4
Easton
By noon, Hockey House smelled like bleach, lemon cleaner, cold pizza, and fear. The fear was mine, but the bleach was Briggs’s fault.
He had been given one job, which was to clean the downstairs bathroom without turning it into a public-health incident, and he had somehow managed to use enough product to make the hallway smell like a motel pool desperate to cover the scent of regret.
I stood in the kitchen with a trash bag in one hand and a rag shoved into my back pocket.
My headache came from closing North Cut Rink after midnight, sleeping four hours, and waking up to clean a three-story house full of athletes before my mom and sisters arrived.
A house my mom still thought I lived in.
“Lawson,” I called toward the hallway. “If you mixed chemicals in there, I swear I’ll let Coach Little find your body.”
Briggs appeared in the archway wearing rubber gloves, a backward cap, and the expression of a man offended by sanitation. “I did not mix chemicals. I created a cleansing environment.”
“You created a smoke agent.”
“I created sparkle.”
Ryan leaned against the counter with a coffee in one hand, his dark eyes tired from the drive in and his tattoos disappearing beneath the sleeves of his hoodie.
He looked less like a guest and more like the kind of guy who didn’t live at Hockey House anymore but would still show up before anyone had to ask.
“You created fumes.”
Briggs pointed at him with one gloved finger. “You don’t even live here anymore, Decker. Your judgment is nonresident.”
Ryan took a sip. “Still smells like you’re trying to kill mold and freshmen.”
Rider walked in from the living room with an armful of empty cans, his long blond hair tied back and his face too calm for someone who had just pulled three pizza boxes out from behind the couch. “Found a sock in the fireplace.”
Briggs brightened. “See? The house has lore.”
“The house has disease,” Cade said from the entryway, where he was wiping down the banister with the flat, irritated focus of a man who had almost died and still considered college-guy grime the bigger insult.
I tied off the trash bag too hard, the plastic biting into my palm. “Look, I appreciate the help. I trust your cleaning methods more than I trust terrified freshmen with a Swiffer and no survival instincts.”
My gaze moved to Cade, then Ryan, because neither of them lived here anymore and both had shown up before I had to ask. “Seriously. You didn’t have to be here.”
Ryan lifted his coffee. “I understand the commitment to keeping your mom and sisters from finding out you moved out under emotional distress.”
Cade wiped one more spot on the banister, his expression flat. “And if we’re honest, none of us trust Briggs near bleach.”
From the hallway, Briggs yelled, “I am thriving under supervision.”
“You’re the reason supervision has a legal department,” Ryan called back.
I huffed despite myself, and some of the pressure in my chest shifted an inch instead of crushing straight down. “Still. It matters.”
Cade looked over, and whatever joke had almost touched his mouth disappeared into something quieter. “We know.”
Ryan’s voice was drier but no less real. “That’s why we’re here.”
“This place needs to be normal for one afternoon.”
Briggs’s brows went up. “Define normal, because we have historically struggled with the concept.”
“No shouting in anyone’s face, touching anyone’s stuff, or throwing things. Nobody comments on Vivi’s headphones, her routine, what she eats, how she communicates, or whether she looks at you while you’re talking.”
Briggs opened his mouth, but I kept going.
“If she needs space, give her space. If Skylar acts like she hates all of you, assume that means she’s having a great time. If my mom says something terrifying with a smile, she means it, and you should take the warning as a gift.”
The kitchen went still in a way this house almost never did, but these were my guys. My best friends. They knew why I was wound so tight about today.
My mom was living on hospital doubles and stubbornness.
Skylar was fourteen-going-on-twenty, with an attitude big enough to get her grounded in three seconds with one look.
Vivi was twelve, autistic, brilliant in ways most people never took the time to understand, and my best friend in a way that made my chest ache if I thought about it too long.
The guys knew every dollar I could spare went home, every extra shift at North Cut mattered, and every game this season had scouts looking at me like my future was a question I needed to answer cleanly.
Today was supposed to be fun for them. Easy. One afternoon where my mom didn’t have to scan the room for problems and my sisters could be part of my world without feeling like they had walked into another thing I needed to manage.
Briggs pulled off one glove slowly. “So, best behavior.”
“Your version of best behavior or human best behavior?”
He thought about that. “Human adjacent.”
“Try harder,” I said. “If any of you embarrass me today, we’ll be running drills after the game until this time tomorrow. I don’t care if Coach Little is there. I’ll steal the whistle and become a problem.”
