Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
Empty Net - When a team removes its goalie for an extra attacker.
Cole
Returning to my apartment felt strangely unreal, as if I were stepping not into home but into some echo of it—familiar walls, familiar air, but nothing sitting quite right beneath my skin.
Maybe we should move? This felt too much like my father could walk in, and it was sterile…
too sterile. The door clicked shut behind us, soft but definitive, sealing out the hallway noise: the distant TV from down the hall, the elevator groaning through its cables, the steady thump of footsteps overhead.
Usually that mix of sounds comforted me.
Tonight, they only made the silence between us feel sharper.
Phoenix hovered in the middle of the living room like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to sit or stand or breathe.
His hands were buried deep in his pockets, his shoulders curled inward, and the dragon beneath my ribs bristled immediately at the wrongness in his posture.
He looked like someone boxed in on all sides.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
He nodded too fast. “Yeah. Just tired.”
It wasn’t the lie that hit me—it was how easily he said it. He wasn’t a bad liar; he was simply terrified. I just didn't know why. My biggest fear that was he regretted me, us.
I moved toward the bedroom, and he followed, staying just far enough behind that I could feel the distance he was trying to create.
He’d kept that same few feet between us all day, close enough to watch but far enough to hide.
I pulled down garment bags and shirts from the closet.
Phoenix pulled out his own clothes and that settled me.
“You didn’t sleep last night,” I said gently.
“A bit.”
Another lie.
“You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“Not with me.”
He stilled. His hands flattened on the fabric. When he finally lifted his eyes, they looked bruised with exhaustion. “I’m just tired,” he said again. “You had a big day. I didn’t want to make it about me.”
“You can tell me anything.”
Something flickered across his face at that—wanting, fear, apology—but vanished before I could reach for it.
“Not this,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“Because…” He swallowed hard. “You deserve to be excited about the All-Stars. You deserve something good without me dragging you down.”
I touched his arm, every alarm I had blaring. “Phoenix—talk to me.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head, voice barely steady. “I can’t. Not now. Please.”
It felt wrong to drop my hand, but I did, a mixture of hurt and confusion. “Okay. When you’re ready.”
“After the tournament,” he murmured, and the way he said it twisted something deep in my chest.
We kept packing. I touched him deliberately, and he didn't pull away. For a heartbeat he leaned toward me, breath catching like he needed the contact, needed someone to pull him out of whatever hell he was drowning in. Then he stepped backwards, out of reach.
“We should finish packing,” he said, voice too even to be real.
So I let him have his space and kept on until everything was neatly sorted. He paused at the foot of the bed, looking at the garment bags as if they were something dangerous. Then he forced a small, tight smile.
“You should shower,” he said. “It’ll help.”
I met his gaze. “And you’ll still be here when I get out?”
His eyes met mine, full of something he didn’t say. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I’ll be here.”
I took him at his word.
In the shower, the water helped my muscles unwind, but nothing helped my mind.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw him flinch at shadows, saw his fingers tapping against his thigh whenever his phone vibrated, saw him trying so hard not to fall apart.
The dragon paced in my chest, restless and growing more agitated by the minute.
When I finally stepped back into the bedroom, dripping and toweling my hair, the quiet hit me hard. Too quiet. Wrong quiet.
“Phoenix?” I called.
Nothing.
My stomach clenched until I heard a cupboard close in the kitchen.
I exhaled, relieved. He was just getting tea, maybe.
I turned back to the bed to finish sorting clothes, and a belt snagged on the comforter pulling it a little.
Impatiently I yanked it up—and something slid out from under the pillowcase.
A plain white envelope.
The fuck? I picked it up, turning it over in my fingers. No name. No markings. Just heavy, thick paper that made my gut twist the second it touched my hand. “Phoenix?” I called again, louder this time.
I opened the envelope.
Cash flooded out—thick, stiff bills spilling across the bedspread like they’d been waiting there all along. I counted without meaning to, hands numb. A hundred.
Two.
Five.
Ten.
Five thousand dollars. The room wavered. It didn’t make sense. No, it made too much sense.
The ringing in my head drowned out everything else. The money spread across my bed looked like evidence. Like truth laid bare. Like betrayal given shape.
