Chapter 27
twenty-seven
ROWAN
Sloane never called back.
My hand throbs as I grip my coffee cup, the first two knuckles purple-black and swollen enough that the skin looks shiny and wrong. I can move my fingers, so nothing is broken, but every time I think about the pain I see Mason’s lip splitting under my fist.
Not very mature, but very satisfying.
Headlights sweep across the lot at 7:41. Coach Franklin’s Tahoe pulls into his reserved spot, and he gets out carrying a travel mug and a laptop bag. When he sees me on the steps, he stops.
“Hale,” he says.
“Coach.”
His eyes go to my hand, then to my face.
“Inside,” he says, then keeps walking.
I follow him as he unlocks the building and walks to his office. It feels like the longest stroll through this part of the building in my whole career at Halden, and when he gestures for me to sit, I drop into the chair opposite his desk.
“Talk,” he says.
So I talk. I tell him about the post on the campus gossip account — all of it — and while I speak, his expression doesn’t shift. It stays still and focused, the way it does during a bad game when he’s taking in more than he’s giving back.
Then I tell him about the bar: Mason denying it, me pushing, and then the punch.
His hand stops halfway to his travel mug. “You punched him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In a public bar.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looks at my hand. “I appreciate the accountability.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looks back to my face, and his expression softens. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“I’m okay,” I say.
“That wasn’t the question.” He watches me, then leans back and lets out a breath through his nose. “You look like hell. You need to get it sorted.”
I don’t answer.
Franklin rubs a hand across his jaw, then tells me to walk him through everything about Mason. So I do: what Mason admitted at Murphy’s, the kitchen, the photos he never had, the bluff that did the work, and the days of distance that make sense now.
And I tell him the last thing I said to Mason — that he’d be suspended by tomorrow.
He looks at me for a few long seconds, deciding, then pulls out his laptop and starts typing. It’s like that for a while, because he’s got that horrible Boomer habit of typing with both forefingers, and the whole time he doesn’t look at me.
“What Mason did is not a prank that got out of hand,” he says, not looking up from the computer.
“He leaked a student’s private information and ignited a gossip fire that will cause real harm.
That’s several student code violations, and depending on what conduct finds, it may not stop there.
He’s suspended, effective now, pending the review. ”
I sit with that, and what hits me isn’t relief.
It should be — Franklin just confirmed that what Mason did has a name, a process, and a consequence, and that’s what I came here for — but the thing underneath is uglier: Sloane’s name is going to be in a conduct file.
Her story will be typed up, submitted, and reviewed by people she’s never met, in a building she’s never been inside, in a way she didn’t choose. I chose it. I walked in here and laid her life out because that was the shortest path to a solution.
But even though it feels wrong, I don’t stop it.
“Your punch.” Franklin points at my hand. “I should bench you for that.”
“I know.”
“You’ll sit the first period of your next game, and you’ll run the freshmen’s six a.m. skates for two weeks,” he says. “And no more fuckups or I’ll have your ass.”
“Understood.”
Then his voice drops half a register, and I swear I catch him looking around to make sure we’re alone. “You know who Mason’s father is?”
I do. Patrick Cross is a longtime NHL scout with connections in front offices around the league. I’ve known since freshman year because Mason made sure everyone did, dropping the name into conversations like loose change.
“I’m not telling you to do anything differently,” Franklin says. “I’m just telling you the context you now have to live with. Are you hearing me?”
“I’m hearing you.”
That context is obvious. Patrick Cross has been scouting players since before I was born, and his son just walked out of Murphy’s with a split lip and a suspension, and I’m the one both Mason and his old man will blame for both.
“Get some ice on that hand, eat, and sleep,” he says. “You look like shit.”
I nod and leave his office, and when I reach the parking lot behind the athletics building, the guys are waiting for me like I asked them to in a text as soon as I woke up. They all showed up in various states of Saturday morning, which tells me I’ve still got the team on my side.
A team I need to help me undo some of the damage.
“Mason is suspended effective immediately, and the formal channels are in motion,” I say. “Nobody talks to him until that plays out.”
The silence holds.
