Chapter 31
Cade
Practice ends with Briggs trying to convince Easton that whatever is happening between him and Aura counts as foreplay if both people are pissed off enough.
Easton looks like he is five seconds from drowning him in the showers.
Rider is encouraging it because Rider has never met a bad idea he didn’t want to sharpen and hand back to the room. Ryan walks beside me with his bag over one shoulder, quiet as always, but his mouth keeps twitching like he is pretending Briggs isn’t funny and losing the fight.
I should be tired. Season opens in five days, and Coach skated us like he personally hated our lungs. My legs feel heavy, my shoulder aches from Rider getting cute along the boards, and sweat is drying cold beneath my hoodie as we push through the back doors of The Furnace into the wet evening air.
But I’m not thinking about practice.
I’m thinking about Bliss.
I’m thinking about her in bed this morning, sleepy and warm and trying to call me a situationship warden like I hadn’t already made it clear I was off the market.
I’m thinking about the way her mouth softened when she thought I didn’t notice.
The way she said she hated me like it meant please don’t stop looking at me.
The way she wore fear like armor and still somehow let me see underneath it.
I check my phone again, but there’s nothing since her last text.
It isn’t weird. She had class. Then Aura and Charm. Then whatever tornado of glitter, caffeine, and poor impulse control those three call a normal afternoon. She knows I’m finishing practice, and she said she would text when she headed over.
Still, something in my chest has been sitting wrong since I stepped on the ice.
“Mercer,” Briggs says, falling into step beside me, “you’re doing that thing again.”
I don’t look at him. “Walking?”
“No, that’s more of a controlled stalk. I meant the brooding.”
Rider swings his bag higher on his shoulder. “I like it. Makes him seem mysterious.”
“He’s not mysterious,” Briggs says. “He’s rich and emotionally unavailable. People confuse those all the time.”
Easton glances at me. “You staying at her apartment tonight?”
“Yeah.”
Briggs’s whole face changes. “The ABC apartment?”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“It was weird before I got here. I’m just adding commentary.”
“You always add commentary,” Ryan says.
“Because silence is how cults start.”
Rider looks at me. “You have a drawer there yet?”
“No.”
Briggs narrows his eyes. “Toothbrush?”
“No.”
“Backup deodorant?”
I say nothing.
Briggs stops walking so abruptly Rider almost runs into him. “Holy shit.”
Rider points at me. “He has deodorant there.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“That is a huge deal,” Briggs says. “A toothbrush is basic. Deodorant means you’re planning to get sweaty there again.”
Easton’s mouth twitches. “He’s not wrong.”
I look at him. “You want to talk about things left at apartments?”
That shuts him up.
Briggs makes a delighted sound. “Oh, I would love to talk about things left at apartments.”
Easton turns his head slowly. “Lawson.”
“Never mind. I respect privacy when threatened directly.”
Rider grins. “Since when?”
“Since Wade started looking like he’d fold me into a locker.”
Ryan exhales through his nose, which is about as close as Ryan gets to laughing in public.
The parking lot lights reflect off the rain-slick asphalt, and the air smells like wet pavement, cold lake wind, and exhaust from somebody’s truck idling near the far end.
A few players are loading bags into cars.
Someone laughs near the side entrance. Normal post-practice noise moves around us, but my phone feels like a warning in my pocket.
Ryan sees me reach for it again.
“She’ll text,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“You’re checking like you don’t.”
I shove my phone back into my hoodie. “I’m fine.”
Briggs groans. “Oh, he said fine. Somebody put him down before he suffers.”
“I hate all of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Rider says.
That phrase hits different now.
No, you don’t.
I think about Bliss saying it, eyes bright with fake annoyance and real feeling underneath, and my chest does the stupid fucking thing again.
Easton catches it. “You’re in deep.”
I don’t deny it.
That shuts them up faster than anything else could have.
The four of them look at me, and for once, nobody makes the obvious joke. Even Briggs lets the moment sit, probably because he knows how rare it is for me to hand them anything real without making them rip it out first.
“Yeah,” I say, looking across the lot toward my Rover. “I am.”
Briggs’s expression shifts. Still Briggs. Still annoying. But less performance now. More friend. “Good.”
Rider claps my shoulder. “About time.”
Easton nods once. “She’s good for you.”
Ryan’s gaze stays steady on mine. “You’re good for her too.”
I want to be.
Holy fuck, I want to be.
Briggs clears his throat, like too much sincerity might kill him if it stays in the air too long. “For the record, I liked Bennett before you made this your whole personality.”
“She was never my whole personality.”
