7 #2
Cade held my gaze, and that was worse because he had seen the beginning.
He had known me before I started letting girls touch me to watch Aura burn, before I turned every party into a chance to prove I could be touched without caring, and before I became the kind of guy who kissed women with my eyes open just to see whether Aura would bleed.
Cade had seen me in his penthouse with red eyes and split knuckles, holding myself together with rage and humiliation.
He knew exactly how far I had fallen.
“I can’t take much more of this,” I said.
The words escaped before I gave them permission, and none of them moved.
I looked toward the end of the hallway and the room that used to be mine, the closed door I hadn’t opened in months because I refused to step into a place where Aura still existed in the shadows.
“If it wasn’t for hockey, I’d transfer. I’d move back to Crystal Falls and be the man my family actually needs. Hear me when I tell you this: I can get my degree anywhere. Hockey costs me nothing, and it’s the only thing keeping me at KFU instead of going home.”
Briggs’s head snapped up.
Ryan’s face went still.
Cade stepped forward. “East.”
“I mean it.”
“No, you don’t,” Cade said.
I laughed, but it broke in the middle. “Don’t tell me what I mean when you have no fucking clue what being me costs.”
“You’re captain.”
“Yeah, by default, and I never wanted it. I only benefit if a scout gives enough of a shit to look twice.”
“You weren’t captain by default, and you know it,” Cade said.
The words hung between us, ugly and honest.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and tasted blood where I had bitten the inside of my cheek.
“The ice is the only place she doesn’t own.
That’s it. That’s all I’ve got right now.
The Furnace. The blue line. Sixty minutes where I know the rules and nobody gets to look at me like that and make me want to hand them the knife again. ”
Ryan’s voice dropped. “Then stop giving her the knife.”
“I’m trying.”
His eyes held mine. “You’re handing it to her and daring her to use it so you can hate her more when she does.”
My head turned slowly toward him, but Ryan didn’t back down.
“That what we’re doing now?” I asked. “Therapy in the hallway while everyone picks a side?”
“No,” he said. “I’m saying you looked wrecked downstairs, and it wasn’t the kind of wrecked that comes from not caring.”
Briggs exhaled hard. “Nobody thinks he doesn’t care.”
“That’s the problem,” Cade said.
Ryan looked at him sharply. “The problem is Aura knows he cares and keeps pressing on the nerve.”
“The problem,” Cade returned, his voice still controlled but edged now, “is that he’s letting anger drive because it feels better than hurt.”
“Maybe pain earned a turn,” Briggs muttered.
Cade’s eyes cut toward him. “That’s not helping.”
“Neither is pretending he’s the only one with work to do.”
“I’m not pretending that.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Rider’s gaze stayed on me instead of joining Briggs’s defense, like his loyalty meant stopping me before I made another mistake.
The air tightened as I watched my boys divide.
Not boys against girls yet, but the shape of it was there in the hallway.
Ryan and Briggs stood nearer to me without meaning to, both of them too loyal and angry on my behalf to care much about fairness.
Cade and Rider remained across from them, not against me, never that, but trying to drag me back from the edge before I mistook revenge for healing.
I hated all of them for being right in different directions.
Ryan stepped between the argument before it became another fire. “Enough. We’re not doing this up here.”
“Then go downstairs,” I said.
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“I didn’t ask for a fucking intervention.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask to watch you come apart in front of half the team and a girl you were using as emotional shrapnel.”
Briggs made a sound. “That was vivid.”
“It was true,” Ryan said.
Cade kept his eyes on me. “You need to leave.”
I smiled without humor. “Already did that. Remember?”
Something flickered across his face. Regret, maybe.
I didn’t want his regret or anything else from anyone right then except a way to peel Aura out from beneath my skin without taking half of myself with her.
“I’m not going back downstairs,” I said.
“You’re coming with me,” Ryan said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him. “You really planning to force me into your car?”
His expression didn’t move. “I already answered that.”
“And I told you I’m a fight you don’t want.”
“You’re also the guy who thinks bleeding counts as a coping skill, so forgive me if I’m not intimidated.”
Briggs glanced between us. “For the record, I support removing him from the building.”
“Thank you,” Cade said.
“But I also support him being angry.”
“I didn’t ask,” Cade said.
“I know. My support is unsolicited and emotionally generous.”
Rider pushed away from the wall. “East, go with Ryan.”
I looked at him. “You too?”
“I’m not picking sides.”
“Sounds like something people say when they picked one.”
“No,” Rider said, steady as ever. “I’m saying if you stay here, you’re going to keep looking for ways to hurt her, and every one of them will hit you first.”
That shut me up.
For a second, all I could hear was the party beneath the floor and the blood moving too fast in my ears. I hated how much of myself was showing, the throb in my hand, and the fact Brinley’s lipstick was probably still on my mouth while I fought with Aura.
I hated that Aura had cut me back.
That was the part I couldn’t say.
Aura had gotten the reaction. She had landed the blow. I had tried to make her jealous and prove I could stand there untouched by the history between us, but all I had done was prove she could still destroy me in front of everyone.
Ryan’s voice softened by half an inch. “East.”
I looked at him because he almost never used that tone.
He looked tired. Older than he was. Like Flint Frost road games and whatever life had taught him before KFU had carved out all his patience, leaving only loyalty in its place.
“She fucked you up,” he said. “I hate that she did that, man. I’ve got your back on that.”
Cade’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t interrupt.
Ryan held my gaze. “But you keep doing this, and we’re the ones watching it eat you alive.”
My throat worked.
Briggs looked at my hand again. “Come on, man. You can’t be alone tonight.”
There was no joke or performance in it. Only Briggs looking at me like he could hate Aura for me and still be scared of what hating her was doing to me.
I looked down the hall one more time at the door that used to be mine, then turned away. “I’ll go with Ryan.”
Cade nodded once, and he didn’t look relieved enough for me to resent. “My Rover’s out front. I’ll drive you both to Ryan’s, then I’m going to find Bliss before she tries to drag Aura home through sheer emotional violence.”
I laughed beneath my breath, but nothing about it was funny. “Right. My fault too, I guess.”
Cade’s face tightened. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
My gaze moved down the hallway again, toward the room that used to be mine, and the laugh died before it had ever really lived.
The only place in my life besides the ice that Aura hadn’t touched was my apartment.
KFU was full of her in ways that made no sense and every kind of sense at once—the stands in The Furnace, the Sin Bin, the path between the history building and the rink, the corner booth at the diner where she used to pretend she hadn’t saved me a seat, and the stoplight near campus where she always fixed her lip gloss in my passenger visor.
My truck. My phone. My stupid memory.
Everywhere.
Ryan clapped a hand against the back of my neck, firm and grounding, then shoved lightly. “Move before I make Briggs carry you.”
Briggs brightened slightly. “I could. I’ve been waiting for a practical use for goalie thighs.”
“Don’t touch me,” I said, but there was no heat left in it.
“See?” Briggs said. “Progress.”
I started down the stairs because staying in that hallway felt too much like standing inside a life I didn’t get to have anymore. I wasn’t better or done, and all of us knew it, but if I stayed in that house another minute, I would go looking for the girl whose face still had the power to undo me.
I had already warned Aura what I would become, but the part that scared me was realizing I had never really been warning her.
I had been warning myself.