“Second thing. The post about Sloane. The screenshots, the comments, the texts — all of it ends now. We all have clout on this campus, so use it.”
“Already on it,” Seb says.
He’s leaning against the wall with his arms folded. I hold his gaze, and he holds mine, and we have a whole conversation without making a sound. And a glance at some of the others tells me they’re already putting in work, too.
Luca clears his throat. “Honestly, this is hard for me, because gossip is my major…”
A few of the guys laugh, and a few crack smiles.
“Anything else?” I ask.
Silence.
“Practice Monday,” I say. “Be early.”
They scatter in pairs, but I catch Seb before he pushes off the wall.
“Things okay?” I ask. “The calls at Ironwood — you’re carrying something.”
His jaw sets, then he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Offer stands, whenever.”
“I know.” He nods, and then he’s gone.
I dig my phone out. No missed calls. No texts.
I start walking toward Sterling House.
Sterling House is quiet when I knock on Sloane’s door.
Eventually, the door opens, but it’s not Sloane. In the gap, Ivy stands in a T-shirt and shorts, hair loose, face bare, and whatever she sees on my face does not soften hers. She steps into the hallway and pulls the door shut behind her.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you right now, Rowan,” she says.
“I know.” I sigh and run a hand through my hair.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I need to fix this…”
Ivy watches me, and her expression shifts — not sympathy, exactly, more like recognition. She’s seen what Sloane looks like this morning, and she’s seeing what I look like now, and she’s weighing whether overriding Sloane’s wishes will hinder or help both of us.
“Wait,” she says.
She leans back through the door. I hear murmuring, then a one-word answer from Sloane I can’t make out, and then Ivy comes back. She gives me a look that carries about six different warnings, mutters something about coffee, and then leaves.
The door opens about eight inches — enough to show me Sloane in an oversized cardigan, her hair up in a knot that’s half fallen down. She looks at me the way you look at something you knew was coming but hoped would take longer to arrive.
She’s been crying, hard enough that it’s still written on her face: the puffiness under her eyes, the chapped edges of her mouth. Behind her, a half-empty glass of water sits on the desk next to a bottle of Advil with the cap off.
Her eyes move over my face and the guarded line of her mouth loosens, just barely, and I watch her catch it and then put it away.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
“Can I come in?”
She doesn’t step back. Her hand stays on the edge of the door, and it doesn’t move — the eight inches between us holding. She’s not letting me in, and she folds her free arm across herself like she’s bracing the gap.
“You weren’t answering,” I say.
“I know.” Her voice is quiet, careful.
“Why?”
She looks at the floor. “I didn’t want to drag you into this, Rowan.”
The sentence is so small and so wrong that it takes me a second to hear what’s inside it — she already knew what I’d do if I found out about Mason’s threat, and she was trying to stop the machine before it started. It turns out she was right, and I started it anyway.
But I’m too deep in the machinery of solving the problem, and what I hear instead is an opening. So I take it, charging ahead.
“I was at Coach Franklin’s office early this morning,” I say. “I laid all of it out — the post, Mason, and what he admitted to me.”
“Yeah,” she says, with a sigh.
“Franklin’s referring him to student conduct,” I say. “Mason’s suspended from the team, pending investigation.”
She doesn’t say anything, so I keep going.
“I briefed the guys after. They’re going to do what they can to squash the gossip. So that should be it unless—”
“Rowan.”
“—conduct wants to talk to you next week, but I can walk you through what that looks like if you—”
“Stop.”
I stop. She’s still watching me, but her face has changed. The careful composure is gone, and what’s underneath is worse: not anger, not disappointment, but something quieter and more final. She’s looking at me like she’s watching something break.
“You’re going to keep going, aren’t you?” she says.
“I just want you to know it’s handled.”
She sighs. “I know it’s handled. I never doubted it would be. That’s what you do.”
“I—”
“I didn’t want it handled.” Her voice is small, almost sad. “I didn’t want you to handle it.”
She looks at me and goes still — the way a decision looks when it’s just been made and the person is just waiting to deliver the news — and all of a sudden I don’t like my odds.
“Nina was right about you,” she says.
