Wyatt
Practice was brutal.
I hit harder. Skated faster. Ground through drills like someone had lit a fire under me—and maybe someone had. The memory of Chastity crying on my couch, small and broken over a documentary about a dead girl, burned through every drill.
Ryker, captain and professional pain in my ass, skated up beside me during suicides. "You good, old man?"
"Fine."
"Translation: 'I'm spiraling over a girl.' Noted."
I glared. He laughed and skated off.
During water break, Jared—Southern charmer with a drawl thick as honey—dropped beside me on the bench. "Heard your lady friend defended you to Barbara yesterday."
I scowled. "Who told you that?"
"Barbara. She came straight to Isla about it. Wanted a psych eval on your 'little girlfriend's reckless attachment.'"
I nearly crushed the water bottle in my fist.
Nikolai "Russian Reaper" Volkov glided over silently, all cold menace and thinly veiled amusement. The man moved like death on skates. "Chastity is good girl. Soft. Innocent."
Every muscle in my body locked. "How the hell do you know that?"
Nikolai shrugged, unbothered by the threat in my voice. "Mina showed me photos online. Mina says she is sweet."
My eyebrow twitched. "Tell Mina to stop looking at her."
Nikolai's smirk widened. "Ah. Possessive."
I almost swung my stick at him.
Ryker, hearing this from across the ice, shouted loud enough for half the team to hear, "HE'S IN LOVE!"
I was going to kill all three of them.
But the problem—the real, unavoidable problem—was that they weren't wrong.
I couldn't stop thinking about her. The way she'd looked at me this morning, vulnerable and trusting despite everything.
The way she'd defended me to Barbara without knowing the full story.
The way she fit against me when I carried her out of the bar.
The way she was getting under my skin in ways I couldn't control.
This was supposed to be revenge. Clean. Simple. Devastating.
Instead, it was becoming something else entirely.
Something that scared me more than any hit I'd ever taken on the ice.
Practice shifted into full scrimmage, and I moved into my element.
Defense was warfare. Every shift, every hit, every stride—calculated violence wrapped in control.
I read the play before it developed. Rookie winger tried to cut inside—I angled him into the boards so hard his mouthguard flew out. Clean. Legal. Devastating.
Jared had the puck, weaving through traffic with that infuriating Southern grace. I tracked him like a predator, waited for the exact moment he committed to the pass—and stripped the puck clean off his stick. His curse echoed through the arena.
"Christ, Garrison!"
I didn't respond. I was already moving, scanning ice, finding Nikolai streaking up the wing. Saucer pass over two sticks—landed perfectly on his tape.
Ryker grinned from the blue line. "Still got it, old man."
"Never lost it."
Next shift, their second line came hard. Three-on-two rush. I dropped back, forced the play wide, cut off the passing lane. The center tried to deke—I poke-checked the puck away and immediately transitioned into offense, sending a breakout pass that hit Ryker in stride.
Goal.
The assistant coach blew his whistle. "That's how you play position, gentlemen! Garrison makes it look easy because he's been doing it for sixteen goddamn years."
I skated back to the bench, breath controlled, muscles warm and loose. This was home. This made sense. No complications. No emotions. Just ice, puck, physics, and pain.
The coach's whistle cut sharp through the arena. "That's it! Hit the showers!"
Skates carved final lines across fresh ice. Bodies peeled off in groups of two and three, sweat-soaked and loose-limbed. The rink emptied in waves—rookies first, always eager to escape scrutiny, then the veterans who moved slower, bones protesting years of accumulated damage.
I stayed longer than necessary. Let the cold air work through my jersey, felt the familiar ache settle into my knees, my shoulders, the old fracture in my wrist that never quite healed right.
The arena lights hummed overhead. Zamboni driver waited patiently in the tunnel, ready to resurface what we'd torn up.
Finally, I pushed off. Skates bit into ice one last time as I glided toward the gate. The bench was littered with abandoned water bottles, discarded tape, someone's forgotten mouthguard. Equipment staff would clean it later—they always did.
The tunnel swallowed me, concrete and fluorescent light replacing open ice. Voices echoed from the locker room ahead—laughter, trash talk, someone's phone blasting music too loud.
I pulled my helmet off. Ran a hand through sweat-damp hair. Pulled off my gear and headed for the showers.
I stood under the spray longer than usual, letting the heat pound against my shoulders.
The locker room emptied around me—teammates heading home, heading out, heading anywhere but here. I stayed. Needed the quiet. Needed to think.
