I’m reading a book on my bed when there is another knock on my door. I smile instantly, already knowing who is on the other side.
Opening the door, I find him standing there in sweats and a hoodie, his dimple on full display and waiting for me.
“Hi, Gray.”
“Hi, gorgeous.” He walks inside my dorm, placing a quick kiss on my temple as he passes by. He sets his backpack on the floor and plops down onto my bed.
I join him, sitting at the other end and crisscrossing my legs. “I have a question for you.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “What?”
“Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?”
Grayson shrugs. “No. I had honestly just planned on staying on campus. I don’t really talk to my parents outside of a random text here and there from my mom. Sometimes one of the guys invites me to tag along, but I haven’t made any plans this year.”
“Would you want to come with me? Our parents only live about two hours from here. Kai and I plan on leaving after your guys’ skate on Wednesday morning.”
He studies me for a moment, his eyes going back and forth between mine, searching for something. “Do you want me there?”
Rolling my eyes, I move closer to him on the bed until I’m straddling his lap. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t.”
My answer earns me a smile. A real one that you can see even in his eyes. “Then I’m there.”
I smile to myself before leaning down and kissing him. Tuesday’s game is coming. Tyler’s team. All the noise. All the history. But tucked inside all of that is something new.
A choice.
And for the first time, I don’t want to run from it.
37
GRAYSON
Iwake up thinking about two things I shouldn’t.
The first is tomorrow’s game.
The second is the way Harlow looked at me last night when she laughed—quick, reluctant, like it surprised her that her body still remembers how to laugh and live freely. One of those things is allowed to take up space in my head. The other one is already living there like it pays rent.
I try to drown it in routine. Coffee. Stretch. Bag packed the exact same way it’s been packed since I was fifteen and convinced control could keep tragedy from finding me. The campus is gray-blue when I cut across it, air cold enough to sting my lungs clean.
When I get to the rink, Kai runs the morning skate like he runs everything: quiet authority, no wasted movement. He’s the captain for a reason. Center. Anchor. The guy who doesn’t chirp unless he has to and still somehow manages to make the whole bench sit up straighter when he does.
Weston is loud enough for three people.
“Tomorrow,” he says, lacing his skates like he’s about to propose to the ice. “We end them. We crush them. We?—”
“As an adult,” I tell him, “you’re supposed to have an inside voice.”
Weston squints at me. “Do you have an inside voice?”
“Less today than I’d like,” I mutter.
He grins like he thinks that’s a confession. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
We get on the ice, and it’s simple for ten minutes. Not easy—simple. Flow drills. Touch passes. Small-area stuff that keeps your hands honest. Kai runs a set where the centers rotate low, wingers swing high, quick give-and-go off the wall, and every time the puck hits my blade, my body remembers what it’s good at.
Then my brain ruins it.
