Chapter 28
Adonis
The Rink at Bellford had been many things for Adonis. A prison of sorts, training for a future he didn’t want. A refuge, where he could skate away his worries. A place to nurture friendships. An arena for rivalries. Now, it was a retreat.
He hadn’t known what Bash would say when he called him.
He had hoped the phone call would go differently.
He had hoped that Bash would say that yes, he wanted this too, and yes, they could make it happen.
He had tried to prepare himself for the idea that Bash might not want the same, but hearing that Bash wanted the same but didn’t think they could…
That hurt, perhaps more than if Bash hadn’t wanted the same.
The only place Adonis wanted to go was the Rink. He wanted to skate. Not because it was what his mother wanted him to do. Not because he was competing in anything, but because he hoped it would clear his head.
Skating, finally, was a way for him to be free and to be himself. It was no longer about pleasing anyone else. It was just a way to clear his head.
He left his apartment, a skating bag over his shoulder. It was bitterly cold outside, the air tight with wind. It was beginning to snow. He hadn’t grabbed a coat, which he now regretted. He hunched his shoulders and hurried through the night.
He passed a few other students on the paths, but most were engrossed in conversation and either didn’t notice him or only nodded a polite hello. He returned it, but only because he didn’t want to be rude. Really, right now, he didn’t want to speak to anyone else.
The Rink loomed in the distance. His refuge. A haven against all the thoughts he had to untangle. He tried to breathe through the confusion and the grief—and the bits of embarrassment—that lingered after his conversation with Bash.
He knew Bash hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
The things keeping them apart were outside of Bash’s control, right? If Bash could do something about it, he would, right?
Adonis took a deep breath. He had to let these thoughts go, at least for now. Dwelling on them wouldn’t help him get over anything. Maybe he would call Bash in the morning, and they could talk again. He didn’t like how they’d left things, and he hoped they could at least figure something out.
Adonis had bared his heart to Bash, something he never did. Something that hurt. It was vulnerable to tell someone how you felt. To hear that Bash felt the same, but didn’t think he could do anything about it…that hurt.
He was a hundred yards from the Rink. Maybe less. It was dark, the lamps along the sidewalks flickering, the blue lights on the security pillars offering a cold glow.
Something felt…wrong.
Adonis didn’t believe in intuition or anything like that, but he had a feeling he couldn’t shake.
He began to walk more quickly, hurrying towards the Rink. He wanted to get inside, out of the open.
He was fifty paces away from the Rink when the front door burst open. A man in a dark hoodie stepped out, looked around twice, saw Adonis, then turned and ran in the opposite direction.
Adonis froze in his tracks. What in the world?
He was too far, and it was too dark to see who the man was. He couldn’t tell the man’s age. He might’ve been a student, or he might’ve been older. His hoodie hid anything that Adonis could’ve used to identify him.
The feeling that something was wrong intensified.
Adonis broke into a trot, hurrying to the entrance to the Rink. He used his student ID card to swipe into the Rink. Inside, it was dark and quiet.
“Hello?” Adonis called. Was someone else in here? If the guy he’d just seen run away wasn’t a student, a student would’ve had to let him in.
No one answered his call.
Adonis clutched his gym bag, like it could protect him if he needed it to, and began to walk through the quiet, dark Rink.
Instead of going to the locker room to change into his skating clothes, he went straight to the ice.
His feeling that something was wrong was intensifying, beating inside him like his pulse.
He navigated through the stands. The lights on the ice were low.
Adonis walked slowly to the boards. One of the gates onto the ice was open.
“Hello?” Adonis called again.
He froze. There was a noise. Not quite a voice, but close, like someone had tried to respond but couldn’t.
He hurried to the ice. “Hello?” he shouted.
This time, it was undeniable. Someone was trying to answer.
The voice, or whatever it was, was coming from the ice itself.
