His shoulders drop with relief.
"Good," he whispers. "I was worried."
He closes his eyes.
Worried.
I feel sick to my stomach.
But I’m still holding his hand.
He brings my hand up and kisses me softly.
I let the tears drop as I lean in and rest my head on his shoulder.
What the fuck am I doing?
Chapter 31: Beckett
Practiceisatsix.
I'm there at five forty-five, sitting in the locker room with my gear half on and nowhere to put the thing that's been sitting in my chest since last night.
Adela's face when she hung up the phone. The way her whole body went still in the span of three seconds. The judge's voice came through the phone, sayinghe's been asking for you, while I had my mouth on her skin.
The bastard’s awake.
I was there when she found out. I held her while she cried and watched her pull herself back together, and walked out when she asked me to. I know what last night cost her. I know she wentto that hospital this morning and is probably performing every second of it.
The locker room fills around me — voices, clatter, music from someone's phone. Silas drops onto the bench across from me and starts taping his stick without looking up.
"You sleep?"
"Enough."
He nods once and doesn't push it.
Theo comes in last, which he never does. He drops his bag on the bench, starts pulling on his gear, and doesn't say a word to anyone. His jaw is set.
I watch him for a second.
His jaw is set. His eyes…are like fire. His movements are too controlled. The kind of controlled that isn't calm — it's someone holding something down with both hands that doesn't want to stay down.
Oh, fuck.
He knows.
That’s the thing about Theo. He doesn't explode. That's what people get wrong about him. He doesn't rage. He doesn't break things. He gets quiet and precise in a way that’s far worse than any of that, because you can't see it coming and you can't track where it's going to land.
And this is different from his usual cold.
This is Nessa-level. This is whatever lives in the part of him that was never strategic to begin with — the part that put Cody in a hospital bed in the first place.
I file it away and follow the team out to the ice.
And I make a note to stay out of his way.
Coach runs us through systems first. Breakout patterns, neutral zone play, and defensive zone coverage –– standard stuff. I move through it on autopilot, my body doing what it knows while my mind stays half on last night.
