5 #2
Mom laughed softly, and the sound made my chest hurt. “She heard you. Vivi wants to know if number thirteen is still bad luck.”
I closed my eyes. “Tell her it’s bad luck for the other team.”
There was a pause before Vivi’s voice came through, smaller and farther from the phone. “That’s acceptable.”
My throat tightened.
Mom came back on. “Are you okay, baby?”
The room around me went too quiet.
I kept my voice steady because that was my job. “Yeah. I’m good.”
“Easton.”
Hearing my name in that tone was all it took.
Cade looked down. Briggs stopped pretending not to listen. Rider gave me privacy by turning toward the ice schedule taped above his stall, which somehow made everything worse.
“I’m good,” I repeated. “Just game head.”
“You sound tired.”
“I’m always tired.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
She breathed out, and I could picture her rubbing the space between her brows while trying to decide how much mothering she could fit through a phone before puck drop. “We’re proud of you. All three of us.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked at the C on my chest, then at the floor. “I’m trying to.”
The truth slipped out before I could stop it.
Mom went quiet.
I hated myself for giving her that much.
“I’ll see you after,” I said quickly. “Keep Vivi near the aisle if she needs a break. Don’t let Skylar buy anything from the student section with glitter on it.”
“She already did.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Language,” Mom said automatically, and for one second, she sounded less tired.
That helped.
I smiled slightly even though the pressure behind my ribs hadn’t eased. “Love you.”
“Love you too. Go be captain.”
The call ended.
I stood with the phone in my hand, staring at the blank screen.
Briggs broke first because Briggs was allergic to emotional silence. “I would die for your mom.”
“You’d die if she asked whether you had eaten a vegetable.”
“Same thing.”
Rider’s eyes moved toward my phone. “She knows.”
“She suspects.”
“Easton,” Cade said.
I shoved the phone into my bag. “She doesn’t need to know anything tonight.”
“She’s your mom. She already knows something.”
“Then she can know from the stands while I win the game.”
Cade studied me. “That’s a lot to carry.”
I laughed, and it came out sharper than I meant. “Which part?”
Nobody answered, and that pissed me off more than if they had.
“The C?” I asked, tapping one gloved finger against my chest. “The scouts? North Cut? My mom working herself into the ground? Skylar needing money for clothes she won’t ask for because she thinks bills have feelings?
Vivi needing every plan mapped out so the world doesn’t get too loud?
Aura looking at me like I’m the villain because I finally got tired of being the idiot who loved her first? ”
The words escaped before I could stop them, and the room held every one.
Then Briggs said, softly enough that he hardly sounded like himself, “Nobody thinks you’re an idiot for loving her.”
I looked at him.
He lifted one shoulder, his pads making the movement awkward. “I think you’re an idiot for several reasons, but that isn’t one of them.”
Rider leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “You loved her. She panicked. You got hurt. You hurt her back. That’s ugly, but it isn’t complicated.”
“It feels complicated.”
“It’s simple and painful,” Cade said. “People confuse those all the time.”
I sank onto the bench, my stick between my knees. “I can’t do this with her right now.”
“Then don’t,” Ryan said from the doorway.
Every head turned.
Ryan stood just outside the locker room in his Flint Frost quarter-zip with a visitor pass clipped to it, his arms crossed and his face set in the same unimpressed lines he had carried since the day he learned how not to need anyone.
Coach must have let him through, which meant Coach had either lost his mind or decided I needed another witness.
Briggs pointed. “Retired cryptid sighting.”
Ryan ignored him. “I came to wish Cade luck and tell Briggs not to disgrace the position of goalie.”
Briggs placed a hand over his chest protector. “Too late. The disgrace is structural.”
Ryan’s eyes moved toward me. “You look like shit.”
I stood. “Good talk.”
“Sit down, Captain Emotional Support Disaster.”
Cade looked almost amused. “He has a point.”
Ryan stepped inside just far enough to let the door swing shut behind him. “You don’t do this with Aura right now. I know you’re stressed because she’s here and you’ll have to share neutral ground tonight, but for now, you play the game.”
He nodded toward my phone. “You get through your mom seeing the C. You keep Vivi’s night steady and Skylar’s attitude contained, if that’s even legally possible. Then, when you’re not one bad sentence away from setting the whole place on fire, you apologize for the part you owe.”
Briggs lifted a glove. “For the record, this is why I like Ryan’s advice. It allows anger and logistics.”
Rider looked at Ryan. “What part does he owe?”
Ryan didn’t look away from me. “The part where he took a shot at something he didn’t understand.”
I stared back at him. “And the rest?”
“The rest can wait until both of you stop trying to win.”
The answer was so irritatingly reasonable that I wanted to reject it on principle.
Cade nodded. “That’s what I said.”
“You said it with more support for the opposing side,” Ryan told him.
Cade shrugged. “I have Bliss now. It happens.”
Briggs made a gagging noise. “Love has ruined him.”
“Love saved him,” Rider said.
The room went quiet for half a beat before Briggs pointed at Rider. “That was dangerously sincere. Are you unwell?”
Rider looked back at him. “I read sometimes.”
Ryan’s mouth curved. “Don’t start. Cap will assign homework.”
It wasn’t much. It didn’t fix anything, take Aura’s words out of my head, make my mom less tired, or erase the money I needed to send home after my next North Cut shift. It didn’t make the C lighter, either.
But it loosened something enough for me to breathe and cut up with the guys.
Coach’s whistle sliced through the room from the hall. “Helmets. Tunnel in thirty.”
Ryan stepped toward the door. “Go play hockey.”
Briggs reached for his mask. “That was moving. Brief. Masculine. Slightly bossy.”
Ryan pointed at him. “Stop pucks.”
“I always stop pucks.”
Rider raised a brow.
“I often stop pucks.”
Cade stood, rolled his shoulders once, and grabbed his stick. “You ready?”
Everyone was watching me—freshmen, veterans, my boys, Ryan in the doorway, and Coach in the hall. The C pressed against my chest like a hand.
Somewhere above us, my mom sat with my sisters, trying not to let her exhaustion show. Somewhere behind our bench, Aura would be with Bliss and Charm, refusing to disappear even after I had given her every reason to.
I put on my helmet. “I’m ready.”
Cade looked at me for another second. “That sounded almost true.”
“It’s game night,” I said as I stepped toward the tunnel. “Almost true is enough until puck drop.”