Footsteps approached softly, and Phoenix appeared in the doorway with two mugs of tea. His wet hair clung to his forehead, and for one fleeting moment he looked so eager to take care of me that it hurt.
Then he saw my face. Then he saw the bed. The mugs fell from his hands and shattered across the floor.
All color drained from him.
“Cole…” he whispered.
My fingers shook as I held up the mostly empty envelope. “What is this?”
He didn’t answer. He stared at the money like it was a venomous thing—something he’d prayed I’d never touch, never question.
And in that breathless, agonizing moment…I knew.
This was the secret that had been tearing him apart. The thing behind every flinch. Every half-truth. Every panicked look at his phone. Every lie dressed up as protection.
He still didn’t move. Not when the mugs shattered. Not when tea spread over the carpet. Not when the envelope sagged in my hand, spilling its ugly contents over the blankets.
He stood there barefoot and devastated.
My heartbeat thudded in my ears, slow and heavy, drowning everything.
“Cole,” he said again, softer this time, pleading. “Please—”
“What is this?” My voice didn’t even sound like mine. It was too thin. Too tight. Too sharp to belong to someone calm. He flinched as if I’d struck him.
“I—I can explain.”
“Then explain,” I said, and the cold in my own tone startled me. “Right now.”
He swallowed hard. His throat bobbed.
“I was—someone—someone paid me.”
Paid.
My stomach dropped.
“To do what?”
The question ripped out of me, claws bared.
I watched the moment Phoenix broke. Watched the fight drain from him. Watched the truth force its way through the cracks he’d tried so hard to keep sealed.
“To get close to you.”
And my world dropped away. The one I'd started to believe in. The one where I thought I had a future. It all vanished.
Phoenix kept talking, words tumbling out so fast and uneven that he had to grip the doorframe to steady himself. His whole body trembled with the effort of forcing the truth out.
“He found me,” he said, voice cracking. “I didn’t go looking.
I swear, Cole. He knew you were with the Dragons, knew your father controlled everything around you.
He said if I—if I got close, if I kept an eye on you—I’d get paid.
Enough to help Ricky’s family. Enough to get us out of that building. I never meant—”
“Stop.”
The word tore out of me sharper than I intended.
Phoenix froze immediately—not because he was finished or ready, but because the sound of my voice startled us both into stillness.
Something inside him must have cracked, because he looked at me like I’d broken him, when really the cracks around my heart were all mine.
I stared down at the bed, at the money scattered across my blanket like a stain.
The dragon inside me recoiled as if burned, wings flaring tight under my ribs, heat twisting up my throat in a sudden rush of betrayal so fierce it made my eyes sting.
"It was the day we fought. The day you came back.
That was the reason you came back. Not because you wanted to, because you were paid to. " I snarled the last two words.
He nodded, and almost detached, I caught the sheen of moisture in his eyes. Because he'd been caught. “You were spying on me,” I said, and the quietness of the words felt far more dangerous than if I’d shouted.
Phoenix stumbled forward a step, horrified. “No. No, not—not like that. Cole, please—”
“You took money to be near me.”
“Yes, but—”
“You took money,” I repeated, each word tasting metallic, “to be near me.”
His face crumpled. “I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know what kind of person you were. I was desperate. He threatened Ricky’s family, and I didn’t have a choice—”
“You always had a choice.”
The silence after that sentence didn’t just fall between us—it widened. Phoenix opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and in that empty second, something in me shifted. I stepped back. Just a single step, but it felt like the space between us opened like a chasm.
“You could’ve said no,” I said, each word a tremor. “You could’ve walked away. You could’ve told me the truth days ago. Hours ago. Even five minutes ago when I begged you to talk to me. But you didn’t.”
Phoenix’s voice was barely a breath. “I was scared.”
“So am I.” My voice shook, not with anger but with something far more dangerous—hurt. “Or I was. But clearly, you’re not scared of losing me, so—”
“That’s not fair,” he whispered, and the desperation in his voice should have undone me. It didn’t.
A sound clawed out of my chest, something like a laugh but warped and bitter. “Fair? Phoenix, you took money to get close to me. I almost understand it then, but not now. You let me believe you chose me. You let me—” Believe you loved me.
