26. Old Wounds #2
Her hand covers mine on the armrest. “Don’t spiral. Game’s almost over. Then we go home, rest up for Sunday, and forget Drew Markham exists.”
I nod. Force my breathing to steady. Watch the final four minutes play out with Silver Pine scoring twice to win 4-3, and try to convince myself that what I saw was posturing.
Just posturing.
The arena empties slowly. Students celebrate the win. Families gather in waiting. The general chaos of a Friday night crowd reluctantly returning to reality.
I tell Sloane I need to use the bathroom. She gives me a look that says I know you’re lying and I’m allowing it because I love you, then tells me she’ll be outside with some of the other girls from the team.
I move against the current of the crowd, cutting through a side corridor, the one that connects the concourse to the lower level near the tunnel entrance. It gives me a sightline to the bench area where Luke will be finishing his post-game analytics wrap.
I shouldn’t be down here. A women’s hockey player lingering near the men’s facilities after a game is the kind of thing that generates questions, even innocent ones. But I need to see him. Need to read his face. Need to know if what I saw from section 102 was as bad as I think it was.
I reach the corridor junction and freeze.
Because Luke isn’t alone.
Drew is standing four feet from him. Still in partial gear, hair damp with sweat, knuckles still raw from the fight. He looks like he came here straight from the penalty box, which means he sought Luke out before he even showered .
That’s not posturing. That’s intent.
They’re talking. Or rather, Drew is talking and Luke is listening with the absolute stillness I’ve only seen him use when he’s processing something that requires all available cognitive resources.
The kind of stillness that, on the ice, precedes a tactical adjustment.
Off the ice, precedes a decision he won’t be able to take back.
I’m thirty feet away. Close enough to see their faces. Too far to hear words.
Drew leans in, mouth moving, and Luke’s entire body changes.
Not dramatically. Someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t notice. But I know him the way I know my own skating stride, and what I see is a man who just took a hit he didn’t see coming.
His shoulders tighten. Jaw locks. Not the frustrated clench I count during practice, but something deeper. Something that looks like the molecular composition of his composure being reorganized against his will.
Drew straightens. Smiles. The same charming, easy, designed-to-make-you-forget-the-knife-behind-it one that I remember. Then he turns and walks back toward the visitors’ corridor.
Unhurried. Satisfied .
Like whatever he just said was a chess move, not a conversation.
Luke stands there for three full seconds after Drew disappears. Then his hand comes up and rubs the back of his neck. Rattled. He’s rattled.
And I make the decision to do something spectacularly, catastrophically stupid.
I go find Drew.
I reach him before he reaches the visitors’ locker room. And when his gaze meets mine, it’s not filled with surprise.
It’s satisfaction.
Like he ordered a drink and I just walked up and served it.
“Em.” The nickname lands wrong in his mouth. Too familiar. Too owned. A word that belongs to Luke now, to late-night phone calls and early-morning texts and the way he whispers it against my skin when we’re alone. Hearing Drew say it feels like a trespass. “Was wondering if I’d see you.”
“Nice game.” I keep my voice level. Feet planted. The stance that suggests nothing can knock me off my axis. “Very... physical.”
“Fletcher started it.”
“I was watching. He didn’t.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. He shifts his weight in a motion deliberately casual, designed to communicate that this encounter means nothing to him. That I mean nothing to him.
I’ve seen this performance before. Watched him rehearse it in his apartment when he was getting ready to face someone he needed to dominate. The body language of a man projecting indifference while calculating every angle.
“So what brings the future Olympian to the boys’ locker room?” He leans against the wall. Arms crossed. “Nostalgia?”
“We need to talk about the texts.”
“What texts?”
“Don’t.” I take one step closer. Not aggressive. Just deliberate. “The ones you’ve been sending for months. The congratulations with subtext. The comment about ‘connections.’ You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He studies me for a long beat. I let him. Because I’m not the girl who left BC anymore. Not the one who avoided confrontation, who let him fill in the blanks, who ran instead of standing her ground.
“I sent you a congratulations text, Emma. People do that when someone they used to date achieves something. It’s called being polite.”
