Page 17 of Hold the Line

I break the kiss with a sharp gasp, pulling back just enough to look at Cole. My hand tightens around his throat for a single, terrifying second — not enough to hurt, but enough to feel the danger in it. My pulse is roaring in my ears. Anger at myself rises fast and ugly in my chest.

“I can’t…” I rasp, voice wrecked.

I let go of him like he burned me and step back. Cole’s eyes are wide, lips swollen. I do not wait for him to speak. I cannot. I turn and walk out of the shower stall, grabbing a towel on the way and wrapping it around my waist.

Behind me, I hear the sound of flesh hitting tile — Cole punching the wall — followed by a string of furious, broken curses. “Fuck you, Viktor. Fuck you—”

I keep walking.

The locker room is still loud with post-game celebration when I step back in, water dripping from my hair. I head straight to my stall and start pulling on clothes with mechanical movements.

Damian is leaning against the wall nearby, arms crossed, watching me with that knowing look, then he raises one eyebrow.

I do not say a word. I just yank my shirt over my head and sit down to pull on my pants, the weight of what I almost let happen pressing down on me like a mountain.

Cole storms out of the shower area like a hurricane, water still dripping from his curls and down his skin. He is completely naked except for the towel clutched in one hand. His eyes are blazing with fury as he snatches his pants from his stall, yanks on Elias’s oversized Reapers hoodie — the one I know belongs to his best friend because I have seen Elias wear it a hundred times — and shoves his feet into his shoes without even bothering to tie them.

The entire locker room goes dead silent for half a second. Then Cole slams the door open so hard the walls rattle and storms out.

“Cole!” Elias shouts after him, worried. “Fucking hell!” He bolts after him, still half-dressed, nearly tripping over his own gear as he disappears out the door.

I drop onto the bench in front of my stall, elbows on my knees, and let out a long, exhausted sigh. My hand curls into a fist and I punch the wood beside my thigh — hard enough to sting, not hard enough to break anything. The pain grounds me for half a second.

Mats, who was changing nearby, turns to look at me with wide eyes. “Dude… what the hell did you do?”

I glare at him, dark and warning. He wisely shuts his mouth and goes back to pulling on his shirt, but I can feel the rest of the team’s eyes on me now. Shane is muttering something under his breath. Tyler looks uncomfortable. Even Damian raises an eyebrow from across the room, leaning on his cane like he already knows exactly what happened.

I drag a hand through my wet hair and stare at the floor.

One week since Viktor pinned me against the shower wall, his hand around my throat, and his mouth on mine. One week since he pulled back, looked at me with that haunted expression, and said “I can’t…” before walking away like I was something that might break him.

One week since I have spoken a single word to him.

I am exhausted.

Not just the physical kind — though that is there too, from back-to-back games and travel and pretending I am fine in front of the team. It is the bone-deep kind. The kind that comes from replaying the same thirty seconds in your head every night while lying in an empty bed that still somehow smells like him.

I am sprawled on my couch in sweats and one of Elias’s stolen hoodies, staring at the ceiling like it might give me answers. My apartment is a mess of takeout containers and hockey gear, but I cannot be bothered to clean. Not when my best friend is currently pacing my living room like a caged animal on the verge of a breakdown.

“Cole, please,” Elias begs, desperate as he spins on his heel for the hundredth time. “It is two days before the Halloween party and I need this to be perfect. It is our anniversary. One year since Damian first fucked me senseless in that hotel room after the Wranglers series. I cannot mess this up.”

I drag a hand down my face and groan. “Curls, you are deranged. You know that, right? Most people celebrate anniversaries with dinner. You want to turn the team Halloween party into some kind of horny anniversary ritual.”

Elias stops pacing long enough to throw the full-force puppy eyes at me. The big green ones. The ones that have gotten him out of trouble since forever, probably. The ones that work on everyone except Damian (and even then, only sometimes).

“Please,” he says again, his voice going soft and pathetic. “You are the only one who gets it. Shane will just paint weird symbols everywhere, Mats will flirt with Zara until she threatens to murder him, and Viktor—” He cuts himself off, glancing at me carefully. “Well. You know.”

Yeah. I know.

I sit up slowly, rubbing my temples. My head is still pounding from the lack of sleep and the constant replay of Viktor’s mouth on mine, his hand on my throat, the way he looked at me right before he ran.

“Fine,” I say, already regretting it. “What do you need help with?”

Elias’s face lights up like I just handed him the Cup. He launches into a rapid-fire list of decorations, themed drinks, and very specific ideas about how to make the party “romantic but also unhinged” because apparently that is their love language. I nod along, half-listening, trying to ignore the way my chest aches every time my brain wanders back to the quiet Russian giant who has not looked at me properly in seven days.

I am so fucking tired.

But Elias is my best friend. And if planning a chaotic Halloween party that doubles as his anniversary celebration with Damian will make him happy, then I will help.