Chapter 33
HAILEY
Lively didn’t say anything for a while, and I realized I might have overstepped my bounds. I immediately wanted to pull out my own tongue and roast it over a spit. Damn it. I shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, why did I even want to know that?
“Um…I’m sorry if I overstepped,” I started to say, “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.” After all, we weren’t really buddy-buddy like that—
“No, it’s okay, I…” Lively’s words came out rushed, like he couldn’t stand me even finishing my sentence. “I want to tell you. I’m just…thinking about where to start.”
The atmosphere around us seemed to have changed. It was heavier now, much more sombre.
My breath caught in my throat as I waited for him to gather his thoughts, suddenly hyper-aware of how his hands felt against my thighs, how his back expanded with each breath. The forest had grown quieter, as if nature itself was waiting to hear what he had to say.
Finally, Lively spoke, his voice different than I'd ever heard it before—lower, stripped of its usual playful edge.
"You ever feel like your whole life was mapped out before you were even born?"
The question hung in the cooling air. I rested my chin on his shoulder, an unconscious gesture of comfort that surprised us both, no doubt.
I could tell it surprised him because of the way his shoulders immediately tensed up, and I could tell it surprised me because of the way I wanted to… go die. No, really.
“Sometimes,” I admitted softly, pushing the thoughts aside to focus on our conversation instead. He deserved that much.
“Yeah,” he murmured, his voice coming out near subvocal, and soft as air. “That's what that hospital feels like to me. A script, written by my parents, that I can't escape. ”
I blinked, confusion spreading mosslike patches across my mind. But I didn't interrupt him. I could already tell that this was hard enough for him to reveal, so I didn't want to take away the courage he'd now seemed to have gathered.
“And no matter how much I run,” he continued, his voice sounding far away, like he was shaking out the words from inside the depths of his mind, excavating them from places he rarely visited, “I just can't seem to outrun those halls. I hate that fucking place.”
The venom in his voice shocked me to my core, like a sudden plunge into ice water.
This wasn't just dislike or even strong aversion—this was bone-deep hatred that vibrated through his entire body, a visceral loathing that seemed to darken the very air around us.
I could feel it in the sudden tension of his shoulders, the way his fingers tightened around my thighs as he spoke, the slight hitch in his usually smooth stride.
The moonlight caught the sharp angles of his profile, highlighting the rigid set of his jaw, and for a moment, I saw this darker side of Lively with perfect clarity—a deeper understanding of the shadows I'd caught fragments of before, now illuminated in devastating detail.
And it made my heart pound. Because, even with that darkness, this was the same Lively Summers who visited my sister regularly with candy and that stupid sunshine smile plastered across his face. Or, at least, it was supposed to be.
“But you volunteer there,” I said, confusion plain in my voice, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “You visit my sister all the time. You—”
“I know,” he cut me off, shifting me slightly on his back as he navigated around a fallen log, its rotting trunk silvered by moonlight. His voice was tight, controlled. “That's the thing, right? It's fucking weird, right?”
I thought about how he'd avoided answering my question about going to the hospital for his injury after my prank.
How his entire demeanor had changed, shuttered like windows before a storm.
It had been subtle, but remembering it now…
it made a twisted kind of sense, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.
Lively sighed. “I mean...I saw an angel there, one day, and she kept me going back, just hoping I'd see her again.”
The tenderness in his voice was so unexpected, so raw and sincere that it pulled at something inside me, loosening knots I hadn't even known were there. He was talking about Mallory, I knew that much. And I still wasn’t used to hearing the raw affection in his voice when he talked about my sister.
It was so genuine, so unguarded—it was clear that his friendship with her meant a lot to him.
“So, you do it for Mallory,” I said softly, and Lively was quiet for a questionable second before nodding, his head silhouetted against the star-speckled sky as we crested a small rise in the trail.
“Yeah. I guess I didn't realize it then, but she looked a lot like the angel I saw.” He finally said, and I just scoffed, the sound sharp in the hushed forest.
That's because she's probably the one you saw , I thought, but kept it to myself, letting the words die on my tongue. It wouldn’t make a difference to say it out loud, anyway.
“So, if Mallory isn't in the hospital, you wouldn't be volunteering, either?” I asked, my curiosity still not satisfied.
Lively exhaled audibly, and scoffed out a laugh, “I'm not that much of an asshole, you know. I really like the kids at the Pediatric wing, though. Even if she isn't there, I'd keep going back there.” He said. “The children are the one bright spot in that place.”
“But…” I didn’t know whether I could keep pushing the conversation, but he’d successfully roused my curiosity. I wanted to know…more. “If you hate hospitals and Medicine that much…why study AT?”
Lively chuckled, but the sound was hollow. “Because my parents gave me an ultimatum.” He said, and I blinked. “Study a premed course alongside hockey so I could drop the sport when I ‘grew tired’ of it.”
Wow. “So…they really don’t like you playing hockey, huh?”
Lively’s head tilted to the side. “Hm, it’s more of the fact that they didn’t choose hockey for me that pisses them off more.
” He said, and the cheery nature of his tone made him feel even more…
pitiable. “My parents are…weird. They don’t really care about me…
not like normal parents would. I grew up alone, with nannies and drivers acting as my substitute parents…
while my real parents didn’t really care to know what the fuck I got up to.
They gave me everything else I asked for but their attention. ”
There was a moment of silence between us as I digested everything he'd said. I could feel the gentle rhythm of his steps, the solid warmth of his body against mine. It was strangely comforting, being carried like this, and I tried my best not to think about it.
