18. Wren
WREN
Thankfully, the rest of the first period goes by uneventfully, and it’s not long until the buzzer blares, echoing through the arena and signaling intermission.
The crowd roars, the sound thundering through the stands like a pulse, and the players begin gliding toward their benches.
The Kings look frustrated, not that I can blame them.
The Steelhawks are leading by a single point, and if the way Lucian slammed a water bottle into the wall just now is any indication, they’ll be coming back out for second period with red-tinted goggles on.
My eyes scan the rink until I find Dylan.
She coasts to a stop in front of the bench, yanking her helmet off and shaking out her sweat-damp hair.
She turns, searching the crowd. When her eyes find mine, I give her a thumbs-up and a grin.
She smirks, rolling her eyes playfully before disappearing down the tunnel with the rest of her team.
The guy beside me hasn’t so much as twitched in my direction since Lucian’s threat to decapitate him with a puck, but that doesn’t mean I want to sit awkwardly beside him for the next fifteen minutes. So instead, I push out of my seat, choosing to stretch my legs.
The concourse is packed, seemingly half the arena deciding to stock up on food and drink, or dash to the bathroom, while they have the opportunity.
The loud noise drives me into the nearest stairwell, and I breathe out slowly as the door closes behind me, shutting out the worst of the noise and giving me a quiet moment of reprieve.
Wandering through the back hallways while I kill time, I pass the occasional staff member bustling about. Finding a quiet spot, I lean back against the wall and close my eyes.
God, I needed a minute.
Everything—the standoff with the rookie, the puck slamming into the plexiglass, Lucian’s glare, Ronan’s determination, Silas’s unreadable expression—it’s too much. Too intense. The heat of it all still burns beneath my skin.
“It would be much easier for you if you just did what I asked.”
My eyes fly open.
Ronan stands a few feet away, sweat beading along his hairline, cheeks flushed, his chest rising and falling steadily beneath the Kings’ jersey stretched tight across his frame. He’s still in his skates and gloves, as though he got off the ice and made a beeline straight for me.
And he looks pissed.
Pushing off the wall I was leaning against, I stand straight, ready to face off with him as I scoff. “Easier for you, you mean.”
He takes a step closer. Then another, until he is towering over me by more than a solid foot.
His skates make him seem giant-like, as if the fact that he already had a foot on me wasn’t enough.
I swallow around the sudden lump in my throat as I crane my head back at his approach.
It should be intimidating—him standing there in his gear, practically the width of the entire hallway as he looms over me, and yet…
my thighs fucking clench. My mouth runs dry, and I can’t help thinking how fucking attractive he looks right now, fresh off the ice, his cheeks tinted red and hair mussed up.
Those searing hazel eyes pinned on me, reflecting just how worked up he is.
His gaze flicks over me, slow and cutting. “You shouldn’t be wearing that jersey.”
I cross my arms. “Why? Because it doesn’t say Ronan fucking Sterling on the back?”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. He keeps coming until my back hits the wall. His hands plant on either side of my head, caging me in. His scent wraps around me—sweat, spice, and something cold and sharp, like metal.
“You put on another team’s colors, wear someone else’s name, and you expect me not to respond?”
My brows shoot up. “So this is about your ego?”
His eyes darken. “This is about you still denying this.”
A strangled noise escapes me. “I am not denying anything.”
It’s his turn to huff a breath, one side of his lips quirking up in an arrogant smirk that I want to wipe from his face. A sudden vision of grabbing him and pulling those lips to mine takes over me.
“Aren’t you?” His taunting words snap me out of that crazy line of thought. “Always running—from us. From your feelings. From your past…”
I suck in a breath. “You’re out of your damn mind.”
“Am I?” His voice drops to barely a whisper, the feel of his words skating along my skin and making me shiver.
“Because from where I’m standing, you can deny it all you want, but I see the way you look at me.
At us. You think this thing we’re doing is a game, Winslow?
