I swallow. “My brain was loud, and the rink was close. I didn’t think anyone would be there.”
Kai goes quiet for a second—the kind of quiet that means he’s swallowing instinct before it turns into control.
“Were you…thinking about hurting yourself?” His voice drops, rough around the edges.
My chest tightens painfully, because even thoughIknow I’m beyond my darkest days, he still worries that I’m in the same mind frame that I was four years ago.
“No,” I say immediately. “No. Kai. No.”
His shoulders drop a fraction—relief leaking out before he shoves it back down like it’s weakness.
“Then why didn’t you call me when you left?” he demands, and it isn’t angry so much as scared.
Because the last time I didn’t call him, everything went bad. The last time I kept things to myself, he almost lost me.
I press my forehead against the cold glass. “Because I didn’t want you to look at me like I’m breaking.”
Kai’s jaw flexes. “Harlow.”
“It’s exhausting,” I whisper. “Being someone’s emergency.”
Silence swells in the cab. Kai doesn’t answer right away. I can feel him fighting the urge to argue. To correct me. To tell me he has to watch because if he doesn’t?—
Finally, he says, quieter, “I hate that you feel like that.”
My throat tightens. It’s the closest thing to an apology Kai knows how to offer.
The cab turns onto his street. Not “our” street, technically—his and Grayson’s. But it’s close enough that it feels like a second campus of hockey boys and noise and too many eyes. Kai parks hard. The engine shuts off. The silence is immediate and thick. He doesn’t look at me. Just stares forward, breathing too slowly like he’s trying not to unravel.
Then, without turning his head, he says, “Did Coleson bother you?”
My stomach twists. Not because it’s a stupid question. It’s just Kai’s version ofwhat happened to you that you’re not telling me.
“No,” I say. “But I don’t think he’s a good guy, Kai. There’s just something off…and there was this girl with him when he came out of the locker room, and she basically ran out the door.”
His jaw ticks, like he wants to ask the real question. The one he’s afraid of.
“He shouldn’t have been there, especially with a girl, and definitely not in the locker rooms,” he says finally. “I’ll have to see what was up with that and let Coach Graves know. No one has really gotten along with him since he transferred. I’ve been trying to make them, but shit, he’s not the easiest guy to put up with.”
“That seems like the understatement of the century.”
Kai turns his head then, eyes scanning my face like he’s trying to read what I’m not saying. “Did you recognize the girl by chance?”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t. But she didn’t seem really happy. Her mascara was a mess, and she didn’t even pause to say bye to him on her way out.”
I swallow. “He saw me sitting there.”
“And then what?”
“He ran his mouth, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Then you showed up.”
Kai’s expression makes it clear he hates that answer—not because he thinks I’m lying, but because he hates that I was in a potentially vulnerable position.
He opens his door. “Get inside.”
His tone leaves no room for negotiation.
My stomach sinks.
