“Yeah,” I say.
Ryan pushes off the wall. “And if there comes a point where protecting her means putting him down, call me before Briggs.”
Despite everything, my mouth twitches. “Because you’re more rational?”
“No. Because Briggs would livestream it by accident.”
I actually laugh. One short, fucked-up laugh, but it counts.
Ryan’s mouth curves barely. “Laughing and cutting up with us still doesn’t mean you don’t care.”
“Don’t.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The locker room door opens, and Briggs sticks his head out. “Are we having an emotionally intimate hallway moment without the group?”
“Yes,” Ryan says.
“Rude.”
“It’s better without you.”
“Most things are,” Rider calls from inside.
Briggs points back over his shoulder. “That is why nobody likes him.”
Easton appears behind him. “We all like him.”
“Traitors.”
I look at them then—Briggs in his half-taped wrist chaos, Rider grinning like trouble has a favorite son, Easton pretending not to be five seconds away from asking another Aura question, Ryan calm and steady beside me—and something settles.
The ice helped because it gave my rage structure. Lines to stay inside. Rules to obey. Whistles to stop me. Systems to follow. A place to put the violence where it could be useful instead of catastrophic. “I’ll be back at Hockey House tonight,” I say.
Briggs nods. “We’ll be there.”
I grab my bag, shoulder it, and head toward the exit with the boys falling in around me. For the first time since I left Bliss asleep in her bed, my thoughts don’t feel quieter. They feel organized. That is enough.
For now.
28
Bliss
By the time my last class ended, I had learned absolutely nothing except that Professor Simpson owned too many cardigans and my brain had officially become a Cade Mercer documentary with adult content and emotional consequences.
Which was deeply inconvenient because I was supposed to be taking notes on narrative framing, not mentally replaying the way Cade looked at me in my bed before practice like he had already decided I was his and was only waiting for me to stop being emotionally allergic to facts.
I walked across campus with my backpack slipping off one shoulder, white clouds dragging low over Kimball Falls like the sky had gotten tired and decided to nap on the rooftops. Students moved around me in clusters, laughing beneath Fury banners and early fall trees that had started turning gold at the edges, but I barely registered any of it. My body was in northern Michigan. My brain was still trapped in my bedroom before sunrise with Cade’s mouth against my wrist and his voice telling me he was off the market whether I was ready to call him mine or not.
Off the market.
The phrase had been living inside my brain all day like it paid rent.
It was awful and incredible. Make it make sense.
It was the kind of thing a girl should be able to process privately without her stomach doing Olympic gymnastics in public, but apparently my organs had formed a cheer squad and chosen Cade as their captain. Every time I tried to think about something reasonable, like class or assignments or whether Ihad enough gas to make it home without financially negotiating with the universe to miraculously fill my Jeep, Cade cut through all of it. Cade leaning over me. Cade kissing me slow. Cade listening to the worst things and somehow not looking at me like I was ruined. Cade seeing the joke before I finished making it. Cade knowing which ones were shields and which ones were just me being absolutely hilarious.
