Broken Formation (The Titans of Briarcliff #4)

1. Maya

Maya

The laminated edge of the badge presses into my palm where I'm gripping it inside my coat pocket. Maya Maddox, Editor-in-Chief, Briarcliff Chronicle. Eight hundred words are due by six, and all I've fucking written is fourteen words, not one of them the opening.

My breath fogs in front of me. Salt crusts the walkways where the plows pushed snow into gray banks, and the February air slips under my collar, finding the bare strip above my scarf.

I pass the arena on the quad's east side.

The lights are still on inside, the fluorescent glare spilling through the high windows.

As I approach the rink-level service door, a delivery kid has it propped open with his hip, angling a stacked dolly of shrink-wrapped cases through the narrow gap.

Air off the rink carries that chemical tang of frozen water, and underneath it comes the deep grind of blades.

Practice should be over, but a shot cracks against the crossbar, hard enough that my hand closes tighter around the badge.

My stride stutters for a half-step before I force it even again.

I keep my eyes locked on the path, but my coat feels too tight across my chest, and the badge is digging into my palm hard enough to leave a mark.

My next step falters.

Through the narrow opening, I catch a slice of rink—blue boards, white ice, a net dark at the far end. Dante stands at the center line, stick balanced across his shoulders, hands draped over either end. He's looking straight at the door, straight at me.

All that fucking distance, and he finds the gap, catches me mid-step on the path. The look holds for three full seconds, long enough for my breath to jam behind my ribs, before he turns and skates toward the bench, his posture square beneath the pads.

The pulse at my throat kicks harder, and metal floods the back of my tongue, sharp as winter air. I swallow once. The taste thins. I force a count—eight in, eight out—until the air goes down clean.

I keep walking. The path takes me past the door, and I tuck my chin like that can hide me.

I try the lede in my head. The Titans' senior class has outscored every recruiting cohort in the program's history. More injuries, more suspensions, more sealed disciplinary files than any class before them. Five players, one semester left, and the program needs them perfect.

The sealed files don't match the dates. And I'm still missing the goddamn stat line from today's scrimmage.

Cole waits on the bench outside Aldrich, shoulders rounded in the way they always are after practice, feet planted, forearms braced on his thighs, a second cup already marking my spot six inches from the edge. His cell lies facedown on the slat between us.

He looks up when my boots crunch on the path. Half-second read—bag, face, done. After a beat, he grins at me, wide and unhurried, all teeth.

"I've been here four fucking minutes," he says. "Your coffee's cold."

"Then you should have timed it better."

"Yeah, no shit. I timed it perfectly. You're late."

"I'm exactly on time. You're early. There's a difference."

I sit. Fourteen inches of bench between us.

The iron bites through my coat and into the backs of my thighs.

When I pick up the cup, I recognize it from the cart near the science building—green awning, too far from this bench to be convenient.

He walked the extra distance. I drink, and it's lukewarm.

He bought it long enough ago for the heat to fade.

My fingers tighten around the cardboard sleeve before I make them stop.

"Practice run long?"

"Addison's trying to fucking kill us before Cornell gets the chance." He rolls his neck. The chain necklace catches the flat winter light, links shifting against the hollow of his throat. I watch the movement. "Standard February bullshit."

The sweatshirt sleeves are pushed to his elbows, and the ink on his forearms surfaces where the fabric rides up: geometric shapes I've studied before, the compass rose on his left wrist. His hair is almost dry, curling at the temples with the last dampness.

He should be freezing. Somehow, locker-room heat still rolls off him, and I can feel the contrast from here.

His sandalwood soap layers over arena ice, the shampoo he hasn't switched from since freshman year.

His knee is angled toward me, has been since I sat down, a few degrees off center.

The heat of him reaches me through two layers of clothing, a strip of warmth along my left side from shoulder to elbow.

My other side stays at the temperature of the bench.

Two inches the other way would put it out of reach. I don't take the two inches.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out.

Mom: How's your week going, sweetheart? Tell Cole I love him, and he better be eating real food. Call me tonight?

Cole watches while I read it, his chin level, his gaze dropped to the screen with the same easy access he's had for nine years. I keep my eyes on the message until the words blur.

Me: We're good. I'll tell him. Love you.

Mom: Love you more. Both of you. Be safe.

I turn the phone facedown on my thigh.

"She loves you," I say.

"She does." He tips his cup toward me. "Also thinks you work too damn much."

Both of you.

The cardboard buckles where my thumb presses. I make my thumb loosen. My wrist shifts against the sleeve. Fourteen inches of bench still sits between us. Cole reads it all from beside me.

