26. Wyatt
Wyatt
I skated like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts. Puck drills. Conditioning laps. Scrimmage. Normally the ice cleared my head, burned out everything except muscle memory and instinct.
Today? Every move landed half a second late.
I missed a pass I could've made in my sleep. Ryker whistled low, that knowing sound that made my jaw clench before he even opened his mouth.
I shoved him into the boards. Hard enough that the glass rattled.
Coach's whistle shrilled across the ice, sharp and final. His voice carried over the scrape of skates and the thud of bodies against plexiglass, telling me to save it for the game.
I muttered something under my breath and circled back to the line, forcing my legs to move through the motions even as my brain refused to cooperate.
Because the truth was simple and devastating: I couldn't stop thinking about Chastity in my bed this morning.
Her laugh, soft and sleepy against my shoulder.
Her hair fanned across my pillow like she belonged there.
The way she'd looked at me—not with fear or calculation or performance, but like she saw past the scars and the reputation and the carefully maintained armor.
Like I wasn't broken. Like I was worth keeping.
It rattled me worse than any hit I'd taken on the ice in fifteen years.
Practice ended. I peeled off my gear in mechanical silence while the guys ribbed each other about weekend plans and upcoming road games. My hands moved on autopilot—unlacing skates, stripping pads, ignoring the ache in my shoulders from pushing too hard.
I headed toward the locker room, towel slung over my shoulder, already planning the text I'd send Chastity about lunch.
Then I stopped.
Barbara stood outside the hallway. Perfect posture. Expensive coat buttoned against the cold I knew she barely felt. Ice in her eyes that had nothing to do with the rink.
My stomach dropped, then hardened into something cold and familiar. The same feeling I'd had years ago when I'd walked into my bedroom and found her there with him. Betrayal dressed up in designer clothes and polite smiles.
She didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched me with that expression I'd learned to read too well—the one that said she'd come to deliver a message, and I wasn't going to like it.
Every instinct screamed at me to walk past her. To pretend she didn't exist. To protect the fragile thing I'd accidentally built with Chastity by refusing to let Barbara anywhere near it.
But I'd never been good at walking away from fights.
So I stopped. Waited. Let her make the first move.
Because whatever she wanted, it wasn't going to change what had already happened. Chastity was mine now. And I'd burn the world down before I let Barbara take her from me.
I sighed, the sound rough and tired even to my own ears. "You stalking me now?"
Barbara ignored the jab, her gaze steady and clinical. Like I was a problem she needed to solve instead of a man she'd once promised forever. "The month is almost over."
I leaned against the wall, arms crossed, forcing every muscle into casual indifference even though my pulse kicked hard beneath my skin. "And?"
Her gaze sharpened, cutting through the space between us with surgical precision. "That girl is in love with you."
The words hit harder than a body check. Knocked the air from my lungs in a way I refused to show. I didn't flinch. Didn't move. Didn't give her the satisfaction of seeing how deep those words cut—or how much I wanted them to be true.
"Maybe she is."
Barbara studied me, her expression shifting into something that almost looked like concern. Almost. But I knew better. I'd learned years ago that nothing Barbara did came from a place of genuine care.
"And then what? You're going to break her heart just like you break everyone else's."
I laughed. Low. Dangerous. The sound echoed off the concrete walls and settled between us like a challenge. "Maybe I won't."
Barbara raised an eyebrow, disbelief written across every carefully maintained line of her face.
I shrugged, letting the words fall casual and devastating. "Maybe I'll marry her. Put a few kids in her."
Barbara's composure cracked for the first time since she'd cornered me. Her eyes widened, just barely, before she locked it down. But I saw it. That flicker of genuine shock that told me she'd expected anything but this.
"You won't." Her voice turned cold, brittle with something that sounded almost like fear. "Hurting people is in your blood."
I straightened slowly, every inch of movement deliberate. Controlled. Because if I moved too fast, if I let myself feel the full weight of what she'd just implied, I'd do something we'd both regret.
"Let her go, Wyatt."
Silence hung between us, thick and suffocating. The distant sound of skates on ice filtered through the hallway, normal and mundane against the nuclear tension crackling in the air.
Then I stepped closer. Close enough she had to tilt her head back to hold my gaze. Every inch of me hard. Unyielding. "That is not going to happen."
