Prologue #4
“You didn’t even let me finish.”
“Because you said, ‘Move back into the house.’”
“Because you should move back into the house.”
“No.”
Rider tied off his laces and leaned back on his hands. “It’s senior year, man.”
“I’m aware.”
“We’ve got the whole room back,” he said. “Cade’s healed. Briggs is only mildly unbearable. Ryan’s around when Flint lets him breathe. You’re captain. Finish senior year with me and Briggs at Hockey House like old times.”
Ryan’s mouth twitched. “That sounds like a punishment.”
“It’s Hockey House,” Briggs argued.
“It’s a biohazard,” Ryan said.
Cade looked at me instead of joining them. He had always been too good at seeing the bruise beneath the punch.
“Is this about Aura?”
The room shifted around her name.
Nobody gasped or froze or did any of that dramatic bullshit. But every guy in that corner of the locker room knew exactly where the blade went in, and not one of them missed it.
My hands slowed on the tape wrapped around my stick.
“No.”
Briggs sighed. “Easton.”
I looked up. “Stop.”
Cade held my stare without flinching. That was one of the irritating things about Cade Mercer. Almost dying had made him harder to intimidate.
“She’s going to be around,” he said.
“I know.”
“Bliss isn’t dropping Aura because you two decided to turn your unresolved sexual disaster into campus-wide warfare.”
Ryan coughed once into his fist while Rider looked at the ceiling like he was praying for strength.
Briggs lowered his voice. “Unresolved sexual disaster is actually pretty accurate.”
I pointed at him. “Not helping.”
“I’m helping in spirit.”
Cade’s expression didn’t change. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I tossed the tape into my stall hard enough that it bounced off the wood. “Aura isn’t the reason I’m not moving back.”
Cade watched me for a long second. “Then what is?”
My jaw flexed.
For a moment, all I heard was the hum of The Furnace, the showers running somewhere down the hall, and the muffled noise of the team still riding the high of Coach announcing captains. The dull ache of that letter on my jersey felt like a hand pressing harder against my chest.
“My life isn’t the same as yours,” I said finally.
Cade’s face softened, and that pissed me off worse.
I looked away from him and stared at the floor between my skates.
“I’ve got my mom calling me because the car is making a noise she can’t afford to diagnose. Skylar pretends she doesn’t need shit because she knows I’ll send money I don’t have. Vivi melts down when her routine gets wrecked, and my mom is too tired to always catch it before it happens.”
Nobody interrupted me, so I kept going.
“I’ve got North Cut shifts, classes, captain responsibilities, and scouts sniffing around like they can’t smell my desperation for it from a mile away. Now I have this team looking at me like I’m supposed to know how to keep everyone from falling apart.”
I hated saying it out loud, but it helped that nobody tried to fill the silence.
I dragged a hand over my jaw and let out a humorless laugh.
“Aura was never supposed to become another thing I had to survive.”
Briggs’s expression changed first, and the rest of them looked anywhere but at me.
“She was supposed to be the one place I didn’t have to carry anything,” I continued, quieter now. “Instead, she became another weight. Another person I had to chase, read, handle, wait for, and beg to be honest. I don’t have room for that anymore.”
The truth sat there, ugly and breathing.
Briggs leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “Okay.”
I glanced at him.
He nodded like he was accepting something he didn’t like. “Okay. I get that.”
Rider looked at me. “It still doesn’t mean you should be alone in a shit apartment with neighbors who sound like an episode of Cops.”
“My neighbors are fine.”
“You texted the group chat last week that someone was screaming about a stolen crackpipe at midnight,” Ryan said.
“It was handled.”
“You texted, ‘If I die over this missing glass pipe, tell Coach I hated conditioning.’”
Briggs pointed at him. “That is concerningly specific.”
“It was so intense,” I muttered.
Cade shook his head, but a faint smile touched the edge of his mouth. “Just think about it. That’s all we’re saying.”
“I have thought about it.”
“No,” Cade said. “You’ve reacted to it.”
My eyes cut to him as he stood, all controlled power and captain history even without the C anymore.
“You’re allowed to be done with Aura. You’re allowed to hate the house for what it reminds you of. You’re allowed to be pissed off that life keeps taking from you. But don’t confuse isolation with control.”
I hated him a little for that, mostly because he was right.
Briggs stood and clapped once, too loudly. “Beautiful. Annoying, but beautiful. Now hug it out.”
“Touch me and I’ll break your hand,” I said.
He smiled. “There he is in true form.”
The locker room door opened before I could answer, and the noise from the rest of the team spilled in. Freshmen shouted, sticks struck tile, and somebody yelled about post-practice food as life moved forward like it didn’t give a shit what any of us were carrying.
Coach called my name from the hall. “Wade. Media wants captains.”
Captain.
The word settled into me like a command.
I grabbed my jersey from the hook and pulled it over my pads. The C caught beneath my palm for half a second before I dropped my hand.
When I looked up, Cade, Briggs, Rider, and Ryan were watching me.
Not with pity.
That was the only reason I didn’t tell them to go fuck themselves.
Briggs lifted his chin toward the door. “Go be scary.”
Rider smirked. “Try not to look like you’re planning a murder.”
Ryan pushed away from the lockers. “Or do. Brand consistency lately.”
Cade stepped closer as the others started out. He dropped his voice so only I could hear him.
“You know Bliss is pushing for her to be at the first game.”
Of course I knew.
Bliss would drag Aura to The Furnace if she had to put her in a headlock and carry her through the student entrance. Charm would show up polished and perfect beside them, pretending she wasn’t watching Ryan from the corner of her eye.
Aura would sit in the stands with her braids falling down her back, her mouth sharp and her eyes sharper, acting like she was only there for Cade’s first game back.
Acting like I hadn’t once offered her every piece of me I had left.
I looked at Cade. “Then she can watch.”
His expression tightened slightly. “Easton.”
I stepped around him and headed for the door because that was the thing about Aura Clarke.
She had spent seven months learning to stay as far away from me as possible.