Because maybe if I gave everything I had out here—left it all in the paint—I could silence the rest. The headlines. The doubts. The look in her eyes this morning.
Maybe then, I’d be the guy she believed in again. The guy who could protect her from all of it.
Even if she wouldn’t let me in.
I sat on the bench, heart still hammering from the drills, but the adrenaline felt different now. Not the high of the ice. This was sharper. Heavier. Like a fuse burning low and fast toward something I wasn’t ready for.
The room buzzed around me. Jokes flying. Gloves smacking against lockers. Normal stuff.
“Maddox and Delgado are trending like crazy,” one of the rookies said, like it was just another stat line.
My jaw locked so tight my molars ached. Drama. That’s what they were calling it? They didn’t see how Kennedy flinched when her phone buzzed. Didn’t hear the edge in her voice when she said she was fine. Didn’t feel her pulling away from me, little by little, like she was trying not to bleed on anyone.
“Shut your mouth,” I snapped.
The rookie blinked, feigning innocence. “Just saying…”
I didn’t answer. Just stared until he turned away, hands raised like I was the one causing the problem. Coach caught my eye from across the room—his look said everything. Focus. Don’t start something.
Too late.
The laughter dipped just enough for the whispers to slip in.
“She dumped Gary for him, right?”
“Think she was cheating back then?”
I didn’t move, but my whole body went hot. My fists curled on instinct, tight enough to sting. Every part of me itched to swing, to shut them up with one hit.
“Watch your mouth,” I said again—low, calm, lethal.
The same rookie gave a half-smirk and looked away, but the tension lingered like smoke. I leaned back against the bench, every muscle coiled like it was waiting for a fight.
Coach slid onto the bench beside me. “You need to get your head in the game,” he muttered, voice low.
“I know,” I said through clenched teeth.
But I didn’t. Not really.
Because all I could think about was Kennedy—curled into me last night like she finally felt safe, then slipping away this morning like the world was cracking beneath her feet. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Wouldn’t let me in.
Had I missed something? Pushed too hard? Not hard enough?
My gaze drifted to the ice, where the team skated easy and clean like nothing outside these walls mattered. But it did. It mattered to her. And that meant it mattered to me.
I didn’t know what Gary was playing at, or what Kennedy was keeping from me, but I sure as hell knew this: the next time someone tried to touch her, drag her name through the mud, or twist our story into some cheap headline?
They’d have to go through me first.
But silence wasn’t going to fix this.
Not when everything already felt like it was teetering on the edge. Not when I could feel her slipping through my fingers a little more every time she said “I’m fine” and wouldn’t look me in the eye.
If she couldn’t trust me with whatever was eating at her—if she didn’t think I could handle it, carry some of the weight—then what the hell were we doing? How were we supposed to survive everything coming for us?
The whistle shrieked again, cutting through my thoughts like a blade. Coach barked for players to line up for scrimmage drills. Skates scraped the ice as the rest of the team moved into position, chasing victory like nothing outside the rink existed.
I sat there, burning with the kind of frustration that couldn’t be cooled by cold air or a clean hit.
