I leaned down and adjusted the blanket over her legs because touching something helped. Doing something helped. If I stopped moving, I was going to see her throat again. Her face. Luke’s handprint. The way her body had felt too light when I carried her.
Her fingers brushed mine on the blanket, and her expression softened enough to almost break me.
“I’m okay for five minutes,” she said quietly.
She wasn’t.
But I understood what she was really telling me.
Go do what you need to do before you explode.
I bent and kissed the top of her hand, not caring that Charm’s eyes filled instantly or Aura looked away like she was giving us privacy in the only way she could inside a room full of fear.
“I’ll be downstairs.”
Bliss’s mouth curved faintly. “Try not to buy a private army.”
I paused.
Her eyes narrowed. “Cade.”
“I said I’ll be downstairs.”
“That was not an answer.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
I left before she could argue, because if I stayed, I’d sit beside her and hold her hand for the next forty-eight hours without doing the thing I knew had to be done.
Downstairs, Hockey House had shifted into something I had never seen before. My guys were quiet. Not hungover quiet. Not pregame quiet. Different. A kind of watchful silence that made the entire house feel braced. Rider stood near the front windows. Briggs had his laptop open at the kitchen island, not doing a damn thing on it. Ryan leaned against the counter with his arms folded, eyes on me the second I came down. And scattered throughout was the entire team, even the freshmen who we didn’t let live here.
This was support, not loud or vain, but my team showing up because one of ours needed it.
“You good?” Ryan asked.
“No.”
He nodded once. “Didn’t think so.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared at my father’s contact.
Harrison Mercer.
I had called my father plenty of times in my life. About schedules. Travel. Donor events. Draft meetings. Summer training. Appearances. Documents that needed signing. Conversations that never sounded like conversations becauseHarrison Mercer had a gift for making fatherhood feel like a board meeting with genetic ties.
I had never called him because I needed him.
My thumb hovered over his name, and Ryan saw it. He didn’t say a word, and that was why he was my best friend.
I stepped into the back hall near the mudroom where the sound wouldn’t carry upstairs, then hit call before I could talk myself out of it.
He answered on the third ring.
“Cade.”
Not hello.
Not concern.
