Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
static on the blue line
ROOK
Present Day…
The Wolves had qualified for the playoffs, but the start had been pushed back after a brutal snow system tore through several host cities, grounding flights, damaging arena infrastructure, and throwing league scheduling into chaos. We were in limbo.
I was standing at the kitchen window of my house with a mug of coffee that had gone lukewarm in my hands, staring out at the gray stretch of ocean that rolled against the rocky shore behind my property.
The snow had finally stopped falling sometime in the night, leaving everything coated in that heavy, wet silence that only came after a storm that had overstayed its welcome.
The sea was restless, churning up whitecaps that crashed and dissolved, and I watched it with the same restless energy I'd been carrying around for the past week.
The house was too quiet. Two stories, three bedrooms, hardwood floors that echoed when I walked across them alone, and a view of the Atlantic that had sold me on the place the second I'd seen it.
I'd bought it two years ago, back when I'd signed my contract extension and decided I was staying in Toronto for the long haul.
Back when I'd thought having space and privacy and a place by the water would make me feel settled instead of just isolated.
Next door, I could see Coach's house through the trees. My coach and one of my linemates, living twenty feet away, existing in the kind of domestic bliss that had nearly destroyed both their careers not that long ago.
The media circus when their relationship went public had been brutal.
I'd watched it unfold from the inside, seen the way Coach had held the line even when the press was calling for his resignation, seen the way Jace had refused to apologize for loving someone they all wanted him to be ashamed of.
They'd been ripped apart in every headline, dissected on every sports talk show, and somehow they'd come out the other side still together, still standing, still refusing to let anyone else dictate what their lives should look like.
It had done things to me, watching that.
Made me think about what people survived when the alternative was losing the person who mattered most. Made me wonder what I would have survived if I'd been given the chance thirteen years ago instead of just an empty house and a lifetime of wondering what the hell I'd done wrong.
My phone buzzed on the counter behind me, and I turned to look at it without much interest. Probably Dmitri asking if I wanted to hit the gym, or Finn sending me some unhinged meme he'd found at three in the morning.
But when I picked it up and saw the name on the screen, my stomach dropped in a way that had become familiar over the years.
Leroy Donnelly. Private Investigator.
I'd hired him four years ago, right after I'd been named captain and realized I finally had the money and resources to do what I'd been wanting to do since I was eighteen.
Find Soren. Figure out where he'd gone, why he'd left, and whether he was even still alive.
The first year had been full of false leads and dead ends.
The second year had been more of the same.
By year three, Leroy had stopped calling unless he had something concrete, which meant he almost never called.
And now, year four, I'd been ready to tell him to stop looking.
To let it go. To accept that some people disappeared because they wanted to stay gone, and chasing ghosts was a waste of time and money and the parts of me I'd been trying to rebuild.
I answered the call and brought the phone to my ear. “Leroy.”
“Rowan.” His voice was measured, professional, the same tone he always used when he was about to deliver bad news gently. “Do you have time to meet today?”
That was new. Usually he just gave me updates over the phone.
“I was going to call you soon anyway,” I said, leaning back against the counter and running my free hand through my hair. “I've been thinking maybe it's time to stop. It's been four years, and we've got nothing to show for it.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Leroy said, “I'd like to show you what I found before you make that decision. Can you meet me at the coffee shop on Harborview in an hour?”
My pulse kicked up before I could stop it, and I hated that. Hated that after all this time, after all the disappointment, my body still reacted like maybe this time would be different.
“You found him?”
“I found a lead,” Leroy said carefully. “A good one. But I'd rather show you in person.”
I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing, tried to shove down the hope that was already clawing its way up my throat. “Okay. Yeah. I'll be there.”
The drive into the city took longer than it should have because the roads were still a mess from the storm.
Snow had been cleared into piles along the shoulders, but the pavement was slick with ice and slush, and half the traffic lights were still out from the power outages earlier in the week.
I gripped the steering wheel harder than I needed to and tried not to think about what Leroy might have found.
Tried not to let myself spiral into the same hope-crash cycle I'd been living in for years.
By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop, my hands were shaking and I was running through every possible scenario in my head.
Maybe Leroy had found an obituary. Maybe Soren was dead, and this was the closure I'd been avoiding for over a decade.
Maybe he was alive and wanted nothing to do with me, and Leroy was about to hand me proof that I'd been forgotten on purpose.
Maybe I was about to walk in there and find out the last thirteen years of wondering had been for nothing because Soren had moved on and built a life that didn't include me, and I was the only one still stuck in the past.
I got out of the car before I could talk myself into leaving, locked the doors, and walked across the icy parking lot toward the front entrance.
The bell above the door chimed when I pushed inside, and the warmth hit me immediately, along with the smell of espresso and pastries and the low hum of conversation from the handful of people scattered at tables throughout the shop.
Leroy was already sitting in a corner booth near the back, nursing a cup of black coffee and looking every bit the professional investigator he'd been for the past twenty years.
He was in his fifties, gray at the temples, with eyes that missed nothing and a calm demeanor that had probably saved him in more than a few tense situations.
He looked up when I approached and gestured to the seat across from him.
“Thanks for coming,” he said as I slid into the booth and set my keys on the table. “Coffee?”
“I'm good.” I wasn't, but I didn't think I could hold a cup steady right now, and I didn't want him to see how badly this was already getting to me. “What did you find?”
Leroy reached for the folder sitting on the table next to his coffee and opened it slowly, deliberately, like he was giving me time to brace myself.
“I want to start by saying I know this has been a long process, and I know you've been ready to move on.
But I think you're going to want to see this.”
He slid a photograph across the table toward me, and I looked down at it before I could stop myself.
It was a promo shot, the kind bands used for press kits and social media.
Four people standing against a brick wall, all dressed in black, all looking like they'd walked out of some underground music scene I'd never been cool enough to be part of.
The lighting was moody, dramatic, and my eyes scanned over the faces automatically, looking for the one that mattered.
And then I found him.
Third from the left. Holding drumsticks loosely in one hand, shoulders relaxed, head tilted slightly to the side in a way that was so familiar it punched the air out of my lungs.
He looked older. Rougher around the edges.
His hair was longer, messier, and there were tattoos running down both arms, dark ink that disappeared under the sleeves of his t-shirt. But it was him. It was Soren.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't look away. Couldn't process the fact that I was staring at a picture of someone I'd thought I'd never see again, and here he was, alive and real and close enough that Leroy had been able to find a photograph.
“That's him,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I'd expected. “That's Soren.”
“I know.” Leroy leaned forward, his expression careful and measured. “I found him through a source connected to his sister. Someone who works in the Toronto music scene and recognized the name when I was asking around. He's the drummer for a band called Neon Veins.”
Neon Veins. The name hit me sideways because I knew it.
I'd been listening to them for months, ever since Finn had sent me a link to one of their songs and told me I needed to check them out.
I'd added them to my workout playlist, played them on road trips, let their music bleed into the background of my life without ever once looking closely enough to see who was playing the drums.
He'd been there the whole time.
“How long have you known?” I asked, still staring at the photo.
“I confirmed it two days ago,” Leroy said.
“I wanted to be sure before I called you.
The band's been together for about five years, and they've built a decent following in the underground rock scene.
Mostly small venues, a few festival appearances, but they're not mainstream.
I couldn't find much about his personal life, but I did find this.”