Chapter 21 Wren
I wake before my alarm, the kind of waking that isn’t really waking at all because I never fell properly asleep.
I drifted in and out, skin too hot under the blankets, brain replaying the same images until they blurred into each other—Atlas hitting the boards, Finn’s hurt eyes, Kael’s voice going quiet when he realized I was flinching.
And under all of it, the soft ping of a text I shouldn’t have opened.
Adrian.
My phone sits on the nightstand facedown like a tiny grenade I’m pretending isn’t live.
I stare at it for a long time. The room is gray with early light; the radiator ticks; somewhere in the alley, a delivery truck hisses to a stop.
If I were the kind of person who could pretend hard enough, I’d say the quiet means everything is fine again. Normal. Mine.
I’m not that kind of person anymore.
I slide out of bed, pulling the hoodie over my head as I pad to the kitchen.
The floor is cold under my feet. I put water on for coffee and lean my hip against the counter while it heats, eyes fixed on the phone I brought with me like I can hold it still by glaring hard enough.
My heartbeat is loud in the space between the kettle starting to hum and the first sharp whistle.
I pour. I add too much sugar. I take a sip and burn my tongue.
It’s something concrete to focus on—this hurts because I did it.
Not because someone else decided it for me.
When I finally pick up the phone, my hands are already shaking.
No new messages.
I hate that the absence is its own kind of message. Adrian never pushed during the day before; he always waited for night, for after practice, after dinner, after I was too tired to argue and too raw to lie. He was good at choosing openings. He still is.
I open his last text anyway, because if I’m going to fall apart again this morning, I’d rather do it now, before the arena, before the three men who make my stomach twist with equal parts fear and want see me doing it.
Denver’s the same.
Nothing interesting now that you’re gone.
That sentence should be ordinary. It looks ordinary. If anyone else read it, they’d shrug. Maybe smile. Maybe think he misses me in some safe, distant way that honors what we used to be without touching what we were.
But I hear the old subtext even now: You owe me. You abandoned me. You are interesting because you break, and I like to watch you break.
I delete the thread. Then I empty the deleted folder. Then I put my phone face down again and breathe until the room stops tilting.
I get ready through muscle memory. Leggings.
Trainers. Hair up. The hoodie again because I don’t have the energy for zippers or layers or decisions.
I ignore the skating poster by the door.
I ignore the too-quiet stretch of hallway where a note once slid under my apartment like a dare.
I ignore the sting at my sternum when the cold air outside steals my breath as if it’s trying to keep it.
The walk to the T is short. The platform is full of people pretending they’re alone. I board. I grab a pole and watch the dark walls slide by, a blur of graffiti and old leaks and advertisements. I tell myself not to check my phone.
I check my phone.
Nothing.
I’m grateful and disappointed at the same time, which feels like failing both ways. I stare at the cheap metal map above the seats and trace the stops with my eyes like I’m learning them for the first time, like I’m a visitor here, like I could decide to get off anywhere and vanish.
When I reach the arena, the air is colder, drier.
Familiar. Home in the way hospitals are home to the people who work there—fluorescent and too loud with the wrong kinds of smell, but predictable, contained, a place where jobs exist, and rules hold.
I tell myself that means safety. It doesn’t, not always, but I tell myself anyway.
I head to the training room, flick on the lights, and exhale when it’s empty except for the neatly stacked wraps and the smell of eucalyptus from the cleaner I switched to yesterday.
I start small tasks so my brain has something to chew on—replacing the trash bag, sorting gauze by size, checking the med kit inventory.
I listen to the building wake up. Doors thud.
A vacuum hums somewhere down the hall. Water rushes through pipes like applause.
I still haven’t looked at my phone again when the first players start rolling through the doorway with sleepy greetings and jokes that skim the surface of real warmth—Whitaker’s sing-song “Harperrrr,” Norty’s mumbled “Morning, Doc,” a rookie’s shy nod.
I smile and nod and keep my hands busy. Finn breezes by with a paper tray of coffees, catches my eye, and almost veers toward me before he stops, recalibrates, and simply lifts the tray half an inch in a little salute.
I manage a small smile. It feels like he’s offering me a lifeline and promising not to tug.
