Chapter 21 Wren #2
You can’t outrun me.
Breathe.
I set the phone down and step back so fast the back of my knees hit the cabinet door, and it thuds.
I press my fingers to my temple and count silently, a trick from physical therapy I learned when the panic was more visible, when I needed safe numbers to anchor my body.
Four in. Hold. Four out. Hold. Again. Again. Again.
It helps. By a thread. By a breath. Enough to make the room stop tilting.
The door opens again—not Finn this time. The air changes the way it always does when Kael walks in, temperature adjusting around whatever gravity he brought with him. He stops two steps inside the room, eyes moving over my face, down to my hands braced on the counter, to the phone, back to my face.
I hate how much relief floods me and how much fear rides inside it. He is too much. He is also safe in ways I don’t have words for. Those two truths hit each other like colliding weather, and my body doesn’t know which way to lean.
“You good?” he asks. Neutral. Captain-quiet.
“Yes,” I answer. It sounds like a plea.
His gaze shifts. Not a move closer. Not a question. A choice. “Finn said you like the music down a notch on drill days.” He nods toward the rink, toward the speakers that will start pulsing any minute. “Want me to ask Coach?”
I blink. I didn’t know Finn noticed. I didn’t know anyone did. “It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
No.
I nod anyway.
Kael’s jaw works like he’s chewing a thought. “If you need five before you come out—”
“I’m fine,” I snap, too quickly.
His face doesn’t change. The air changes anyway, goes thinner. He nods once as if I confirmed what he already knew—she’s not fine, she’s not ready to say it—and he backs out of the room like he’s leaving something fragile on a ledge and doesn’t want his presence to make wind.
When he’s gone, I sag forward until my forehead almost touches my forearm. The phone sits where I left it, screen gone dark, photo unopened. I pick it up. I tap the image with a finger that doesn’t feel like mine.
It’s a café window. Reflection of someone passing. You can’t see their face. There’s a chalkboard with the special written in looping handwriting. The words mean nothing. The font does.
They used that font at a place in Denver we went to after morning skate, when I still believed the worst thing in our day would be a clumsy dismount or a coach’s bad mood.
We sat at a two-top near the window, and he told me I’d never find croissants like theirs anywhere else, and I nodded because I hadn’t yet learned you could disagree without paying for it later.
If I pretend hard, the photo is nothing. If I am honest, the photo is a hand on the back of my neck, dressed as a memory.
I don’t respond.
The screen stays open, simmering.
Two dots appear. Disappear. Appear.
I can hear his voice even before the words arrive.
We should catch up.
Phone?
I’ll keep it easy.
Promise.
It’s almost gentle. It isn’t. Adrien doesn’t do gentle unless it gets him what he wants.
I lock the phone so fast my thumb stutters, and a shaky breath hitches in my throat.
I can feel tears crowding even before I tell myself not to.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes the way you did when you were a kid, when you believed the right pressure could stop everything from leaking out.
The door creaks.
I yank my hands down and turn my face toward the shelves like I’m looking for a specific size of wrap.
“Harper?” Finn’s voice is cautious, like he knows better than to come all the way in without a signal. “Coach wants to bump warmup five. Uh, because—” he flails for a plausible reason I can agree to— “because the ice is too fresh and he wants you to be there so they don’t do anything dumb.”
It’s nonsense. It helps anyway. I swallow and try to make my voice normal. “I’ll be right out.”
Finn doesn’t leave. I feel him hanging in the doorway, the weight of concern like a hand on my shoulder without the hand.
When I turn, he’s not watching my face. He’s looking at my fingers where they grip the edge of the shelf.
It’s a kindness I don’t deserve. He gives me time to smooth my hands on my hoodie.
He lifts his chin, offering another exit. “Want me to tell Kael to stall?”
“No,” I say, and it sounds steadier, like I borrowed his breath for a second. “I’m coming now.”
He nods and backs away, that same tide motion that quiets more than it stirs.
The door shuts. I let out the breath I’ve been strangling.
I look at my phone one more time, at the unopened message.
I block him. My thumb hovers. I can feel the old fear clench at the idea, the certainty that I’m not allowed to do that.
I don’t block him.
I hate myself for that.
I slide the phone into my hoodie pocket and walk out to the rink, the cold meeting my cheeks like a slap that is also a wake-up.
The boards gleam. The guys are already drifting onto the ice, blades singing low.
Kael turns his head like he felt me enter the room and then deliberately looks away.
Finn taps his stick twice near the bench like a hello.
Atlas doesn’t acknowledge me at all. He skates a slow line along the far boards, head down, fury leashed.
I could cry now, and it would feel like relief. I don’t cry. I stand with my clipboard like always and nod at the assistant who hates kinesiology tape and only wears it when cameras are on.
My phone vibrates against my ribs.
I don’t check it.
I stare at the ice until the world stops being two inches from my face and re-expands to its real size.
I breathe. I think in tasks again: wrist, wrap, check blades, tell Whitaker to stretch, ask Norty about that hip, tell Coach I need an extra five minutes after warmup to test Atlas’s range.
The second hand on the clock moves like it knows I need it to.
The building’s lungs fill and empty and fill again.
Only when the first drill begins and the guys are too loud to hear a small sound do I slide my phone out and glance down.
One new message.
Break a leg Friday.
Kidding, of course.
You know I’d never want that for you.
The arena is suddenly too bright.
I shove the phone back into my pocket so hard it bumps bone, and for a moment, the ice doesn’t look like ice at all. It looks like a painted surface that remembers falling. It looks like a mouth that could open if it wanted to.
I swallow until my throat burns and lift the clipboard higher, a small shield in a place that doesn’t protect the right things.
I will not break here.
I will not break here.
I will not break here.
“Wren,” someone says quietly at my shoulder, and I force my face toward the voice before the tears decide to show themselves.
Finn again. Just a step away, exactly far enough. He nods toward the bench. “You dropped your pen.”
I didn’t. He knows I didn’t. He holds one out anyway, like a lifeline I can say yes to.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it.
He doesn’t leave yet. He lowers his voice even more. “You okay if I stay close out here? Not in your space. Just... here.”
I think about saying no. I think about saying yes. I think about the text humming in my pocket like a mosquito I can’t swat in front of the entire world. “Here is fine.”
He smiles, small and real, and drifts a little down the boards, enough to give me air and still be there if my knees unlock.
On the ice, Kael snaps at a rookie who’s drifting the wrong way. Atlas throws his weight into a turn that should not be legal in three states and makes it look like gravity is a rumor. The arena breathes again. So do I, barely.
My phone buzzes one more time. I don’t look.
I’ll look later.
Or I won’t.
Either way, he is here with me now, without being in this building at all.
I watch the ice. I take notes. I steady my hands on the edge of the boards until the tremor becomes a pulse again. When Finn glances back at me, I give him half a nod—nothing anyone else would see—and he gives me the same one back.
I am not fine.
But I am upright.
And for this minute, that is the only thing I know how to be.