Chapter Two #2
“Everything good?” Jax asked, voice low. His broad shoulders took up more space than the other two.
He didn’t look at me, but his tone held weight. He felt the shift.
“Fine,” I said. It was a lie. But he didn’t push. He rarely did.
Chase shifted in his seat, stiffening beside me. His attention snapped to the doorway. That predatory stillness meant one thing—he saw something he didn’t like.
I followed his line of sight. Avery. My jaw ticked.
His sister walked in laughing, shoulder bumping against Mark Delaney’s like it belonged there. His hand hovered at her lower back.
Wrong move.
Jax caught the shift too. His mouth curved into something dangerous. “Problem with your sister talking to that guy?”
Chase tensed. “Mark’s not good enough for her.”
To us, no one was good enough for Avery, but her brother took that to extremes.
“Didn’t ask if he was good enough,” Jax said, voice calm but edged. “Asked if it was a problem.”
Chase muttered under his breath then stood like he was about to start something. Jax leaned back in his seat, amused.
I didn’t stop Chase. He could handle it. I had my own shit to deal with. Because Mila being back? That wasn’t a coincidence. No way had she returned without a reason.
Last time she saw me, my world was crumbling. My dad caught her mom in something—money, theft, who the hell knew. All I got were fragments and fury. My father said they ran because she was guilty. That her mom screwed us over and Mila helped.
And when she left without a word? I believed him. I let myself believe she was just like the rest—using me until it didn’t serve her anymore.
But now? Now she was back. And she didn’t get to pretend nothing had happened. She didn’t get to keep my secrets, disappear, then walk these halls like she hadn’t gutted me. This time, I’d make damn sure she stayed. And she would answer for what she did.
Seeing Mila knocked the air out of me. And it only got worse when I caught her bare neck—no chain, no star pendant. Just skin where her promise used to sit.
She wore it every damn day. Swore she never took it off. That it reminded her we were real, even when everything else felt fake.
And now? Gone.
I hadn’t thought about that night in months—no. That was bullshit. I thought about it every day. Just got better at burying it under everything else. Practice, school, meaningless hookups.
But seeing her now, seeing her without it? That chain wasn’t just missing. It was a declaration.
The necklace she’d returned was still in my hand when I got back to my room the night she left. Silver, thin, delicate—but heavy in ways that had nothing to do with weight. The charm caught the overhead light like it didn’t know it had been gutted of meaning.
My mind tripped back to when she left it for me with no explanation. No goodbye. Just slipped it into my hockey bag before an away game and walked away. Didn’t even look back.
When I realized she was gone, that leaving the necklace with me was her goodbye, I stood there, a dumbass, fingers curling around the last piece of her I had, wondering if I should throw it. Smash it. Melt it down and forget she ever wore it.
My brother Drew found me. Door half open. Bottle of whiskey dangling from my hand and half gone. Me standing in the middle of the room with my knuckles white around a broken promise.
His eyes flicked from the chain to the bottle. “This isn’t the way.”
“Don’t start,” I muttered.
But he didn’t flinch. Didn’t get preachy or pissed. Just stepped inside and shut the door behind him as though he’d been there before. As if he knew exactly what it meant to watch someone you love vanish without a reason.
“I’ve been exactly where you are,” he said, voice low, steady. “World turned upside down. Gutted from the inside out. And I promise you—it doesn’t end with just one night.”
I wanted to tell him to fuck off. That I didn’t need a babysitter.
But there was no pity in his face—just truth.
And coming from my brother, truth held weight.
He’d crashed and burned before—alcohol, drugs, rock bottom.
Dad hadn’t done much besides get pissed at the spiral Drew had fallen into.
A disappointment. A risk. The pressure had shifted to me.
If Claire—Drew’s assistant back then, now his fiancée—and I hadn’t dragged him out of whatever devastation had tipped him over the edge…
I wasn’t sure he’d have made it back. He still hadn’t told me what it was, but Claire was his tether to sobriety now.
He grabbed the bottle, tipped it into the trash until the last drop was gone, then plucked the necklace from my hand and set it on the desk like it deserved to survive this night. Even if I didn’t.
“Hold on to that. Trust me—it’s lighter than what’s waiting for you if you don’t get your head straight.”
And damn if he wasn’t right.
That was the night I stopped trying to drink my way through the burn. At most, one or two beers at parties. Water after wins. Not because I was clean. But because Drew showed me where that road ended—and I wasn’t ready to lose more than I already had.
And maybe that was why I only let family close now. Because trusting anyone else? She taught me exactly how that ended.