11
Easton
The morning after my first win as captain, I learned that my sisters were the only people on earth capable of making hockey players, one semi-pro graduate, and Cade Mercer show up at Waffle House before ten without violence.
Skylar had demanded breakfast in the group chat she had somehow bullied Briggs into creating under the name Wade Family Support Staff.
It already had twenty-nine messages, three memes I didn’t understand, and one blurry photo of Briggs asleep with Vivi’s napkin drawing of a goalie crease beside his face like evidence of a religious experience.
Vivi: Waffles. Syrup on the side. The guys come too.
Briggs: I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED.
Rider: I’ll be there.
Ryan, who apparently had nothing better to do on his off day than act like he wasn’t emotionally attached to the team he no longer played for, added his own response.
Ryan: This is how cults start.
Cade: Ten.
I stared at the thread at eight in the morning with a headache behind my eyes, a split place inside my chest where Aura’s name kept cutting through, and the ugly memory of the Hockey House kitchen sitting heavy in my stomach.
My mom took one look at me across the hotel room and said, “Well, you look like a man who either got no sleep or lost a fight with someone important.”
Skylar, sitting cross-legged on the second bed with her mascara wand in hand, looked up immediately. “Did something happen?”
Vivi stood near the small hotel desk, lining up sugar packets by color with her headphones resting around her neck. “Easton’s eyes are red.”
“Betrayed by my own bloodline,” I muttered, shoving my phone into the pocket of my hoodie.
Mom took a sip of the coffee she had bullied the front desk into giving her before the breakfast bar opened. “Your bloodline has eyes, baby. Put on shoes. You’re explaining yourself before we leave this town, or I’m chaining myself to a hotel lamp and making the front desk deal with me.”
Skylar brightened. “Can I film that?”
“No,” I said.
Mom pointed at her with the coffee cup. “Maybe.”
Vivi looked over. “Hotel lamps are not stable enough for chains.”
Mom smiled at her. “Useful information. Thank you.”
I rubbed both hands over my face and tried to drag myself into the version of me my family needed.
Brother, son, captain… the guy who hadn’t spent the night after a win walking out of his own party because the girl he loved and hated and loved again had ripped the last decent piece of him open in front of half the team.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Mom’s gaze narrowed. “You keep using that word like I didn’t push you out of my body and raise you through stomach flu, broken bones, and the time you lied about shaving one eyebrow because you wanted to look intimidating for peewee tryouts.”
Skylar dropped her mascara wand. “You shaved an eyebrow?”
“I was nine.”
“You were a menace,” Mom said, grabbing her purse. “And you are stalling.”
“I’m not talking about this before breakfast.”
“That means there is something to talk about after breakfast.”
I opened the hotel room door and held it while Vivi tucked her sugar packets carefully into the tiny front pocket of her hoodie because apparently they had become passengers. “I said we’d get waffles. I didn’t say I’d volunteer for interrogation.”
Mom patted my cheek as she passed. “Baby, mothers don’t ask for volunteers. We draft.”
Waffle House smelled like coffee, butter, bacon, syrup, and the kind of fluorescent lighting that made every bad decision from the night before feel personally accused.
The windows were streaked from rain, the parking lot was still damp enough to mirror the gray sky, and Cade stood near the side of the building like he had been waiting for me instead of breakfast.
That was never good.
I glanced toward the door. Through the glass, I could see Briggs already inside, talking with his hands while Rider sat half-asleep in a chair near the front counter.
Ryan leaned against the wall beside him in a black Flint Frost cap, his arms folded, looking like he had been dragged there by loyalty and mild threat.
Bliss sat in the corner booth, small in Cade’s hoodie, her face turned toward the window.
Even from outside, I could tell she had been crying.
Cade stepped in front of my line of sight before I could look too long. “Don’t mention her eyes.”
My stomach dipped. “What happened?”
“You mean after you and Aura turned Hockey House into a public execution?”
“I’m really not in the mood.”
“Neither is she.” Cade looked toward the window, his jaw tight. “She was up all night. Crying. Yelling at me. Crying more. Then yelling again because she was mad that she cried.”
“Over Aura?”
“Over all of it.” His gaze returned to mine. “The ABCs are fractured. Bliss thinks everyone picked sides last night, and nobody picked Aura.”
I wanted to hate Aura. I had been committed to it, actually.
It had structure. It gave me something to do with the hurt besides stand in the middle of it and admit I was still in love with a woman who knew exactly where to cut.
