Smiling at me like she wasn’t scared anymore.
And standing there beneath the scoreboard with sweat rolling down my spine and adrenaline still burning through my veins, I realized something terrifyingly simple.
I was already addicted to this girl, and nothing in my life had prepared me to survive it.
39
Cade
By the time postgame media finally let me breathe, the arena had started emptying in uneven waves of noise.
Reporters packed up cameras near the press backdrop. Students still roared somewhere beyond the concrete corridors, drunk on a Fury win and whatever mythology they wanted to build around a hockey team in October. Staff moved equipment with clipped efficiency while Coach Little finished talking to a guy from local sports radio near the tunnel, his expression caught somewhere between proud and pissed because we had won ugly and apparently winning ugly still came with a lecture if you were unlucky enough to make eye contact.
I should’ve been listening.
I was not.
My head was already outside.
Bliss had texted me before wrap-up started, letting me know she’d meet me near the main exit with her family, Aura, and Charm. Her dad was there. Her brothers were there. The girls were with her. She was surrounded by enough Bennetts to make a small country reconsider invasion, and still, my entire nervous system had been grinding its teeth for the last twenty minutes because she was somewhere I wasn’t.
That was my life now.
I had become a man who scored twice, took a late hit without reacting, answered questions about neutral-zone pressure like a functional human being, and still spent the entire media scrum thinking about a five-foot-two blonde menace waiting outside wearing my number.
Pathetic.
Accurate, but pathetic.
“Mercer,” Briggs called from a few feet ahead of me, already walking backward down the hallway with his suit jacket thrown over one shoulder and a grin sharp enough to be illegal. “You coming, or are you doing that haunted-captain thing where you stare into the middle distance and make the interns nervous?”
Ryan snorted beside him, tugging at his tie. “He’s not haunted. He’s wondering how fast he can get outside before Bliss decides she’s cold and steals another article of clothing.”
“She can have whatever she wants,” I said, pushing past them toward the locker room.
Briggs slapped a hand to his chest. “Disgusting.”
Ryan shook his head. “Terminal.”
“Both of you are annoying as hell.”
“Yet we stand correct,” Briggs said.
I ignored him and shoved through the locker room doors into the stale, familiar air of wet gear, tape, sweat, disinfectant, and victory. The room was mostly cleared out now, most of the guys already dressed and heading toward whatever postgame chaos waited outside. A few freshmen lingered near their stalls, speaking too loudly because they were still trying to prove they belonged in the room. Rider was gone already. Easton too, probably out front pretending not to orbit Aura while she pretended not to enjoy it.
My stall looked like every postgame version of me had exploded in one place.
Suit bag half-zipped. Tape balled up near my skates. Water bottle on its side. Duffle open beneath the bench.
I crouched in front of my duffle and started digging through it, moving faster with every second that passed. Gloves, hoodie, extra socks, the roll of athletic tape I always kept in the side pocket, the folded team-issued warmups I didn’t remembershoving in there—none of it mattered. My phone wasn’t there. Irritation pulled tight through my jaw as I stood and checked my suit pocket, then the inside pocket of my jacket, my patience thinning when my fingers came up empty again.
My pulse stayed even, but irritation sharpened under my ribs. Not because it was just a phone. Because Bliss was outside waiting, and I did not like being unreachable with Luke Dempsey still breathing the same air as her.
“Mercer,” Ryan said from the doorway. “We’re heading out.”
I looked up. “Meet you in a minute. I gotta grab my cell. Left it in my locker.”
Briggs leaned around Ryan, brows lifting. “You lost your phone? That’s so unlike you. Should we notify the authorities?”
