My knees go soft. I have to widen my stance and lock my knees because the pavement feels like it’s dropped an inch. I put my free hand on the brick of the theater wall because I need to put it somewhere, and that helps a little, but only a little.
I let that fear eat at me because something had happened in that kitchen with Mason, and he knew about the birthmark, and I jumped to conclusions. And when she pulled away, that confirmed something in my head.
Wrongly.
She wasn’t cheating or getting back with Mason. She was being threatened. I don’t know why she wouldn’t trust me with that, but I saw the Halden Girl mask go back on and misread the threat as something else.
Something she carried alone.
And I know why.
She carried it to keep it off me, because she could see I was already under too much — the team, the captaincy, all the weight I wouldn’t set down — and the gossip still got out and got passed around.
Because that’s the part that’s mine. I went at Mason in front of the guys, loud, the way I do — and he told me I’d pushed, and that now he’d press the button and blow up something I’d rather keep. This is him pressing it.
I call Sloane.
It rings four times, then hits voicemail. Her recorded message is the one she made in September when she was still wearing the mask, bright and a little too fast:Hi, you’ve reached Sloane, leave a message and I’ll call you back!
I hang up and call again.
Voicemail.
So I call Luca.
He picks up on the second ring. “Ro?—”
“Where is he?”
“Murphy’s.” A pause. “What do you need?”
I hang up and text Seb.
Rowan: Murphy’s. Don’t let Mason leave.
The reply comes in four seconds.
Seb: Done.
I start walking. Murphy’s is twelve minutes from the theater, but I cover it in eight. Every step rearranges another detail — one morning, after the kitchen incident, when Sloane asked me, out of nowhere, if I ever felt like the team was too much for one person to carry.
I’d shrugged and saidsomebody’s got to, then watched her face close up, and I didn’t bother to read it because I was late for practice. But she was checking whether I could carry one more thing, and when she decided I couldn’t, she carried it alone.
When I get there, Murphy’s is in full Friday-night mode: loud music, sticky floors, neon beer signs throwing blue and red across the ceiling. The bouncer nods me through because he knows I wear the jersey, and the heat and noise hit me the second I push inside.
I spot them from the door, and whatever was happening at that table before I got here is already over. The Pi Sig guys Mason usually drinks with are gone, scattered to the bar or the door.
In their place are my guys, arranged around Mason. Luca has his back to the wall, jaw set. Theo is beside him. Niko and some of the other guys are at the far end, and they’re giving off a don’t-even-think-about-it vibe.
Mason sees me before I’m halfway across the room. He stands — fast, instinctive, already reaching for his jacket on the back of the booth — and Seb’s hand lands on his shoulder and pushes him back down.
Mason hits the seat and looks up at Seb. For a quarter of a second, the confidence slips, and what he flashes isn’t cool or bored or amused. It’s the look of a man who knows exactly why everyone in this booth is looking at him and that the bill has come due.
Then the grin slides back into place. “Captain, pull up a chair. I just ordered a round.”
I don’t sit down. “Why?” I say.
The grin holds. “Why what?”
