8. Cole
Cole
The dining hall at one-thirty is half empty, and the quiet is the only thing I can fucking stand about it.
The room hums with the low drone of trays on metal rails and the hiss of the espresso machine, a few scattered voices bouncing off the high ceiling like they're trying to find a way out. I need the silence.
I get there first and claim the corner booth, the wraparound one in the back where the bench bends ninety degrees, with a clean sightline to the entrance and the coffee station.
I set out three trays before I even sit down.
One for Dante across the table. Mine in front of my spot.
The third beside mine: turkey wrap, apple, water.
Exactly what Maya orders when she remembers to eat, which is never unless I fucking make her.
Three trays. I look at them lined up on the table. I adjust the napkins. I slide into the booth and watch the door, my knee bouncing under the table until I force it still.
Dante walks in at one-thirty-two. Alone. He spots me immediately and crosses the room without slowing, covering the floor in six clean strides. He slides into the seat across from me, reaches for the coffee, and takes a long sip before he says a fucking word.
His shoulders are locked, the tension running across the top of his back in a hard line I can read from here. He carries it in his traps, in the set of his jaw, in the way his fingers grip the cup.
"How was Marco?" I ask, because I have to start somewhere.
His jaw flexes slightly before he swallows. "Fine. Family stuff."
"The restaurants?"
"Cole." My name. Flat. One word. That's the line.
"Okay," I say, and I take a bite of my sandwich so I don't say anything else stupid.
Maya shows up at one-forty-five. I texted her twenty minutes ago.
Me: Dining hall. 1:30. You need to eat.
Maya: I'm editing.
Me: Bring the laptop. Eat while you edit.
She answered with nothing. Which is Maya for fine.
She comes through the entrance with the Chronicle bag over one shoulder and her laptop already open in both hands.
She reads as she walks, her thumb on the trackpad.
Hair up. My hoodie. The navy one this time.
She picks the navy one for editing days, the gray sweatshirt for class, the black zip-up when it's cold enough that she needs pockets.
She doesn't know I've mapped the rotation.
The navy one tells me she's been at the Chronicle since morning. She'll go back after this.
"Sit," I say, sliding the third tray toward the empty space beside me on the bench.
She drops onto the bench beside me, sliding into the curve of the booth until she lands directly across from Dante.
Her eyes stay glued to the screen. She sets the laptop on the table in front of her tray, balancing the back edge against the heel of her left hand to keep the screen tilted toward her.
She pulls the pen from behind her ear and turns it between her fingers as she reads, the movement repetitive enough that I've timed it before. Three turns, pause, three turns.
"I'm not staying long," she says, her voice distracted.
"You say that every time."
"I mean it every time."
"And yet."
She takes a bite of the wrap, her right hand stabilizing the laptop edge while her left brings the food up.
The laptop holds steady. Her shoulder sits three inches from mine, close enough that I can feel the heat of her body through the fabric of my own hoodie.
The hoodie is too big on her. The collar slips when she reaches for the water, and the line of her collarbone appears, pale and smooth, the dip at the base of her throat where the thin gold chain rests.
My breath catches for a half-second, sharp and sudden. I cover it with a drink from my Gatorade.
Her knee presses against mine under the table, light, accidental, and she fucking leaves it there. My jeans go warm where her knee meets mine.
Across the table, Dante is watching her.
I catch it because my eyes are always on him, the same way his are always on the ice.
His hand pauses with the coffee halfway up.
His gaze tracks her the way he tracks film.
Studying. Cataloging. His eyes drop to the collar of my hoodie, to the strip of bare collarbone and the gold chain resting there, then snap back to her face.
His hand lowers, and the cup settles on the table with a soft click.
Her knee on my left. His jaw locked across the table. My chest constricts. I swallow the Gatorade too fast.
"Dante," I say, because I need to see how this plays out. "Maya's been building a piece on the defensive breakdown from last Saturday's game. She found something in your neutral zone reads that Addison missed."
Maya's head snaps up from the laptop, her eyes wide. Her pen stops between her fingers and lands flat against the edge of the laptop hinge. "I didn't say you could—"
"Third period, right?" I turn to her, holding her gaze. "The weak-side rotation. You showed me the shot charts yesterday."
She gives me the look. The one that promises slow, creative violence.
