Chapter 52 Lexi
Lexi
The arena is packed wall-to-wall with bodies—students in school colors, alumni with too much school spirit, families with kids eating overpriced nachos.
The energy is buzzing through the crowd.
Every seat is filled, standing room only at the back, and the noise level is already deafening even though the game hasn’t started.
I’m wearing Koa’s hoodie—the one that smells like him, like ice and sweat and that cedar body wash he uses.
It’s too big on me, sleeves hanging past my hands, and I’ve pulled the hood up to hide in plain sight.
Nobody knows who I am. Nobody knows what these boys mean to me or what we’ve survived together.
I’m just another face in the crowd.
Except I can feel the weight of what’s about to happen settling in my chest like a stone.
I feel bad for not reaching out to Thea.
She’s given up on texting me. I know she’ll understand when I come around.
I’d rather be here alone than to be with her right now, and that’s how I know I’m no longer the person that I was before.
But the guilt is eating at me when I see all the female relationships around me.
I shouldn’t have shut down and pushed her away.
I hope she knows I love her no matter how weird I’m being.
The teams skate out for warm-ups and the crowd erupts. Pointe University in their home jerseys—deep blue with silver accents. Blackridge in red and black, looking sharp and dangerous under the bright arena lights.
I spot Koa immediately. Number 19. He’s easy to find even among twenty other players because I know the way he moves—that controlled aggression, the economy of motion that makes every stride purposeful.
His helmet hides most of his face, but I can see the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders.
He’s already in game mode. Already hunting.
Then I see them. Numbers 7 and 12. Revan and Atticus.
Revan moves like a general surveying a battlefield—smooth, calculated, reading the ice even during warm-ups. Atticus is all power and speed, taking practice shots that make the goalie work even though it doesn’t count yet.
They look good. Like they’ve been playing on the same line for years, which they have. Like they can read each other’s minds.
And watching all three of them on the ice at the same time does something to my pulse that has nothing to do with the cold air pumping through the arena vents.
The warm-up ends. Teams retreat to their benches. The announcer’s voice booms through the speakers, introducing starting lineups, and the crowd’s energy ratchets up another level.
I stare at the guys getting into position, wondering what’s running through their heads. I can’t believe they’re all on the ice right now.
Then the puck drops.
And immediately, I know this isn’t going to be a normal game.
Koa wins the face-off, sending the puck back to his defense, but Revan is already on him. Not going for the puck—going for Koa. He slams into him with a check that echoes through the arena, and Koa barely keeps his feet.
The whistle doesn’t blow. It was clean, if aggressive.
Koa doesn’t care—I can see it from here—and the next shift he returns the favor. Catches Revan along the boards and drives him into the glass hard enough that I hear the impact over the crowd noise.
“Jesus,” the woman above me mutters. “They’re trying to kill each other.”
She’s not wrong.
Play develops but I can barely follow the puck because I’m watching them. Watching the way they target each other every shift, the way this stopped being about hockey the moment they stepped on the ice together.
Atticus joins in on the next play, cutting Koa off at center ice with a check that sends him sprawling. Koa’s back up immediately, skating hard, and the next time they’re on the ice together he absolutely destroys Atticus with a hit that makes the crowd gasp.
Atticus goes down hard, sliding into the boards. For a second he doesn’t move and my heart stops.
Then he’s up, shaking it off, but there’s blood on his lip.
That’s when Revan retaliates.
He waits until Koa doesn’t have the puck, until he’s vulnerable following through on a shot, and then levels him with a check that’s borderline late. Koa goes down and this time he’s slower to get up.
The ref’s whistle blows. Two minutes for roughing.
Revan doesn’t care. Just skates to the box with his head high while Koa glares at him from the ice.
The game continues but it’s barely hockey anymore. It’s warfare in skates, each shift escalating, the refs losing control. Both teams are feeding off the energy, hits getting harder, play getting chippier.
And I’m sitting in the stands with my pulse racing, hands clenched in the hoodie pockets, and I realize with disturbing clarity that I’m not afraid of what they’re doing to each other.
I’m turned on. This is hot. I’m aroused.