“It’s called being passive-aggressive. The ‘right connections’ comment? That wasn’t congratulations. That was you implying I didn’t earn this on my own.”
“Did I imply that?” His expression is perfectly calibrated. Innocent but knowing. “I think you might be reading into things.”
“And I think you don’t get to have opinions about my career anymore. You don’t get to speculate about how I got here. You don’t get to send me messages that are designed to make me feel like everything I’ve accomplished is somehow contingent on someone else.”
He uncrosses his arms. Slowly.
“You sound good, Em. Confident. Silver Pine’s been good for you.” A pause that lasts exactly long enough for me to wonder what’s coming next. “The coaching staff must be... really something. ”
The emphasis on coaching is surgical. A scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The kind of precision that reminds me why Drew Markham scared me at BC. Not because he was loud or aggressive, but because he was quiet and smart and could dismantle you with implication alone.
I don’t flinch. “The coaching staff is exceptional. The entire program is. Luke built something special from nothing, and the team—all twenty-three of us—executed it.”
Luke. I said Luke. First name. Not Coach Anderson. Not “our head coach.”
Luke.
And I watch Drew register it. The slight widening of his eyes. The almost imperceptible shift in his stance. The data point being filed away alongside whatever else he’s been collecting.
Shit .
“Luke,” Drew repeats. Casual. Testing the name in his mouth like a wine he’s evaluating. “Grayson’s friend from college. The one who used to come to holidays at your mom’s place.”
“He’s my brother’s best friend. Has been for years. That’s not exactly classified information.”
“No, it’s not.” Drew pushes off the wall. Takes a half-step closer, and I hold my ground because backing up would tell him more than staying still. “I remember him, actually. From the photos at your mom’s. Your brother’s college championship. Anderson was number...”
He pauses. Lets the silence do the work.
“Nineteen, right?”
My blood goes cold.
Not because he said it. I knew he knew. Have known since Liz whispered it in the handshake line. But hearing it in this corridor, after whatever he said to Luke, with the championship game two days away and the Olympic invitation on the line? It changes the temperature of the information entirely.
He’s not guessing anymore. He’s confirming.
“Drew.” My voice is steady. I’m proud of that. “Whatever story you’ve constructed about my life, my choices, my reasons for anything—it doesn’t matter. I’m not at BC anymore. You’re not my boyfriend. We don’t owe each other explanations.”
“No, we don’t.” He agrees too easily. “You’re right. I’m sure there’s a perfectly normal explanation for everything. The transfer. The tattoo. The way your career took off the second Anderson started coaching you.” He lifts a shoulder. “I’m just saying, it’s quite the coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence. It’s hard work.”
“I believe you.” He smiles. The one that used to make me feel like I’d won something. Now it makes me feel like I’m standing on a trapdoor.
I should walk away. Every cell in my body is screaming to end this, to take whatever I’ve given him and leave before I give him more. But there’s something I need to say. Something that’s been sitting in my chest since Easter when he looked at a photograph and decided he understood me.
“The reason I left BC wasn’t about you, Drew. It wasn’t about Liz, or the team, or anything you think you figured out. I left because I needed to be somewhere that made me better. As a player. As a person. I found that at Silver Pine.” I meet his eyes. “That’s the whole story.”
“Sure.” He nods. Agreeable.
Then, as he steps past me toward the exit, his shoulder almost brushing mine in the narrow corridor, he says it.
Tossed off. Afterthought. Light as air and heavy as a grenade.
“Take care of yourself, Em. And hey—that ink on your hip?” He glances back. Just his eyes, his body already moving away. “Suits you. Always thought it was your best-kept secret.”
He rounds the corner. Gone.
I stand in the corridor with the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead and the distant sound of the arena’s circulatory system doing its post-game wind-down and realize, with a clarity that arrives like a puck to the chest, what I’ve done.
I came here to close a door.
Instead, I showed Drew that there’s still something behind it worth protecting.
My composure, my controlled demeanor, my refusal to react to the number—all of it told him what my words didn’t.
That the tattoo still matters. That the name I used for Luke was too familiar.
That whatever I’m hiding is worth hiding carefully.
I didn’t give him a confession.
I gave him something worse.
Confirmation.