My voice broke, and that was somehow worse than shouting. Worse than rage. It was a sound that made Phoenix step forward, reaching for me instinctively—like he could fix it if he could just touch me.
“Cole—”
“Don’t touch me.”
He stopped so abruptly he almost stumbled, hand suspended midair. The command wasn’t loud, but it hit him like a blow. I saw it in the way his whole body recoiled.
His eyes filled instantly. “I didn’t know what would happen,” he whispered, words shaking apart. “I didn’t know I’d care about you. I didn’t know you’d—”
“Don’t,” I cut in sharply. “Don’t make this about your feelings now.”
He folded in on himself, shoulders rounding, breath trembling, like he was trying to make himself small enough that my anger wouldn’t find him.
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said, the plea thin and breaking. “Not like this.”
“And yet you did.”
He flinched. Actually flinched—as if I’d struck him physically.
I took another slow step back. The envelope still hung from my fingers, heavy in a way that made it hard to breathe.
“This whole time,” I said softly, “you let me think you wanted me. And all along, you were doing…what? Reporting on me? Feeding information to a stranger about my life? About my dragon? About the things I was terrified to tell anyone?”
Phoenix shook his head violently, eyes wide. “No. God, no. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t about your dragon—I swear he didn’t know. He just—he just wanted—”
“What?” I snapped. “What did he want?”
Phoenix’s silence said everything.
I inhaled slowly, the breath catching and splintering inside me. “I can’t do this.”
His face twisted with panic. “Cole, please—don’t—”
“I need air.”
“Please don’t walk away,” he begged, stepping toward me like he couldn’t stand still.
“Don’t walk away—not like this—” Snarling again, I stuffed the cash into the envelope and slammed it hard into Phoenix's chest. I had my garment bags in hand a second later, and I picked up my suitcase. Phoenix’s breath hitched so sharply he had to grab the doorframe again.
“No,” he whispered. “Don’t go. Not like this. Please—”
I turned to him, finally meeting his eyes fully.
He looked destroyed. Completely undone. Tears running down his face, chest heaving, every inch of him begging without words.
For a heartbeat, the weight of that desperation pulled at me. I almost caved.
But then my gaze dropped to the envelope he was still clutching, to the money that started all of this, and whatever softness remained in me closed off like a slammed door.
“You need to leave,” I said.
His knees wavered. “Cole—”
“You can’t stay here tonight. Not after this.”
“I don’t have…” He choked on the rest, but then he nodded.
I stared at him, at who I thought he was and who he had been all along. The ache in my chest hollowed out, leaving nothing protective behind—nothing but emptiness.
“Be gone today. I'll instruct the doorman to remove your access to this building,” I said quietly.
“Please,” Phoenix begged, his voice tearing at the edges. “Don’t send me away. Not now. Not when—”
“When I finally know the truth?” I asked. “When I finally see what’s been right in front of me this whole time? When I thought I was—”
Loved?
Safe?
Home?
The words tangled painfully in my throat. When I finally spoke, it came out soft and devastating. “When I realize I was used?”
Phoenix made a sound that didn’t seem possible—a stifled, broken sob that sounded like the ground giving way beneath him.
“I’m not that person anymore,” he whispered. “Cole, please—I love you—”
The words almost knocked the breath out of me. I blinked once. Slowly. “Make sure you leave today,” I said again—quiet, steady, final. Because I could not survive hearing that he loved me while he was still holding the ashes of a lie between us.
Phoenix pressed a shaking hand over his mouth, tears spilling so fast he couldn’t wipe them away. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He backed up, step by trembling step, as if turning away from me would make something inside him break completely.
Then he fled.
The front door closed behind him with terrible gentleness.
I stood alone in the wreckage of the room—the wreckage of my life. The dragon inside me curled tight, shuddering. I could barely breathe, and I stood a moment in the wreckage of my life, then walked out without looking back.
I didn’t know where Phoenix had gone. I didn’t care. All I knew was that morning would bring an All-Star tournament…
…and I would walk into it carrying a heart that no longer felt like it belonged to me.