Everybody’s safe place. Nobody’s actual partner.
The words land before I can brace for them. I told Sloane those words at two in the morning, my jaw against her chest, her hand in mine, because I trusted her with the worst thing anyone had ever said about me.
Her hand drifts from where it’s been pressed against her, reaching for me, and I see the exact moment she catches herself. She redirects to push a strand of hair behind her ear, her arms folding tighter like she’s holding herself in place.
“When you found out about all of it,” she says, “why didn’t you come here?”
“I got out of a movie and I called you three times,” I say. “You didn’t pick up, so I—”
“I told you why. I was trying not to pull you into the thing I knew you’d try to solve, Rowan.” She breathes in, then lets it out in one big exhale. “But you found Mason and banished him from the team, then went to Franklin and filed a conduct report with my name and my story in it.”
That’s when the doubt that’s been at the back of my mind hits full volume. She’s right, and I don’t have a defense. I called, and when she didn’t answer, I didn’t come to her door. I spent the night building a solution, then the morning executing it, and then I came here last.
Still, I keep trying to explain it. “That’s how the process works, Sloane. If you wanted Mason to be punished, I had to—”
“You didn’t ask me.” She sighs. “You left me a voicemail last night. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t fix it.’” Her eyes don’t leave mine. “Not sorry you didn’t ask me. Not asking if I’m okay.”
Her name in a file, her story submitted to people she’s never met, and I did that without asking because it was the fastest path to a solution.
“What was I supposed to do?” I plead. “It was hurting you, Sloane…”
“You were supposed to come here.” Her voice is steady but her eyes are wet. “I didn’t answer because I’ve been too busy bawling my eyes out, hoping — desperately hoping — that somehow this wouldn’t reach you and impact you.”
“Sloane—”
“But it did reach you,” she sobs. “And when it did, you were supposed to ask me what I wanted, Rowan. I told you what my parents and others did to me last year, and you did the same thing. I don’t need someone to step in front of me, Rowan. I need someone to stand beside me.”
“Sloane—”
She swallows hard. “My parents did the same thing after Harrison. They handled everything. And the whole time I was sitting in my room and nobody came in and asked me if I was okay or what I wanted. They just handled it.”
She’s describing my night and my morning and she’s also describing last year — people moving fast in every direction except toward her, making every decision except the one that includes her voice.
“I was protecting you,” I say, and even as I say it I can hear how thin it sounds.
“And I was protecting you.” Her voice cracks but she pushes through it. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I could see what carrying everyone was already doing to you, and I knew if you found out, it would tear you and your team apart to fix it. And I was right.”
Her hand comes up from where she’s been gripping her own arm — she reaches toward me, fingers open, trembling — and her face twists as she fights the urge and forces her hand back, closing it into a fist against her stomach.
“I love you,” she says.
She’s never said it to my face. The word love arrives like the front edge of something else, and I can feel both things at once: the thing I’ve wanted to hear for weeks arriving in the same breath as the thing that’s taking it away.
“But it’s a lot, Rowan.” Her voice cracks on my name. “Every time I take the mask off, every time I let myself be the real me — the loud one, the messy one, the too-much one — somebody makes me pay for it. Harrison did. My parents did. Mason did.”
“I love that messy you, Sloane.”
“I know.” She wipes her face with her sleeve, rough, impatient. “But with mess comes cleanup, and I know what it costs you to always clean up after everyone. And I don’t want you to grind yourself down for me, Rowan, and I definitely need you to ask me first before you do.”
She looks like someone who’s been through something physical, not a conversation, and every instinct is screaming at me to step through that gap and put my arms around her, which is the exact thing she just told me is the problem.
I should say something, but every sentence I reach for sounds like another thing I’d be trying to fix. And for the first time ever, the machine in my head has nothing queued, just her telling me she loves me and that it isn’t enough.
Her hand moves toward me one last time — further than the others, close enough that I can almost feel the warmth of her palm before she pulls it back against her chest, because she’s been fighting this the entire time and she’s finally out of resistance.
“I’m going to close this door now,” she says.
And the door closes between us, soft.
I stand in the hallway, looking at it, and I don’t know what to do.