But the second Cade said nobody picked Aura, something ugly and ashamed twisted beneath my ribs.
“She had Charm,” I said, but even I heard how weak it sounded.
“Did she?”
I looked away.
Cade didn’t soften it for me. That was why Cade and I worked. He would stand beside me in a fight without pretending I hadn’t thrown the first punch.
“For the record, Rider and I were on Aura’s side too.”
My head turned. “You were?”
“We weren’t against you.” His voice stayed calm, which almost made it worse. “Those aren’t the same thing.”
I laughed once, hard and humorless. “That supposed to help?”
“No. It’s supposed to be true.” Cade kept his eyes on mine.
“You were hurt. She was hurt. Both of you said things meant to leave marks. But she was standing in a room full of your people, East. Your house. Your team. Your friends. Even the guys who thought she was wrong were looking at you first, waiting to see how badly you were bleeding.”
My throat tightened.
“Bliss saw that,” he said. “Then she went home, and Aura let her and Charm have it before leaving the apartment without saying when she’d be back.”
I stared through the rain-streaked window again.
Bliss had one sleeve pulled over her hand, dabbing beneath her eye while pretending she was fixing her mascara.
Briggs was speaking to her from across the table, his expression careful.
He looked like he wanted to make things better and knew enough, for once, not to try.
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“I told her what I just told you. That you were hurt and Aura was hurt, and the room leaned toward you because you were ours first. I told her that didn’t make Aura the villain.” Cade’s mouth tightened. “She didn’t want to hear it from me.”
“Because you’re my best friend.”
He nodded. “I’m Bliss’s too. That’s the problem.”
The words sat between us, heavy as hell.
“She thinks she failed Aura,” Cade said.
I dragged a hand over the back of my neck, then stopped because the movement reminded me of Aura’s eyes catching on me every time I did it. “I didn’t ask anyone to pick me.”
“No, but you knew they would.”
I looked at him.
Cade didn’t blink. “Come on, Wade.”
The worst part was that I didn’t have an answer. Not a good one. Not one that didn’t make me feel like shit.
“I wanted her to feel it,” I admitted, keeping my voice low enough that Mom and the girls wouldn’t hear from the sidewalk. “For once, I wanted her to feel what she did to me.”
Cade nodded once. “Did it help?”
I looked back at Bliss, then down at the wet pavement. “No.”
“Yeah.” He exhaled and glanced toward the parking lot, where Mom was helping Vivi out of the truck while Skylar argued with her own reflection in the window. “Breakfast needs to be clean. Your mom is sharp as hell, and Bliss doesn’t have the face to fake fine this morning.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“I’m not worried about you saying anything. I’m worried about you noticing too much and doing that thing where your face turns into a locked door.”
“That’s just my face.”
“No, that’s your avoidant face. I’ve seen both.”
I gave him a flat look. “You have been unbearable since falling in love.”
“I was unbearable before. Now I have purpose.” Cade’s gaze shifted toward my family crossing the lot. “Be careful with Bliss, be careful with yourself, and sit with the fact that wanting to hate Aura didn’t stop you from looking like I punched you when I said nobody picked her.”
I opened my mouth, but Mom called my name before I could answer.
Cade stepped back, the conversation over because family had arrived and the public version of us needed to exist again. Mom took one look between us, then at Cade’s face, then mine.
“Whatever this is,” she said, “save it until after waffles.”
Cade straightened slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mom looked him over. “Handsome, polite, and clearly involved in nonsense before breakfast. Dangerous combination.”
Cade’s mouth twitched. “I’ll try to be less obvious.”
“Don’t bother. Men are terrible at subtlety.”
Skylar slipped past us with her phone in hand. “Is there a booth, or are we loitering in the parking lot?”
Vivi looked at the Waffle House sign, then at me. “The letters are bright. I need the booth away from the window glare.”
“Got it,” I said, grateful for something I could actually fix.
Inside, Briggs saw us and rose like he had been waiting for a royal procession. “Easton’s family!” he announced, then caught himself and lowered his volume so abruptly the entire restaurant seemed to tilt. “Respectfully and at a reasonable morning decibel, welcome.”
Vivi looked at him for a second. “That was quieter.”
Briggs nodded solemnly. “I have range.”
Skylar walked past him with her phone in hand. “You give golden retriever energy.”
“Is that an insult?”
“It’s a brand identity.”
Briggs considered that. “I accept.”
Rider stood and nodded toward Mom. “Morning.”
Mom looked him over. “You’re the calm one.”
He smiled faintly. “Sometimes.”