Cade’s mouth tilted. “You already are one.”
“Then I’ll become a structured problem.”
Ryan set down his coffee. “He’s serious, which is deeply annoying since I drove in from Flint to watch three women wreak havoc on him.”
“You can leave.”
“I didn’t say I disliked the show.”
Rider looked at me over the top of the trash pile in his arms. “Vivi likes hockey, right?”
The question was careful without being pitying, which was why Rider was still alive.
“She likes the order of it,” I said, grabbing another rag and wiping down a sticky spot on the island that had resisted every known cleaning method.
“Lines. Numbers. The clock. Penalties make sense to her because there’s a rule and a consequence.
She likes stats more than the yelling, so if the house gets loud, she might put on her headphones and go quiet.
That doesn’t mean she hates you. It means her brain is done letting the world be so loud. ”
Briggs nodded with a solemnity that made him look almost mature, which was disturbing. “No grabbing the headphones.”
“Touch her headphones and I’ll remove your hands.”
“Understood.”
“No forcing hugs.”
Briggs looked personally offended. “I am a consent-based hugger.”
“You’re a full-contact emotional event,” Ryan said.
“Which is why I announce myself with warmth.”
“Announce yourself with distance,” I said.
Briggs pressed a hand to his chest. “I can be gentle, Captain.”
I looked at him long enough for the joke to leave his face.
His voice softened. “I can be gentle.”
That was the thing about my team. They were loud, obnoxious, and disgusting in the way twenty-something men sharing a house could be disgusting. Most of them had eaten food off surfaces that should have required a tetanus shot.
But they were mine, and when I said something mattered, they heard me.
Even Briggs. Especially Briggs, sometimes.
The doorbell rang at exactly two thirty because my mother lived her life on time even when she was exhausted enough to fall asleep standing up. My entire body locked before I could stop it.
Cade noticed. “You good?”
I tossed the rag into the sink. “I’m fine.”
Ryan laughed beneath his breath.
I glared at him. “You want drills too?”
“I’m not on the team anymore.”
“I’ll make you watch.”
“Get the fuckin’ door, muchacho. You act like we don’t know what family means.”
The doorbell rang again, followed immediately by a fist pounding against the front door.
Skylar.
I exhaled and went to answer it.
The second I opened the door, my little sister looked me up and down like I had personally offended her by existing.
Fourteen years old, pale blond hair pulled into a ponytail, mascara too carefully applied to be casual, phone clutched in one hand, and the kind of dramatic boredom only teenage girls could weaponize.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Hello to you too, Sky.”
“You always say I look tired when I FaceTime you after school.”
“That’s because you look tired after school.”
“That’s called being academically oppressed.”
Behind her, my mom snorted while hauling a bag over one shoulder. She wore jeans, boots, and a black Fury hoodie she had washed so many times the logo had gone soft around the edges. Her hair was twisted up in a clip, and the shadows beneath her eyes told me she had worked too close to this trip.
She still smiled like the world had not figured out how to beat her yet.
“Move, baby,” she said. “Your sister has been trapped in a truck with a playlist called Hot Girl Emotional Support for two hours, and I deserve coffee, a medal, or a new identity.”
Skylar rolled her eyes. “My music has layers.”
“It had screaming.”
“That was artistry.”
“That was a woman threatening a man with arson over a bass drop.”
I stepped back, and Mom walked in first, reaching up to squeeze the back of my neck as she passed. She did it quickly, like affection was something she could disguise as checking me for a fever.
Her fingers paused for half a second, and I knew she felt the tension there because mothers had a witchery to them that was terrifying.
Her eyes flicked to mine, and I looked away first.
Vivi stood behind her with purple sensory headphones over her ears and both hands tucked into the sleeves of her Demon Slayer hoodie. Twelve years old, smaller than Skylar had been at that age, her eyes scanned the doorway, stairs, lights, shoes by the mat, and the guys visible down the hall.
Her mouth moved silently, and I could tell she was counting because her left thumb tapped each finger inside her sleeve.
I crouched enough to bring myself into her line of sight without blocking the door. “Hey, Vivi.”
Her eyes landed on my mouth, then my chin, then the gray hoodie I had thrown over my shirt. She lifted one hand and tapped two fingers against her sleeve.
“Two thirty,” she said.
“Two thirty,” I agreed. “Right on time.”