28. Detonation
Chapter twenty-eight
Detonation
Luke
Right now, he's not the NHL multimillion-dollar center or the face of the Grizzlies franchise. That Grayson would be resting, hydrating, doing whatever his sports science team has prescribed for a man about to play a rival in seven hours.
This Grayson is whisking eggs and cinnamon in a ceramic bowl his mother gave him. He's the guy who's been feeding the people he loves since he was ten years old and his father walked out and someone had to make sure Emma ate breakfast before school.
He doesn’t talk about that. I only know because Emma told me during one of those 2 AM calls, back when she was seventeen and I was twenty and the sound of her voice was the only thing keeping me tethered to a world that felt like it was crumbling at the edges.
I’m standing at his kitchen counter slicing strawberries.
The knife work gives my hands something to do besides tremble, which they’ve been doing since I woke up this morning with Emma wrapped around me and the knowledge that in approximately forty-eight hours, I’ll be making the most important phone call of her career.
Walsh. Monday. The Olympic invitation that’s been the finish line I’ve been sprinting toward while simultaneously trying not to set everything around me on fire.
“All I’m saying,” Zane Morgan announces from where he’s sprawled across Grayson’s kitchen stool like he owns it, “is that your power play has been predictable since November. LA’s film team cracked it in two sessions.”
“Our power play is converting at twenty-six percent,” Grayson counters without looking up from the stove. “Your penalty kill is ranked nineteenth.”
“Twelfth,” Zane corrects. “We’ve been climbing.”
“Climbing from the basement still puts you in the lobby. You need to have Sienna get you traded to New York. Come back. Actually get past the first round of play-offs.”
“We're not in the basement. Luke, back me up here.” Zane turns to me with the easy confidence of a man who’s been named to two All-Star teams and gets photographed leaving clubs regularly with Victoria’s Secret models.
LA’s golden boy. The playboy veneer wrapped around an actual hockey genius.
“New York's weak-side entry is exploitable, right?”
“I’m not getting in the middle of this.” I arrange the strawberries on a plate. “I have a championship game tomorrow and zero interest in making enemies of either of you.”
“Coward,” Zane says.
“Strategist,” I correct.
“Same thing, with you.” Zane grins, and the comfortability of being here, with two guys who have been brothers since college, who survived late-night practices and bad pizza and one very ill-advised spring break trip to Cancun, settles warm in my chest.
Right next to the guilt. Where it’s been living rent-free for months.
From the living room, I can hear Emma and Sienna talking.
Fragments drift in. Something about contract structures and representation timelines, the business architecture of a professional hockey career that’s about to launch.
Sienna’s in her element, walking Emma through the landscape with the kind of expertise that makes you understand why she’s one of the best sports agents in the state despite only taking on four actual clients. Two of whom are in the room with me.
Emma laughs at something. The sound travels through the open-plan kitchen like a homing signal, and I have to actively redirect my hands back to the strawberries before my body does something stupid.
Like go to her. Like wrap my arms around her in front of her brother and our friend and the woman who’s been quietly noticing every stolen glance since she started Grayson four years ago.
Grayson flips the toast. “Breakfast in five. Someone tell the women to stop planning world domination long enough to eat.”
The table seats six. Grayson’s at the head because it’s his house and his food and the man can’t help being a patriarch even at twenty-five. Sienna is to his right with a coffee that’s mostly cream. Zane’s beside her, already reaching for seconds before his plate is full. And Emma… is beside me .
The morning unfolds with easy banter, overlapping conversations, and the chaotic warmth of people who’ve chosen each other. Zane chirps Grayson about LA’s odds tonight. Sienna interjects with a stat that silences them both. Emma steals a strawberry off my plate when she thinks no one’s looking.
Everyone’s looking. Nobody says anything.
This is the last good morning. Not that I know that yet. But some part of me, the part that’s been bracing for impact since Drew looked me in the eye and said nineteen’s a hell of a number, can feel the barometric pressure dropping.
Storm’s coming.
Sienna’s fork stops halfway to her mouth.
It’s such a small thing. A micro-interruption that most people wouldn’t register. But I’ve spent six months coaching women who communicate in millisecond-level body language shifts, and Sienna Brooks setting down her fork mid-bite is the equivalent of a fire alarm in a library.