That we’re going to give up and walk away?
” He leans closer. “We’re not. We’ve been in this since the moment we found you, unconscious and vulnerable.
Seeing you like that…it spoke to each of us. ”
It’s the first time one of them has said it out loud.
That they were there. That they found me.
My knees threaten to buckle. As if sensing that, Ronan’s hand drops to my hip, pressing me into the wall as he inches impossibly closer.
Part of me wants to scream. Another part wants to grab his face and demand to know everything.
“You are strong enough to face your greatest fears,” he murmurs against the shell of my ear. “When are you going to wake up and realize that?”
The heat between us spikes.
My hands press to his chest, but it’s not to push him away. I don’t even think I could. My heart is hammering. My skin prickles with awareness.
“What does any of this have to do with a jersey?” I ask, my voice rough.
“Everything.” His face is so close, I can see the individual sparks of gold in his eyes.
They glimmer and dance in the fluorescent light, only adding fuel to his words.
“It has everything to do with the jersey. With you moving forward. With you healing. With you realizing that this is where you belong, where you were always meant to end up—with us.”
I stop breathing.
“You are not a Steelhawk anymore,” he continues. “You aren’t that same person. You aren’t the girl from that night.”
His words slice through me one by one because part of me still feels like that girl. Shattered. Lost. Powerless. But when Ronan says it, when he looks at me like that, I almost believe I’m something more. Someone stronger.
“You are no longer that woman who has been hiding away. You are stronger than that. I know it, and you know it.” He watches me, eyes sharp and knowing.
“You’re letting fear cloud your true potential.
Open your eyes and realize you don’t have to be afraid anymore, because you are no longer alone.
We are here. We have been from the very beginning.
We’ve just been waiting for you to realize that. ”
He removes his other hand from the wall. The backs of his fingers brush my cheek before his thumb skims the edge of my throat. He leans in, his lips ghosting along my jaw. My eyes drift shut, my head falling back as my blood dances with glee at having him so near.
He trails a path up to my ear, whispering. “You have no idea how much it is killing me not to kiss you right now.”
“So why don’t you?”
The words are out of my mouth before my brain has a chance to process them, but I don’t regret them. Don’t scramble to take them back. I want to feel his lips on mine. I want it so badly that every fiber of my being strains to eliminate the last bit of distance between us.
“Because when I kiss you, it’s going to change everything. And you don’t get to have that until you’re ready to face the truth.”
A lump forms in my throat, but I don’t feel the usual fear when I consider asking that question. After talking it through with Dylan, I think I might actually be ready.
Despite saying he wouldn’t go any further, Ronan lingers there, his lips brushing my skin like he can’t bring himself to withdraw.
“Cap! Coach wants you!”
The call from down the hall breaks the wrought moment between us. However, Ronan doesn’t move immediately. His hand rests against my cheek, thumb pressing lightly into my throat as his eyes blaze.
Then, slowly, as though pained, he pulls back.
“Find a new seat,” he practically orders, voice deep and commanding, so it takes me a second to register his words.
I blink. “What?”
“The guy sitting next to you.” His voice hardens. “Don’t think I didn’t see him. Sit somewhere else, or so help me God, I will hop the boards and drag you to a vacant seat.”
With a final brush of his fingers along my skin, he turns, stalking out of the stairwell like a soldier on a mission.
Alone, I fall back against the wall again and let out a long, shaky breath.
Holy. Shit.
The TV bathes my apartment in flickering pastel light.
There’s half-eaten popcorn in the bowl between us, our mugs of hot chocolate long since drained, although the scent of chocolate and cinnamon still lingers in the air.
I sniffle quietly at the closing montage of the rom-com we just finished.
Dylan—being the decent friend she is—is pretending not to notice, even though I’ve cried at this ending too many times to count.
We’ve done this a hundred times before—blanket forts, sugar highs, emotional damage courtesy of whatever love story I decided to subject us to—but somehow, it still feels like home.