Adonis squinted out at the ice, but it was too dark for him to see clearly. He dropped his gym bag and pulled out his phone, turning on the flashlight. Then he stepped out onto the ice, wearing his sneakers, something he normally would never do.
“Who’s here?” he called. His voice echoed off the ice.
Then he heard it. Yes, it was a voice. And yes, he could understand what it was saying.
“Help.”
Adonis’s blood froze, and it wasn’t from the chill of the rink.
His shoes threatened to slip beneath him as he shuffled forward on the ice.
“Who—” he started to shout, and then stopped.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Halfway across the ice, near where they would set up one of the goals for a hockey game, something—someone—huddled in a shivering pile.
Even in the dim lights of the rink, Adonis could see the dark puddle forming around the figure.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered.
He ran forward, heedless of the ice beneath him. Like a mother when her child was in danger, Adonis was filled with the adrenaline of necessity.
Someone was in trouble. Maybe mortal trouble.
He skidded to a stop, throwing himself to his knees near the end so that he slid the rest of the way to the shuddering form.
A young man, a boy, a few years younger than Adonis, was huddled in a pool of tacky blood on the ice. He was curled in a fetal position, clutching at his shoulder. Red blood pooled around his hands, spilling out as it added to the puddle beneath him.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Adonis gasped, kneeling beside the boy.
The boy shivered, turning his head slightly to look up at Adonis. He was very pale, and his blonde hair was matted with blood.
Adonis recognized him.
He remembered Minneapolis, finding this boy drunk on the road. He remembered taking this boy back to the hotel with Bash, taking care of him, helping him sober up.
Bash had ranted about this boy many times, endlessly complaining about how frustrating Cort Styleton was, how he never wanted to be coached, how he hated following instructions.
“Cort,” Adonis said. “It’s Adonis. I’m here. What happened?”
“Help,” was all Cort said, reaching with one bloody hand towards Adonis.
Adonis, without thinking, grabbed the boy’s hand, squeezing it. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m going to get you help.” His muddled brain remembered what he had learned in first aid classes years ago, what he had seen on medical shows. “Keep pressure on the wound,” he said.
“Shot,” Cort gasped. “He shot me.”
“Who? Who shot you?”
“Pizza.”
“Jesus Christ,” Adonis said. His free hand shook as he dialed 911. He held the phone up to his ear.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” came a woman’s calm voice from the other end.
The same adrenaline that had forced Adonis onto the ice now forced him to be calm. “My name is Adonis Costa,” he said. “I am at the Rink on Bellford University’s campus. A student has been shot in the shoulder. We need an ambulance immediately.”
The 911 operator was saying something. Adonis could only hear every other word through the pounding of his pulse.
“He’s breathing,” he said. “He’s responsive. Please hurry.”
He put the phone on the ice and pressed the Speaker button.
“Cort, look at me,” he said.
Cort’s eyes were wide as he looked up at Adonis.
“Help is on the way,” Adonis said.
“An ambulance will be there in three minutes,” the 911 operator said.
“Did you hear that?” Adonis said. “Three minutes. They’re almost here.”
“You’re Adonis,” Cort whispered. His lips were bloody.
“I am,” Adonis said. He still held one of Cort’s hands in his. Cort’s other hand fell from his wound. Blood flowed faster. “You have to keep pressure on that, Cort.”
Cort didn’t seem to understand Adonis.
Adonis cursed, pulled his hand free of Cort’s, and pressed both palms to the wound. Blood warmed his hands, and he swallowed the wave of nausea that hit him.
“You’re Bash’s boyfriend,” Cort whispered, blood bubbling as he spoke.
“Not his boyfriend,” Adonis said briskly.
“He talks about you all the time,” Cort said. He coughed. “I think he really loves you.”
“Okay,” Adonis said. “Keep talking, Cort. Even if it’s about my miserable love life.”
“They’re a minute away,” the 911 operator said.