Her phone is in her left hand. Screen angled toward her body, away from Grayson. Her thumb scrolls once. Twice. Stops.
The warmth drains from her face like someone pulled a plug.
“Sie?” Grayson notices. Of course he does. He’s spent four years learning the vocabulary of this woman’s face, and whatever he’s reading right now has him setting his own coffee down. “Babe, what’s wrong?”
“Give me a second.” Her voice is controlled. The voice she uses when something’s gone wrong with a client and she needs thirty seconds to assess the damage before anyone panics .
Then Emma’s phone erupts.
Not a single notification. A barrage. The overlapping vibration of group chats detonating in sequence, of people texting all at once.
Emma pulls her phone from her pocket and the color leaves her cheeks.
Then mine goes off.
CALLOWAY, E. — SILVER PINE ATHLETICS
I reject the call. My hand is steady. The rest of me is not.
This is it . The storm.
“Sienna.” Grayson’s voice has shifted. No longer casual. No longer the guy making French toast for his family. This is the captain’s voice. The one that commands locker rooms. “What is it?”
Sienna looks at me.
Not at Grayson. Not at Emma. At me .
“There’s a post circulating,” Sienna begins. “About Luke and Emma. It’s gaining traction.”
A thousand rocks land with a thud in the pit of my stomach.
Grayson’s hand extends. “Show me.”
Sienna hesitates for one breath. Then she turns her phone toward him.
I don’t need to see the screen. I already know what’s on it.
Some version of the truth, twisted just enough to be deniable and specific enough to be damning.
Probably Drew. Probably something about the tattoo.
About how I spend Christmas Eve at the Cole residence or drive Emma to Grayson’s games.
Details that individually mean nothing and collectively paint a picture that’s impossible to unsee.
I know because I’ve been imagining this exact moment since September. Lying awake at 3 AM running scenarios. How it would surface. What it would look like. Who would see it first.
In none of my scenarios was it this quiet.
Grayson reads. His expression doesn’t change immediately. That’s the thing about him. People assume he’s impulsive because he’s expressive. But when something actually matters, Grayson processes before he reacts.
He's processing.
And just like Sienna, when he looks up, he doesn’t look at Emma.
He looks at me.
“What is this?”
Three words. Not loud. Not angry. Flat. The emotional equivalent of a blank page, waiting to be written on by whatever comes next .
Waiting for me to write it.
“Gray—” Emma starts, finally looking up from her own phone with an expression of devastation that let's me know it's bad. Really bad.
“I’m asking Luke.” His eyes don’t leave mine. “Is this bullshit? Some troll making things up? Because that’s what I’m hoping it is. That’s what I’m giving you the chance to tell me right now.”
The chance. He’s giving me a chance. To say it’s ridiculous, it’s speculation, it’s someone stirring up drama before our championship game.
He’d believe me. That’s the devastating part.
Despite whatever’s on that screen, Grayson would take my word over some post, because that’s how much he trusts me.
Trusted me.
I open my mouth. The lie is right there. Loaded and ready. One sentence and this morning continues. French toast gets finished. Zane chirps about tonight’s game. Emma and Sienna go back to discussing agent stuff. The walls stay standing.
But I look at the man who took me in when my own family wouldn’t, who made me part of his family, who trusted me with the person he loves most in this world… and I can’t do it.
I can’t lie to him one more time.
“It’s not bullshit.”
The words fall out of me like stones dropped into still water. I feel the ripple before it reaches the edges. Feel the table shift. Feel Zane go completely still in my peripheral vision. Feel Emma’s sharp intake of breath.
Feel Grayson’s face rearrange itself around the confirmation like a building absorbing a hit to its foundation. Not collapsing. Not yet. Just…settling into a new alignment that accommodates damage.
“There’s a mention of a tattoo,” Grayson starts slowly. “On Emma’s hip. Roman numerals. Nineteen.” He pauses. “Your number.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew about it.” He’s past questions. He’s into confirmations. “You’ve seen it.”
The implication lands on the table between us like a grenade with the pin pulled. If I’ve seen the tattoo on his sister’s hip, then I’ve seen his sister’s hip, and there’s really only one context in which that happens between two people who aren’t medical professionals.
“Yes.”
Grayson nods. “How long? ”