Then, he cleared his throat and asked, “What about you?”
I froze, my entire body going rigid against his back.
“What about me?” I threw the question back at him, unease crawling up my spine like a cold, wet spider, leaving a trail of dread in its wake.
I could already anticipate what the question he was really asking, and I didn’t know if I had it in me to answer it.
“Why do you play hockey?” he asked, his voice cutting through my rising anxiety. The question hung between us, innocuous on the surface but weighted with implication.
I blinked, momentarily thrown off balance, my grip on his shoulders tightening unconsciously.
It wasn't what I'd expected him to ask, but it was still a deeply personal question—one that required more vulnerability than I was comfortable showing.
It was like he was asking me to peel back my skin and show him the raw, beating heart beneath.
I didn’t know if I could do that right now. Yeah, I knew I was being unfair, after everything he’d just shared…but I…just couldn’t do it.
“I still have a lot of questions to ask you, though.” I said, the words coming out in a rush, and I heard Lively’s breath catch.
“You do?” There was an excitement in his tone that I didn’t understand, renewed fervor in the way his fingers clenched around the back of my thighs. Even the tips of his ears were a fresh bloom of red, but I figured that was probably just the cold getting to him.
“Yeah.” I said, arms clenching around his neck for a brief moment.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day when Hailey Baleman would want to know stuff about me.” He said, and there was a smile in his voice. “Is this what Heaven is like?”
My cheeks went hot, but my lips turned down at the edges. “Don’t make it weird, fuckface.” I grumbled, and he chuckled. “And don’t fucking laugh, either.”
“So…what do you wanna ask me?”
“Was it really the bench players on the team who destroyed the rink we shared last year?” I asked, the words coming out fast, like bullets.
Lively’s steps slowed. “Ah.” He said, his tone becoming a tad bit subdued now. “That.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That. My teammates are saying that you kicked the guys off the team before your coach even got to them.”
His shoulders had gone rigid underneath my hands. What, did he really hate this topic that much? Was he going to get out of answering it? He was quiet for a moment longer, and I could feel the tension rising in his body again, like he was bracing for a blow that hadn’t yet landed.
“They were trouble from the start,” he said at last. “Those guys. They gave me hell from the moment I was named Captain. Thought I was just a ‘nepo pick’ because the coach liked me. Didn’t matter that I’d earned it on the ice. They still looked up to the old Captain and…they didn’t like change.”
He said the word like it was toxic. Like it burned his mouth to speak it.
“I kept warning them. Over and over again,” he went on. “Told them to knock it off with the pranks. Especially the ones they pulled on you girls. They just kept brushing it off—laughing like I was their babysitter, not their Captain. Like I was nothing.”
His jaw clenched, and I could feel the shame bleeding through his words, each one weighted with guilt and the residue of something worse. Regret.
“When I found out what they did that night,” he said, and now his voice dropped, dark and low and tight, “I saw red. Dylan had to drag me off one of them. If he hadn’t stopped me…I would’ve been suspended for assault.”
My eyes widened at that, heart skipping. I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to be shocked or impressed or…something in between. Picturing this cocky jerk throwing hands to the point of near suspension certainly hadn’t been on my freaking bingo card for the year.
I tried to let that settle for a beat, but the next question slipped out before I could stop it. “Then why did you ignore me for days after?” I asked. “If you didn’t know what they were going to do, or didn’t okay it…why did you disappear?”
The silence that followed was uncomfortable, stretching thin between us.
Then—“Because I couldn’t face you,” he said quietly. So quietly, I almost missed it.
My pulse jumped, neck tightening in tandem. I swallowed, suddenly dry-mouthed. “What?”
“I know how hard you and your team worked to prep for that game,” he said, voice thick now, the edges rough and self-loathing. “It was my fault. I was the fucking Captain. I should’ve been there to stop that shit.”
My heart was doing this annoying thing now—quicker, heavier. Like I couldn’t quite catch my breath, even though nothing had changed. Same moonlight. Same trees. Same boy carrying me like it was nothing.
“What,” I said, trying for lightness, “no one else can bully me but you?”
He didn’t laugh. Not even a breath of amusement.
“Bully you?” he asked, confused.
I snorted. “Please. As if you don’t know what you did.”
He stopped walking altogether. “Yeah. I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on ,” I groaned, brows furrowing. “Typical jerk behavior. You do remember how much of a jerk you were to me in freshman year, right?”
He made a noise—something between a cough and a choke—but I barreled on.
“You told me to smile the first time we met, you asshole. Like, what are you, a sleazy old creep? And I know you were the one who made all the guys in our year avoid me like the plague.”
There was a sharp breath from him. Caught. Hooked.
Ah. There it was.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I accused, voice rising. “What did you tell them? Why did you do that?”
He went very still. This silence wasn’t the kind asking for space. It was pure avoidance.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said finally.
My scoff was instantaneous. “What? You went around spreading rumors about me, and you can’t tell me why you did that?”
Lively let out a shaky breath, like the very air was betraying him. “Yeah. Can’t we just…agree it was because I was a fucking jerk in freshman year? I wouldn’t deny that I was, to be fair.”
I gawked at him. Genuinely floored. He was actively trying to get me to cling to the idea that he was just a dick for sport? I mean, not that he had to convince me in that regard but, wasn’t that the opposite of what he wanted me to think about him? Was it not?
“So what, you did it for fun ?” I snapped. “You asshole.”