“Fucking hurry, please,” Adonis said. “Police cars, too. I saw a man running away from the Rink before I got here.”
“They’re coming, too, honey,” the 911 operator said. “Just stay on the phone with me. You’re both doing great.”
I don’t fucking feel like it, Adonis thought, but didn’t say out loud.
Cort gripped one of Adonis’s wrists, leaving a sticky, bloody handprint. “Tell Bash that I’m sorry, okay? Tell him that I should’ve listened to him.”
“You can tell him,” Adonis said.
“You helped me in Minneapolis, didn't you?” Cort whispered. He coughed again.
“I did.”
“I’m so stupid,” Cort said.
“Maybe,” Adonis huffed, “but we all make mistakes.”
He didn’t want to know what mistake had led to Cort getting shot in the fucking shoulder, but that wasn’t his problem to figure out.
He heard sirens from outside the Rink. Without taking his hands from Cort’s shoulder, he turned and screamed, “In here! We’re in here!”
Seconds later, paramedics were on the ice with a stretcher. They moved efficiently and quickly, and they didn’t slip. Two men and a woman who knelt beside Adonis gently moved him and lifted Cort onto the stretcher.
They drilled him with questions, but Adonis had no answers.
“I’m coming with him,” Adonis found himself saying. “I don’t want him to be alone.”
One of the paramedics, a guy probably only a year or two older than Adonis, looked about to protest, but his partners silenced him.
“What’s his name?” asked the woman.
“Cort Styleton. He’s a student.”
They navigated the stretcher off the ice and picked up the pace as they hurried out of the Rink.
Adonis was already calling Bash. Pick up, he thought. Pick up, pick up, pick up.
The call went straight to voicemail. Adonis cursed.
He called the next person he could think of.
Robbie answered on the third ring. “Adonis?” he said. “What’s up?”
“Cort was shot,” Adonis said, not wasting words. “At the Rink. I’m on the way to the hospital with him.”
There was a clatter on the other end of the phone. “Holy fuck. I’m on my way.”
Adonis sent a quick message to Bash: CALL ME. CORT SHOT. Then he pocketed his phone.
The ride to the Bellford University Hospital was quick. They barreled from the ambulance into the emergency room, where Adonis was told he had to wait. He stayed there, bloody and shaking, while frantic nurses wheeled Cort away, shouting about surgery.
Robbie arrived moments later, wearing sweatpants and a parka and looking wild-eyed. Clarisse followed close behind. They ran straight to Adonis, not stopping at the sight of the blood, and hugged him.
“Oh, my god,” Clarisse said. “What happened?”
Adonis gave a shaky summary of what he had seen, and his friends listened with wide-eyed shock.
“I can’t reach Bash,” Adonis said when he’d finished updating them. “It’s going straight to voicemail.”
Robbie frowned. “Didn’t he tell you? He’s flying back to Boston right now.”
“What?”
“Shit,” Robbie said. “I think that was supposed to be a surprise.”
Adonis almost rubbed his face, but stopped when he remembered his hands were covered in blood.
“You need a shower, and you need to change,” Clarisse said.
Robbie squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll wait for Cort. You go home. Clarisse can drive.”
Clarisse nodded and held out her hand for Robbie’s keys.
“If…if the police need me,” Adonis whispered, “you can give them my number.”
Robbie’s face was white. “I will.” He pulled Adonis into a bear hug. “Good god, I’m so glad you were there to find him.”
“I just hope I was there on time.”
——
They drove in silence back to campus. Clarisse gripped the wheel tightly.
“I want to go back to the Rink,” Adonis said. “I left my bag there.”
She nodded silently.
When they got back to the Rink, she waited in the car, and he walked slowly to the entrance, only to find it already blocked off with police tape.
Adonis quickly retreated. He didn’t want to talk to the police yet.
That would come later, he was sure. Right now, he just wanted to get back to his apartment, shower, and wait for Bash.