Watching them fight over me makes something dark and primal wake up in my chest. The same thing that pulled the trigger in that warehouse. The same thing that walked away from my father’s body without looking back.
Power.
The game intensifies. Koa scores first—a beautiful shot top shelf that the goalie never sees. He doesn’t celebrate, just skates past the Blackridge bench and stares at Revan through the glass.
Revan answers five minutes later with a goal of his own, assisted by Atticus. When he scores he searches the stands, not finding me.
The second period is even more vicious. Gloves come off twice—not Koa, Revan, or Atticus, but their teammates feeding off the intensity. The refs are calling penalties left and right, but it doesn’t matter. The game has taken on a life of its own.
Then third period, ten minutes left, tied game. Koa has the puck along the boards. Atticus comes in for the check, but Koa sees him, braces for impact. They collide with enough force that I feel it in my chest.
But Koa doesn’t go down. Instead he drops his gloves.
Atticus’s gloves hit the ice a second later.
The crowd goes insane as they start throwing punches, and suddenly it’s not hockey anymore—it’s just two men beating the shit out of each other on ice while refs try to intervene.
Atticus is huge, but Koa has a darkness that comes out in this moment.
It doesn’t matter that Atticus is bigger and stronger, Koa is unstoppable. Punch after punch after punch.
Revan skates over, and for a second I think he’s going to help Atticus. Instead he drops his gloves too and goes after Koa from the other side.
It’s three players fighting in the corner, teammates trying to pull them apart, and the whole arena is on its feet screaming.
I’m standing too, hood fallen back, watching blood hit the white ice in dark drops.
The refs finally separate them, sending all three to the locker rooms early. Game misconduct. Ejected.
The crowd is still buzzing as the game resumes, but I’m already moving.
Pushing through people, muttering apologies, heading for the exit.
My heart is hammering, and my skin feels too tight, and I need to see them.
I need to know they’re okay. I need to figure out what the fuck we’re doing to each other.
I make it down to the tunnel that leads to the locker rooms just as the final buzzer sounds. Blackridge won, 4-3. The crowd erupts but it sounds distant, muffled.
The door to the visiting team locker room opens and Koa emerges first. His jersey is torn, blood on his face from a cut above his eye, knuckles split open. But he’s grinning—actually grinning—high on adrenaline and violence.
His eyes find me immediately.
He crosses the distance in three strides and grabs me, one hand tangling in my hair, the other on my waist. He kisses me rough, tasting like copper and fury, and I kiss him back just as hard because I need this as much as he does.
Then someone shoves him.
Atticus. Also bloody, also wrecked, also burning with that same post-fight energy.
“My turn,” he says, reaching for me.
But Revan is there, pulling me back against his chest, his arm a bar across my collarbone. “Neither of you get a turn until you cool the fuck down.”
“Cool down?” Koa laughs, dark and dangerous. “You started this, Rev. You came after me out there.”
“Because you deserved it.”
“For what? For fucking her first?”
The words hang in the air like a grenade with the pin pulled.
Atticus steps forward. “We all fucked her. That’s not the issue.”
“Then what is?” I finally speak, my voice cutting through their testosterone-fueled standoff. “What is the actual issue here? Because you’re all acting like boys fighting over a toy.”
“You’re not a toy,” Koa says, his voice dropping.
“Then stop treating me like one!” I push away from Revan, putting space between myself and all three of them. “You want to fight? Fine. Fight for me somewhere else. Not here, not where everyone can see, not where it becomes a spectacle.”
I turn and start walking toward the exit.
Behind me, I hear footsteps. All three of them following.
My heart races.
A feeling like water overtakes my chest.
Power.
I feel it in my bones.
I push through the arena exit doors into the night. The cold air hits my face, sharp and clarifying. The parking lot is empty of people, only cars. Everyone’s still inside celebrating or commiserating.
When I turn around, they’re all there. Standing in a loose semicircle, bloody and battered and still radiating that violent energy.
“So?” I cross my arms, the feeling in my chest stretches and wakes under their stare. “Now what?”
They look at each other, then back at me.
And I see it finally click—the realization that I’m not the prize in their game.
I’m the one making the rules.
“Your move,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake.
I hold my breath, waiting to see what happens next.