“Mercer, you’ve checked your phone seven times since we left the locker room.”
“Eight,” Ryan says.
Briggs points at him. “Thank you. See? Brotherhood is accountability.”
Rider nods. “Also harassment.”
“Same family,” Briggs says.
I shake my head, but I can feel my mouth trying to move. “She was your lab partner.”
“Sophomore year,” Briggs says proudly. “We almost got banned from the building.”
“You lost fire,” I say.
“I temporarily misplaced flame.”
Rider looks impressed. “How do you lose flame?”
“With confidence,” Briggs says. “And Bennett distracting me by arguing that the periodic table was badly branded.”
“She said that?”
“She had notes. A lot of them. Color-coded.”
Of course she did.
The thought hits me before I can stop it, warm and sharp at the same time. Bliss in a lab with Briggs is probably the kind of thing campus safety still talks about in low voices. Two disasters with access to chemicals and no adult supervision.
“You’re smiling,” Easton says.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Rider says. “It’s creepy.”
Briggs sighs. “Look at him. All happy and domesticated. Makes me sick.”
“Backup deodorant isn’t domesticated.”
“It’s at least engaged.”
Ryan finally laughs under his breath.
I look at him. “Traitor.”
He lifts one shoulder. “That was funny.”
Briggs points at Ryan like he just won a championship. “That’s a supportive witness.”
“You don’t get one,” Easton says.
“I get several. I’m fragile.”
“You are the least fragile person I know.”
“I contain layers.”
“You contain noise,” Rider says.
I am about to say something that will probably ruin my reputation forever when someone shouts my name from the far side of the parking lot.
“Mercer!”
My body reacts before my brain catches up.
So do the guys.
The whole mood changes in one breath. Easton shifts to my left. Ryan’s shoulders square. Rider’s joking expression disappears. Briggs turns, and even he looks sharp now, all the lazy chaos gone from his face.
After the conversation we had this morning, none of us hears a man yelling my name in a dark parking lot and assumes it’s nothing.
Two guys are running toward us beneath the harsh glow of the lights, shoes splashing through shallow puddles, breath coming hard. For half a second, I don’t recognize them through the rain and distance.
Then one of them gets close enough for the light to hit his face.
Emmitt Bennett.
Kellen is beside him, and Lyon is behind them, not running as fast but moving with the same panic carved into every line of his body.
My blood goes cold, not because they look angry but because they look terrified.
Emmitt reaches us first, almost slipping on the pavement when he stops. His face is pale, eyes wild, chest heaving like he sprinted the whole way from hell, and every stupid joke still living in the air between us dies before he even opens his mouth.
“It’s Bliss,” he says.
The world goes silent, and my body locks so hard I barely feel my hands.
“What?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
“She’s at the hospital,” Kellen says, and his voice breaks on hospital in a way that turns my spine to ice. “Luke fucking—”
He can’t finish.
Lyon catches up behind them, one hand braced on his knee, breathing hard. “He beat her. Some guys found her on the road. They saw his truck leave, called it in, and stayed with her until the ambulance got there.”
For one second, I don’t move.
I don’t blink.
I don’t breathe.
Then everything inside me drops out.
Briggs whispers, “What?”
Kellen’s face twists, rage and fear tearing through him at the same time. “Broken ribs. Bruised sternum. Concussion. Her face is—” He drags both hands over his head, shaking. “Her fucking face, man. Her larynx is bruised. He had his hands on her throat.”
Something in me goes very quiet.
Not calm.
Worse.
The kind of quiet that happens when every human part of you steps back and lets the monster walk to the front.
Ryan moves closer, his voice low. “Cade.”
I hear him, but barely. My keys are already in my hand. “Where?”
“County Hospital,” Emmitt says. “Daniel, Knox, Ryker, everybody’s there. Aura and Charm are on the way.”
Easton’s head snaps toward Lyon. “They know?”
“I called them,” Lyon says, still breathing hard. “They’re already there or almost there.”
Easton’s jaw locks.
I turn toward my Rover. The guys move with me immediately. No questions. No hesitation. Ryan catches my arm before I can rip the door open and leans in just enough that only I hear him.
“You drive like you’re trying to get to her, not like you’re trying to join her in the ER.”
I stare at him, but he doesn’t flinch.
“She needs you alive when you get there.”
That is the only thing he could have said that works.
I yank the door open. “Get in.”
Briggs climbs into the back without a word. Easton slides to the middle, and Rider slides in beside him. Ryan takes the front. Emmitt, Kellen, and Lyon run for Lyon’s truck behind us.