Shaking myself from the thought, I glance at Kai. “Can we go?”
Kai nods immediately. “Yeah.”
I don’t say goodbye before we head for the exit because I can’t seem to find the words I want to say. But as we walk out, I glance back once, feeling his stare. Grayson is still by the boards, his gaze meeting mine for a second before moving to the ice, like he’s trying to lose something inside it. Or maybe he’s trying not to want something.
The thought follows me all the way back to my dorm.
When I get inside my room, my body is tired in a good way. My brain is quieter than it’s been in days. I kick off my shoes and set my skates by the door, then stare at my phone on the bed.
I don’t open the forum. Not right away, at least.
For once, I don’t feel the desperation to fill the silence, and that feels like a victory in itself.
It also makes my chest ache, because the quiet in my mind came from being near people. From being nearhim.
I open the forum screen and stare at NumberEleven’s name without typing.
My thumb hovers over the message box.
I type one word.
safe
Then I delete it.
I set my phone down and press my face into my pillow, letting the cold from the rink and the warmth in my chest exist at the same time.
Two separate lives. Two separate people.
That’s what I remind myself.
13
GRAYSON
There’s a specific kind of hell reserved for a senior hockey player at a party he doesn’t want to attend, especially when it’s getting closer to Halloween than not.
It’s not the music—though it’s loud enough to rattle the fillings out of your teeth. It’s not even the fact that Weston has been yelling “PCU BABYYYY” every six minutes.
It’s the in-between.
The part where you’re sober enough to register every conversation you don’t care about, but too tired to be charming about it.
It’s been an extra-long week, and I stand in the kitchen with a red cup I’m barely sipping, because I like my athletic performance and my internal organs, and watch Weston fist-bump a guy I’m ninety percent sure is named Mason or Hudson or something aggressively football.
Asher is in the corner, calm and unbothered, talking to one of the athletic trainers like he’s collecting life points for being responsible.
Kai isn’t here, which is the entire reasonI’mhere.
Kai doesn’t skip a party for fun. He skips a party because he’s with Harlow. Or because he’s worrying about Harlow. Or because he’s pacing around our apartment and pretending he isn’t worrying about Harlow.
He told me he wasn’t coming tonight because she’d had a “long week.” Then he said it like that was the end of the discussion. No details. No explanation. Just a hard line in the sand, like if he didn’t name it, it couldn’t exist. I didn’t argue. I’ve learned arguing with Kai about Harlow is like skating into traffic on purpose.
Weston, of course, heardKai isn’t goingand decided it meantBennett has to go.
“You’re coming,” he’d said, already grabbing his keys. “Because I refuse to be the only one making regrettable choices tonight.”
I told him I was staying in. He told me I was “emotionally unavailable and therefore a coward.” Then he texted Asher, and somehow I ended up here like a man who lost a fight he didn’t realize he was in.