"It's not finished."
"But the analysis is good."
"The analysis is always good."
I glance back across the table. Dante's posture has shifted. He's leaning forward. Barely. An inch. The coffee cup stays on the table, both his hands resting on either side of it now. His eyes are locked on Maya.
"She's the best hockey journalist at this school," I say. "Probably one of the best in the conference."
"Cole," Maya says. A warning.
"I'm stating facts."
"You're being weird."
Dante takes another measured drink of coffee. Sets the cup down with a soft click. His eyes move from Maya to me, a quick assessment, then back to Maya.
"The weak-side rotation," he says. To Maya. "What did you find?"
Maya turns her torso toward him, her shoulder rotating away from mine, but her knee stays pressed against mine under the table, and the pressure of it deepens as her weight shifts. Dante holds her gaze.
"Your forwards are cheating toward the strong side on zone entries," Maya says, her voice sliding into that cool, professional register.
"When the puck moves weak side, there's a one-to-two-second delay before the backside winger rotates.
Addison's running a standard one-three-one, but the timing is off by about half a stride.
It's visible from above." She taps the edge of the laptop, her fingers steady.
"From the press box," Dante says.
"Yes."
A beat hangs there, thick and loaded.
"Sixty feet above the ice," he says, and the words aren't an accusation this time. They land differently.
Maya's pen stops between her fingers. Her jaw goes rigid, that same muscle jumping that I've watched since we were thirteen. She heard it. Dante heard it too. His mouth opens slightly, a fraction, like a word got caught between his teeth and he swallowed it back.
"Best seat in the house," Maya says, quiet but firm, holding the line.
Dante nods once, a sharp dip of his chin.
Maya's hand is on the table, her fingers resting beside her laptop.
The color in her neck is changing, a flush climbing from her collar toward her jaw, a slow bloom of pink against her skin.
She doesn't know she's doing it. I do. I've watched that flush since she was fifteen, across dinner tables, in the backseat of my car when she fell asleep on my shoulder, in her bedroom doorway the night she told me she was changing her major.
Dante's eyes fall to her throat for a fraction of a second. The flush. Then back to her eyes. He saw it too.
"Send me the shot charts," he says. "I want to see the data."
"I'll send you the finished piece."
"I want the raw data. The charts. Before it runs."
"That's not how journalism works, Voss."
"It's how hockey works, Maddox."
They hold each other's eyes across the table. I'm wedged between them. I did this.
Maya's shoulder still rests three inches from mine.
Her knee still presses against mine under the table.
But her body has turned toward Dante, angled away from me, her collarbone bare above the hoodie collar, the flush still climbing, bright and hot.
I'm sitting between them, the heat from Maya's knee on my left, Dante's locked jaw across the table, my stepsister's skin flushed because of the man I've been sleeping with for six years.
I press my thumb into my own thigh under the table, digging in hard until it hurts, but it doesn't fucking work.
Her eyes flick to me for half a second. A question in them, heat and confusion sitting side by side. Then she looks back at Dante, and the moment snaps.
"I'll think about it," she says, her voice flat again, the professional mask back in place.
She takes another bite of the wrap. Conversation over.
I lean against the booth, the vinyl creaking under my weight. My thumb stays pressed to my thigh, the bruise already forming, and the pressure doesn't help at all.
We stand, gather trays, dump them at the conveyor on our way out. Maya tucks her laptop under one arm and shoulders her bag, and the three of us move through the swinging doors into the lobby in a loose triangle, Maya half a step ahead of me, Dante half a step behind on my right.
Gio is on a bench near the entrance, slumped with Zoe beside him, her hand a steady weight on his knee. His shoulders curve forward over his phone, but the tension in his body loosens wherever they touch, like she's the only thing keeping him upright.
He glances up as we pass, his eyes tired. "Practice at three?"
"Film first," I say. "Addison's in a mood."
"When isn't he?"
Zoe tilts her head at Maya, a smirk playing on her lips. "Nice hoodie."
Maya glances down at the navy fabric, my fabric, and her voice stays flat, but I hear the edge underneath. "It's comfortable."
"It's Cole's."
"It's comfortable," Maya repeats, and the finality in her tone could cut glass.
Zoe grins, because she knows she's won, because she sees what I see.