toward the training room with this tight, anxious tension in my shoulders.
I’m not ready to see Jacob.
I’m not ready for that collision of memories.
If I have to be cold…fine. I can do that. I will do that.
I can be professional and ignore him while I work through the shit happening in my chest.
But the moment I push the door open, I can already tell something is off. Because Lauren is here, which isn’t all that strange. But instead of Jacob, there’s some red headed guy in a training polo who I have never seen before.