Kael appears in the door next, already in practice gear, jaw set like usual, but softer at the edges. His gaze finds me, catalogues me, then slides on like he’s decided today I get distance unless I ask for more. It lands strangely in my chest—grateful, hollow, both.
Atlas is last, hoodie half-zipped, laces dragging, an ice pack bunched at the point of his shoulder under the fabric like it never left.
He doesn’t come to me. He stops just inside the room and watches me like he’s daring me to tell him to leave.
When I don’t, his chin dips once. Not approval. Not relief. Just a... truce. For now.
The room fills, empties, refills as guys drift through for tape and stretching bands and excuses to talk about nothing. It should be enough distraction to get me to practice without thinking. It almost is.
Then my phone buzzes.
The sound is small. The inside of my mouth goes dry anyway. I keep my face neutral as I wipe my hands on my hoodie and reach for the device where it sits on the counter beneath the box of nitrile gloves.
One new message.
The name makes my stomach drop through the floor.
Adrian Frost
I don’t open it right away. I let a player chatter in my ear about something to do with sticks and a superstition, nodding when it sounds like I should.
I hand over tape, cut two extra pieces because everything in me wants to stall.
He thanks me and heads out. The door swings shut, and the room goes quiet again except for the building hum.
I click the message.
Saw your first game is Friday.
You always liked Friday ice.
Congrats.
It’s innocuous. It’s friendly. It’s a stranger wishing an old acquaintance luck.
I grip the counter to keep my fingers from doing something stupid, like typing back that I didn’t like Friday ice, that he did, that he liked the pressure and I liked the air right after it broke and silence flooded in.
I type instead: Thanks.
I don’t send it.
The bubble sits there while my thumb hovers.
I imagine the versions of this moment where I choose differently.
I block him. I write, Please stop. I write, Lose my number.
I write, If you come to Boston, I will call the police.
I write, I will tell everyone what you did.
I write, You broke me and I am still trying to figure out all the ways to piece myself back together.
I erase the unsent word and put the phone down like it’s burning.
I turn. I grab the kit with nothing missing. I check the ice. I make more lists in my head—caffeine, lunch, re-order more kinesiology tape in black because the guys think it looks cooler on camera, even though it’s the same product.
The phone buzzes again.
Before I can stop myself, I swipe.
I’m proud of you.
Really.
Boston’s a big step.
I didn’t think you had it in you to go so far.
Far.
The word scrapes. He means distance like miles, and he also means distance like a leaving he doesn’t authorize. You went too far. You are too far. Come back.
I swallow the sick taste in my mouth and type nothing. My thumb is shaking. I put the phone down facedown again, then flip it screen up a second later like I don’t want to be ambushed.
“Hey,” a voice says softly near the door.
I jerk hard enough that the box of wraps wobbles.
Finn. He pauses, hands up, eyes warm and careful. “It’s just me.”
My throat is so tight the first answer doesn’t come out. I try again. “Hi.”
He crosses to the table and sets a coffee near the corner of my clipboard, not moving any closer than he needs to. “I remembered how you take it.”
“It’s... perfect,” I manage.
He watches my face for a beat, the way people do when they’re trying to see if your smile is real. I don’t know what my face is doing. Probably all the wrong things. He doesn’t push. He just nods once and backs away the same gentle way he came in, like a tide receding.
When he disappears, the room feels too large. I stare at the coffee until the lid goes cold. I force a sip to prove something to myself. It’s good. It doesn’t touch the tremor that keeps rolling through me anyway.
Time buckles in the way it does when you’re waiting for something you can’t control.
I tape three wrists. I unspool an elastic bandage and roll it neatly again.
I double-knot a rookie’s skate because he’s nervous and his hands won’t listen.
I say it’s normal to be nervous and pretend I’m not telling myself that too.
Every few minutes my eyes flick to my phone like it might rear up and strike.
When it pings the third time, I nearly drop the scissors.
My thumb is too fast. I swipe before my brain catches up with my body.
Walked by a place that reminded me of you.
Funny how memory follows you, isn’t it?
There’s a picture attached.
My chest caves. I don’t open the photo. I don’t need to open it to know it will be a street somewhere. A sign. A color. A lamp. Something that could be anywhere and nowhere, something that isn’t a threat until you hear it in his voice.