Except every thought circled back to her.
Chastity on my couch earlier, curled under blankets, mascara smudged, watching that goddamn documentary like it was physically hurting her.
The way her breath had hitched when the girl on screen begged her parents to believe her.
The way she'd pressed her fist against her mouth to stop from sobbing.
She was probably on her period. Hormones making everything sharper, rawer. That made sense.
Except it didn't.
Because I'd seen the recognition in her eyes. The way she flinched when the girl's father dismissed her pain. The way her entire body went rigid when the predator cornered his victim in a parking lot.
She knew that fear. Not secondhand. Not empathetically.
Personally.
Someone had hurt her.
And the urge to find out who—to track them down, to make them pay in ways that would send me to prison—hit me so hard I had to brace my hand against the tile.
This wasn't supposed to happen. She was leverage. A chess piece. A means to destroy Thomas Harrington's perfect world the same way he'd destroyed mine.
I wasn't supposed to care if she cried. I wasn't supposed to notice the way she tucked herself smaller when she was scared, or the way she defended me to Barbara without knowing the truth, or the way she trusted me to take care of her when she was drunk and vulnerable. I wasn't supposed to feel protective.
I sure as hell wasn't supposed to feel murderous on her behalf.
The water turned cold. I didn't move. Because the real truth—the one I couldn't ignore anymore—was simpler and more terrifying than anything else. This stopped being fake the moment I wrapped that blanket around her shoulders.
After I showered, I got dressed and headed to my car. I gripped the steering wheel harder than necessary the entire drive home. Knuckles white. Jaw tight. Every mile felt like evidence mounting against me.
I pulled into the driveway, killed the engine, sat there for five seconds longer than I needed to. Watched the house through the windshield like it might bite me. Finally, I got out. Walked up to the front door. Key in the lock. Turn. Push.
And immediately froze.
Smoke.
Not faint. Not subtle.
A full-on haze drifting through my goddamn living room.
"Chastity?!"
A small, panicked yelp came from the kitchen.
I stormed toward it—and found her standing over a pan producing the most horrifying, charred, apocalyptic smell I'd encountered outside of a dumpster fire.
She waved a dish towel frantically at the smoke, hair falling out of its ponytail, cheeks flushed, eyes wide.
"It's FINE! I have it under control!"
The smoke alarm began screaming.
I grabbed the pan—still smoking like a war crime—dumped it in the sink, cranked the faucet, and flipped on the exhaust fan. The sizzle that followed sounded like the pan's dying breath.
"What in the hell were you trying to do, summon demons?"
She crossed her arms, embarrassed red blooming across her neck. "I was trying to cook."
"You mean murder a skillet?"
She glared at me, bottom lip jutting out just slightly—an expression that should not have been as distracting as it was.
"I wanted to thank you. For last night."
I stopped. Completely. Every sarcastic comment I had lined up died on my tongue. She looked down, fiddling with her fingers like a kid caught sneaking cookies.
"You took care of me. And I know you didn't have to. So I wanted to make dinner."
Something in my chest pulled tight. Uncomfortable. Unwelcome. Dangerous.
I stared at the charred remains in the sink. Stared at her. Stared at the smoke still curling toward the ceiling. She'd tried to cook for me. No one had tried to cook for me in years. Not since—
I cut that thought off hard.
"What was it supposed to be?"
Her voice came out small. "Chicken."
I looked at the blackened mass. "That was chicken?"
"…Yes."
I almost laughed. Almost. Instead, I exhaled slowly through my nose and reached for my phone.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Ordering pizza."
"Wyatt—"
"Before you burn my house down."
She opened her mouth to argue, then seemed to think better of it. Her shoulders sagged slightly. "I really did want to thank you."
I paused mid-scroll. Looked at her properly. She was still in those ridiculous oversized sweats, hair a mess, mascara smudged under one eye from earlier, standing in my kitchen like she belonged there. Like she'd been there all along.
"You don't need to thank me," I said quietly.
"I do, though."
"Chastity—"
"You didn't leave me. You could have. But you didn't."
Her voice cracked just slightly on the last word.
And that—that small, vulnerable break—gutted me completely.
I set the phone down. Moved closer without thinking. Stopped when I was close enough to see the leftover tears clinging to her lashes. "I wouldn't have left you."
She looked up at me. Searching. Uncertain. "Why not?"
Because you're mine to protect now, whether I planned it or not.
Because leaving you wasn't an option.
Because something shifted last night and I can't put it back.