Dylan sighs contentedly, her legs tangled with mine beneath a shared blanket, her head tilted back on the couch cushion.
We came back to my apartment after tonight’s game, choosing the quiet and time to ourselves over going out to celebrate the Steelhawks’ win.
It feels exactly like old times, and a pang glances through my chest at the thought of Dylan leaving tomorrow.
Oh, how I’ve missed this.
“I’ve missed this,” Dylan murmurs, as though reading my mind. She rolls to her side, elbow propped on the couch arm. “I hate that I have to leave in the morning.”
“Me too.” I pick at the fraying edge of the throw pillow between us. “It’s been really good having you here.”
She gives me a soft smile, even as she kicks me in the shin beneath the blanket. “Then stop ignoring my calls and texts. We could be doing this virtually. I know it’s not the same, but I need my Wren-time.”
I smirk, shaking my head at her humor. “I will,” I promise her.
She narrows her eyes, then jabs me in the side with two fingers. “Swear on your love of all things color—which, by the way, why does this place still look like the inside of an insane asylum?!” She shakes the beige throw pillow in front of me to emphasize her point.
I snort, batting her hand away, before I shrug. “I dunno. Guess I haven’t really felt like decorating.”
A beat passes, the smile fading from her lips. “Well, you’ll decorate when you feel like it.” Her hand moves to rest over mine on top of the blanket. “You’re not alone in this, Wren. I mean it. I might be two hundred and fifty miles away, but if you need me, you know I’ll be here in a heartbeat.”
My chest tightens. “I know.”
Later that night, when we’re getting ready for bed, I can’t find my glasses case.
Remembering I left it in my backpack from earlier, I go in search of it.
I find it haphazardly abandoned at the door, where I discarded it as soon as we got home.
Unzipping the front pocket, I rifle through the mess, making a mental note to clear out all the empty snack wrappers and random bits of crap that have accumulated.
My fingers brush over the hard plastic shell of my glasses case, and I pull it out. Snapping it open, I pause…
There’s already something in there. A piece of folded paper.
The outside is blank, with nothing giving away what it is or how it got inside the case.
Curiously, I ease it out, unfolding it carefully.
You wore the past because it doesn’t ask anything of you, but you’re not that girl anymore, and we won’t let you go back.
The next time you put on a jersey, make it one that tells the truth.
You’re ours now.
–S
I stare at the note, needing to read it twice to truly take in the words. It’s so unmistakably Silas that I don’t even need his added ‘S’ to identify it.
For a man who doesn’t speak, he sure knows how to slice straight to the bone.
His possession doesn’t burn like Lucian’s or bruise like Ronan’s.
It coils, low and slow, curling around my ribs and pulling tight.
With every word, he makes it apparent just how clearly he sees me.
He cuts me open and exposes every fear, every insecurity I barely dare to acknowledge.
Where Lucian pushes and Ronan demands, Silas coaxes.
The note trembles slightly between my fingers as I read it again.
You’re ours now.
Those words echo louder than they should.
Lucian, hurling a puck into the plexiglass like it personally offended him.
Ronan, pressing me against the wall, hand at my throat, words like fire in my veins.
And now this. Silas’s version—quieter, sharper, but no less suffocating.
All three of them, in their own way, are saying the same thing.
I don’t know what to do with that; not even sure I want to touch it.
Not when my body still burns from the memory of Ronan’s lips ghosting my jaw. Not when I’m still humiliated by the fact I all but asked him to kiss me. Not when the air around Lucian feels too hot to breathe whenever he’s near. Not when Silas sees me in a way no one else ever has.
And yet, I find myself folding the note back up and sliding it into the back of my glasses case, pressing the lid shut like it might dull the sharpness in my chest.
Some girls get flowers.
I get thinly veiled threats disguised as love letters.
And the worst part?
I think I like this better.