Barbara's lips pressed thin, her mask slipping just enough to reveal the steel beneath.
"You'll have to pry her away from me."
She tilted her head, studying me like I was a chess piece she'd miscalculated. "That can be arranged."
Something inside me snapped. Clean and final, like the last thread holding back years of rage and betrayal finally giving way.
My eyes turned lethal. I felt it happen—the shift from civilized to something darker, something I'd spent years keeping locked down.
"You might have betrayed me," I said quietly, my voice dropping into a register that made grown men back away on the ice, "but Barbara, I swear—if you do anything to my girl…" My jaw tightened, every word deliberate and weighted with absolute certainty. "I'll fucking kill you."
Barbara's eyes narrowed, but I saw it—that flash of recognition. She knew I wasn't bluffing. Knew that whatever lines I'd refused to cross before, Chastity had redrawn every boundary I'd ever maintained.
"Are you threatening me?"
I smiled. But it was all teeth. Nothing warm. Nothing human. "I'm making a goddamn promise."
I walked away before I did something I couldn't take back. Before my hands remembered how good it felt to break things. Before I proved her right about the violence she claimed ran in my blood.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Probably Chastity, wondering where I was. Waiting for me. And for the first time in years, someone was actually waiting for me to come home.
Barbara could arrange whatever the hell she wanted. But she'd learn the hard way: I protected what was mine.
And Chastity? She was mine now.
I drove home with Barbara's voice echoing in my skull like a curse I couldn't shake.
She's in love with you.
My knuckles went white against the steering wheel, fingers gripping hard enough to hurt. The pain helped. Grounded me. Kept me from spiraling into the dark truth I'd been avoiding since the moment Chastity had kissed me in the kitchen.
Hurting people is in your blood.
The words burrowed deeper with every mile. Every red light. Every breath I forced through my chest.
Because Barbara wasn't wrong. I'd built my career on controlled violence. On knowing exactly where to hit to make it count. On reading weaknesses and exploiting them without hesitation or remorse.
And Chastity? She was nothing but softness and trust and na?ve belief that people could be good if given the chance.
I'd weaponized that from day one. Used her innocence against her father.
Manipulated her proximity. Orchestrated every touch, every moment, every carefully calculated move designed to destroy the man who'd destroyed me.
The revenge had been perfect. Surgical. Everything I'd planned.
Until it wasn't.
Until she'd defended me to Barbara. Until she'd kissed my cheek like I deserved tenderness. Until she'd looked at me this morning like I was worth keeping.
My chest tightened, something hot and acidic crawling up my throat.
If I ruined her—and God, I was already halfway there—I'd never forgive myself.
The house appeared ahead, warm lights glowing through the windows. She was in there. Waiting. Believing in a version of me that didn't exist.
I pulled into the driveway and sat in the darkness, engine ticking as it cooled.
I opened the door.
The house smelled like her now. Something floral and clean that had seeped into the furniture, the walls, the air itself. A month ago, this place had been sterile. Functional. A space I occupied but never lived in.
Now it felt like home.
And that terrified me more than anything Barbara had said.
I found her in the living room, curled on the couch with her legs tucked beneath her. Hair messy, falling loose around her shoulders in waves she hadn't bothered to tame. She wore one of my old practice shirts; the fabric swallowing her frame and sliding off one shoulder.
She looked up when I entered. Smiled. That soft, unguarded expression that hit me like a freight train every single time.
"Hey."
Every dark thought in my head disappeared. Every poisonous word Barbara had planted. Every doubt I'd been nursing during the drive home. Every brutal truth about what I'd done and who I was and what I deserved. Gone.
I crossed the room in three strides.
She started to say something—probably a question about practice, about lunch, about the plans we'd made. But I didn't let her finish.
I grabbed her face between my hands and kissed her. Hard. Desperate. Like I could erase Barbara's voice and my own guilt and the ticking clock on whatever this was between us if I just kissed her thoroughly enough.
She made a small sound of surprise that melted into something softer. Sweeter. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away even though I was being rough. Too rough.
I gentled the kiss. Forced myself to slow down. To taste instead of take. To remind myself that she wasn't something to conquer or control.
She was something to keep.