My coffee cup meets the bench. His free hand rests on the slat between us, three inches from the cup. As I release it, his thumb nudges it an inch farther from the edge. I slide it back where it was, two fingers on the cardboard. It sits the same distance from the edge. My hand stays.

Cole's jaw flexes once. He settles into the bench and sips his coffee.

"I need Dante's stat line from the scrimmage," I say. "For the feature. Can you get it?"

He drinks, looking at me over the rim before he answers, holding there two seconds longer than the swallow takes. My mouth goes dry, and I press my tongue to the roof of it.

"Four goals." He pauses. "Was pissed about it, actually. Like the goals personally offended the fuck out of him."

The cup flexes under my thumb. Taped knuckles flash, a stick, Dante going rigid after a goal, and the arena air comes with it, chemical and sharp, before it's gone.

My next breath comes a second too late. Heat builds under my coat, trapped between wool and skin.

My hand around the cup has gone steady; the one in my lap hasn't, and I press my fingers into my thigh until they ache.

Cole's gaze is already fixed when I look up. His cup pauses near his mouth. His expression hasn't changed.

“Four goals and pissed about it.” My voice stays flat because I make it. “That's consistent with his scrimmage pattern.”

"Is it?"

"He scores easy and gets angry. Scores hard and gets quiet. I've got three months of data on it."

"Three months." He turns the cup in his hand, one rotation, counterclockwise. "On Dante specifically."

"On every player on the roster. That's how features work."

"Sure." He drinks. "Every fucking player on the roster."

Cole's phone vibrates against the bench slat. He lets it sit before he lifts it, and the screen lights his face from below. A text. One line. His jaw goes hard. He thumbs a quick reply, two taps, then sets it facedown on the slat again.

"Dante," he says, before I can ask. "Wants to know if you're coming tonight."

"You didn't answer."

"I said you were thinking about it."

"I'm not."

"Then tell him your damn self." Cole's voice drops half a register. "He's right over there."

I follow his glance. Across the quad, two hundred yards away from the service entrance, the arena's main doors stand wide. A figure waits alone in the rectangle of light, backlit, but I know the silhouette: shoulders squared, head tilted just enough to watch.

It's Dante.

The service door. The bench. Cole reading the text beside me. The cup Cole nudged and I moved back. All of it sits inside his line of sight from that bright rectangle.

Cole pulls in a slow breath through his nose. Holds it. Lets it out before he speaks.

“Come to Elm House tonight,” he says, still looking at the figure in the distance. “Team’s watching Michigan-Denver. Before Addison pulls us for film review.”

"Pass."

"Maya." He puts weight on the name. "Last semester. Come tonight."

"I'll have my bylines. That's enough. "

He pivots toward the building, sliding closer along the bench until the quad is behind him.

His arm stretches along the backrest behind me, and my neck goes still.

The fingertips of his left hand hang an inch from my shoulder, close enough that the heat of him presses through the wool, a small, fixed point of warmth.

He leaves them there. I stay exactly where I am. My collarbone starts keeping its own count, right where his thumb could reach.

"Dante will be there."

Cole's hand flattens on the bench back, fingers gone still. His eyes drop to the path for one second before they come back to mine, and the cardboard buckles where my thumb is.

"Dante lives there," he says. "That's how houses work."

"Exactly."

Cole looks at my cup, then back at me, and holds the look. Seven freckles mark the left side of his nose, clustered between bridge and cheekbone.

"Just come tonight."

I stand. I put the phone back in my pocket and adjust my bag strap where it's dug a groove into my shoulder, then lift the cup from the bench.

Cole stands too and falls into step beside me.

He holds the door for me, arm above me as I pass through.

The sleeve clears my head by an inch. I walk under it.

We take the stairs to the second floor, then walk toward the Chronicle office at the end of the hall.

At the office door, he stops. "Love you, sis." His voice catches on the hallway noise. His smile arrives late.

My teeth press together. I swallow once before I answer. "Step. Call Mom."

His lips touch the top of my head, fast, and his hand settles on my shoulder. His thumb presses into the soft spot where my neck meets my shoulder. I brace for the lift, the release, the step back.

Except this time his thumb moves along the ridge of my shoulder toward my neck, slips beneath the edge of my scarf, onto bare skin.

The callus on the pad of his thumb scrapes the hollow above my collarbone. My breath catches, and the hallway narrows to the width of his thumb touching me. I count three seconds, then four.

He doesn't lift it.