“Bliss…”
“She’s safe,” Ryan repeated, and this time his voice cracked on the word before he forced it steady again. “She’s safe, Cap.”
I wanted to believe him.
I did believe him.
But my body didn’t know how to stop trying to get up. Every part of me kept sending the same broken command through muscles that had apparently resigned from duty without notice.
Ryan seemed to feel it because his hand pressed harder against my shoulder. “No. If you move, you’ll make it worse.”
“Need…”
“I know what you need.” His voice broke again, worse this time, sharp enough that his next breath sounded like it hurt him too. “You need to breathe. That’s the whole job right now.”
Breathing felt impossible.
Small.
Shallow.
Ragged.
Each one dragged pain through me so sharp my hands curled uselessly against the floor.
The operator said something I couldn’t follow. Ryan answered. A door banged open somewhere in the distance. Voices rose, still far away but moving closer. Security maybe. Staff. Someone shouting down the hall.
Ryan leaned over me, blocking my view of Luke. I didn’t want to see him, not because I regretted it, because I didn’t. Maybe later, if later existed, I would have time for some complicated moral reckoning. Maybe someone would expect me to lie awake in a hospital bed and stare at the ceiling, horrified by the shape of what I’d done. Maybe my father would bring lawyers who spoke in bloodless corporate tones about optics and exposure and minimizing damage. Maybe reporters would say things like promising NHL prospect and fatal altercation and self-defense until my name became something people argued about online while pretending they knew anything about the hallway, the knife, or the girl outside who had spent years terrified of the dead fuck three feet away.
But right now, I felt nothing but relief that whatever came next, even my own funeral, let everyone know I was content knowing he couldn’t fuck with her ever again.
Luke had brought the knife. Luke had stolen my phone. Luke had waited in a corner and stabbed me because I was the obstacle keeping her from him. He had put the world into two columns and forced me to pick.
Him or me.
Or me for her.
I was fine with the outcome.
I would choose her again in every hallway, with every version of myself I had left.
My breath hitched, failed, caught halfway. Pain spread through my chest, heavy and cold now instead of hot. The lights above me haloed strangely, buzzing in long streaks.
Ryan’s hand slapped lightly against my cheek. “Cade.”
I blinked.
“Stay awake.”
“Tired,” I muttered, or tried to.
It came out almost soundless.
“No shit. You played a full game and got stabbed. You can nap after the ambulance.”
That almost pulled a smile out of me.
Almost.
