Chapter 3 #3
The laugh catches me off guard — not the polished one, not the Halden Girl version, but something quick and sharp that escapes before I can route it through the filter. Rowan doesn’t look up from his coffee, but he goes still, and I know he caught the difference.
A second later, I press my lips together, sit up straighter, and put a little distance between myself and whoever made that sound. It’s too late for him not to notice, but I can at least make sure everyone else sees the composed version of me.
“Your first time watching hockey tonight?” he says, giving me an out onto a safe topic.
“Yeah,” I say. “I was in the student section.”
“I know,” he says. “I saw you. Third row.”
He says it plainly, no suggestion in it at all, but that doesn’t stop heat from rushing through me and to my face before I can stop it. He’s the stillest person in a café full of noise and movement, and I want, suddenly and badly, to be the thing that makes him move.
To fight the urge, I wrap my hands around my cup and look down at it. I breathe deeply, trying to go flat again. I’ve spent four days being a girl nobody looks at twice, yet two conversations with this guy have made me feel like I’ve got a spotlight on me both times.
“You stood up for the hit,” he says, turning his mug a slow quarter turn.
“Everyone stood up,” I say.
“Not for a clean hit in the first period.”
I look up, and his eyes hit mine and stay — steel-blue, steady, not searching, like he already found what he wanted and is just checking it’s still there. It’s like they’ve been on me the whole time and he’s only now letting me catch him at it.
The old Sloane is awake and stretching, and she’s not interested in sitting down.
Before I can say anything else, the table erupts about something Luca said, and the noise swells back in around us like water filling a gap. And, a second later, the door to Maple & Main swings open, and everyone at the hockey table except Ivy and me tenses.
A guy walks in like he owns every room he enters. He’s got dark hair and an angled jaw, and he moves through the crowd without adjusting his path. When he reaches the table, his gaze catches on me and holds, and his mouth curves.
“Theo,” he says, standing behind the chair beside mine. “Move.”
Theo moves, no argument, and as Seb’s eyes lock on the new arrival, the charismatic guy drops in and pulls the chair a few inches closer to mine. His arm goes along the back of my chair, not quite touching, just claiming the airspace.
“Hey, I’m Mason.” He angles his body toward me. “You were in the student section tonight.”
“You could see that from the ice?” I say, carefully, every cylinder of the polish firing.
“I can see the pretty ones from anywhere.”
“Ivy wouldn’t let me hide in the upper section.”
“Smart girl.” His eyes travel over my face once, open and unapologetic. “You from the city?”
“Rye.”
Recognition sharpens his smile. “Harbor Road Country Club?”
“My parents are members,” I say, then glance over at Rowan, who’s looking elsewhere.
“No kidding,” Mason says, pulling my attention back to him. “My uncle is a member. So what’s your name?”
“Sloane,” I say. “I’m Ivy’s roommate.”
He shifts forward again, closing distance that was already small. “You fit here, you know.”
I blush a little. “What?”
“Some people take a semester to figure out where they belong and you just… it’s perfect.”
The word fit warms me, and I sit a little straighter.
Across the table, Rowan’s eyes flick to Mason’s arm on the back of my chair and his coffee cup stops turning. Then he turns to Sebastian and says something about tomorrow’s film session, and doesn’t look back. But I don’t have time to think about Rowan, because Mason is overwhelming.
“So what made you pick Halden?” he asks, like we’re the only two people at the table.
“I like their comms program,” I say, at ease with the polite questions. “Plus my mother went here.”
“Ah, a fellow lifer. I’m fourth generation.” He says it without pride, just geography. “My grandfather’s name is on the field house, which sounds impressive until you see the field house — it’s basically a shed with some sporting equipment inside. But I like it here, present company especially.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know you’re from Rye, you’re in Sterling, you picked the student section on your first night, and you haven’t flinched once since I sat down.” He gives me an easy grin that I’m sure has separated more than a few freshman girls from their clothes. “That’s enough to go on.”
I flush red, again, and try to deflect. “How do you know I’m in Sterling?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Ivy’s roommate. Ivy’s in Sterling. Not exactly detective work.”
“Right.”
“Come to Luca’s thing on Saturday,” he says. “I’ll save you a drink.”
“I’ll be there.”
He smiles like I’ve given him something. “Good.”
Mason rattles on about bits of Halden gossip — a tradition, a place to eat, a place I should see — and I’m nodding and laughing and being exactly who I came here to be. But it’s not the real laugh, the one Rowan got from me twice now.
It’s the other one. The one I packed in my suitcase in August.