Chapter 27 Finn
The rink is loud enough to pass for normal—steel on ice, whistles snapping, the staccato thud of pucks hitting glass—so I pretend normal is an option. I can do that. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. Smile. Skate. Score. Make the room believe you.
But normal is a costume.
Wren steps out from the corridor with Atlas a beat behind her, and the costume tears a little at the seams.
She looks steadier than she did when she followed him away—chin up, shoulders set, the careful competence I’ve watched her build piece by piece since she got to Boston. Better, not fine. And better counts.
Atlas does what he said he’d do. He peels off toward the far lane, staking out a spot where she can see him every time she looks up. No nod. No wave. Just a fixed point in a moving storm.
I get it. I also hate that I get it.
Because I know why she needs it.
Because I’m part of the reason she made it back out here at all.
Last night, she didn’t sleep. She curled against me and shook like her bones were making noise.
I held her through it. I watched the phone light up and felt her go small, and I wanted to put my fist through the wall because there are only so many times you can tell someone she’s safe when her body remembers otherwise.
Adrian.
His name doesn’t belong anywhere near her life anymore, and yet there it is, like a stain that keeps bleeding through fresh paint.
He’s good, too, at getting under her skin and protecting himself at the same time.
Too good. No threats that trip easy alarms. Nothing you can neatly hand to a cop without a backstory.
Just enough to fold Wren in half with dread and make every room feel like it has a second door you can’t see.
She let me in last night. Told me more than she has anyone else. Not everything—she’s still carrying a piece that hurts to look at—but enough that the shape of it sits in my chest like a blade.
I know.
Kael doesn’t. Atlas doesn’t.
And I’m caught between protecting her and warning them as the ice turns under my skates and Coach blows the next drill to life.
I push off into the neutral zone, backward stride smooth and automatic, eyes flicking up every few seconds to find her at the boards.
She’s moving through jobs—checking laces, swapping tape, chirping a rookie who thinks electrolytes are optional.
Half the team is a little in love with her, the other half terrified she’ll bench them in front of their mothers, and I don’t blame either group.
She’s the kind of person who recalibrates the room by existing in it.
Usually.
Today she’s recalibrating herself every sixty seconds.
Kael whistles a reset. I loop back across center and catch his eye. He does the thing he does—two fingers, tiny flick—captain-code for You good?
I nod, because the truth is too complicated for hand signals.
He holds my stare half a beat longer than normal, like he’s reading a line of text I didn’t mean to show him, then pivots to correct a rookie’s footwork.
He knows something is off. Kael always knows. He’ll wait to name it until he’s sure.
Atlas, meanwhile, is pretending to focus on his lane and not on Wren.
He fails. His attention tracks her like it’s magnetized.
He’s not subtle—never has been—and for once, I’m grateful for that.
If anything breathes wrong within ten feet of her, he’ll feel it first. It should make me less tense. It doesn’t.
Because part of me wants to be the only one who feels it first.
I cut through two cones and glide past the glass, tapping it twice with my stick without slowing down. Wren looks up, that small tired smile angling one corner of her mouth. The muscles in my back unknot by a millimeter.
“You good?” I mouth.
“Better,” she says.
Better counts. I cling to the phrase like it’s a bannister in a dark stairwell.
We switch to a mini-scrimmage and I let my body eat the ice—start-stop, edgework clean, ankles soft, stick light until it isn’t.
Kael threads a pass through traffic and I take it on the fly, clipping the post high and left.
The clang ricochets through the arena. A rookie hoots.
I point my stick at him like “next time, watch and learn,” and he laughs.
Control the energy before it controls you—Dad’s old mantra stuck in my head like an unwanted anthem. Some habits pay rent.
I steal a glance at the boards.
Wren is there, hip against the cart, attention fixed on the ice. Except—I know that stare. It’s the one that looks like presence but is actually a guard dog at the door.
Her drawer is shut. Her phone is inside it. I watched her put it there like she was putting a match in a bucket of water. It won’t stop the smoke from finding her.
The puck flips to my line again. I shoulder past a defenseman who should be heavier than me but gets turned into air, muscle and muscle memory working like friends.
We cycle twice and Kael buries a shot top shelf, dead center.
Our bench bangs sticks. Coach says nothing, but I see the approval in the set of his mouth.
And then—
I feel it before I hear it.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
The drawer lights under the smallest sliver of space. The vibration is barely audible under the noise, yet Wren’s whole body tightens like someone pulled a wire inside her chest.
Adrian, I think, and ice water knifes through my veins.
Not shock. Not discovery. Recognition. The pattern is a song I can hum in the dark now: he goes quiet long enough to make hope feel like a thing, then he taps her shoulder from miles away and reminds her that hope is a trick.
Atlas’s head snaps so fast it looks like pain.
He finds the drawer, then her face. His gloves flex.
He breathes once, twice, like he’s smashing a rage button and waiting for the light to go off.
I respect the hell out of him for it. I also want to rip the boards off their screws and hand Adrian his teeth.
Kael slides past the blue line and lands his weight into stillness, the way he does when he’s collecting data. No one else would notice it. I do. He’s inventorying the room, cataloging inputs, readying a decision that will look like it took him one second and actually took him thirty.
Coach kills the play. Guys drift. I coast hard to the bench like I meant to be there, stick braced, pretending I’m thirsty so no one asks why my heart is in my throat.
Wren doesn’t touch the drawer. She sets her jaw and wraps a wrist, steady fingers on someone else’s skin because it’s easier to control pain when it isn’t yours.
“Harper,” I say, soft enough that she can ignore it if she needs to.
She doesn’t look up. “How’s your edge? You were slipping left on the tight turns.”
“I was flirting with slipping left,” I say. “Don’t reduce my artistry.”
The smallest curve of her mouth says hi, I see you trying. The next breath says I can’t do this in front of everyone.
I angle closer without crowding. “I meant—are you...”
“Refill station needs more bottles,” she says. “Unless you want Kael to give a lecture about kidney function.”
“Bold of you to assume he wouldn’t anyway,” I say.
A rookie stumbles and swears. Coach barks his number. Atlas pushes off to reset in his lane. Kael points at me and then to the circle: get your head in or I’ll take it off. I give him a salute that makes him roll his eyes. He doesn’t hide the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth, either.
I skate the next rep angry on purpose—clean footwork, sharper shots, anger as a tool instead of a match. Dad again. “Use it or it uses you.” I hated him for that sentence once. Sometimes I still do. But it works. It gets me through three drills and a line change without screaming.
When Coach finally calls it, guys peel off toward the tunnel, laughing, chirping, the usual chaos fizzing out of their pores. Wren stays by the cart like she’s bracing it, like if she lets go her hands will shake.
Atlas reaches her first, because of course he does.
He stops close, not touching. His eyes say I promised and I’m here and tell me where to stand if it helps.
Kael takes longer, tying a conversation off with Coach that is half real and half cover.
He’s captain enough to know privacy has more value than speed.
I rip my gloves off and follow the gravity that has owned me since the day Wren walked into our facility pretending she wasn’t the bravest person in the room.
“Hey,” I say. “Want a walk to the office?”
“I’ve got post-practice rehabs,” she answers without looking up. “Two defensemen.”
“You can do it there.”
“I can do it here.”
Which is Wren for I am not ready for a smaller room.
Her hand hovers over the drawer. I watch the hover, not the drawer, because last night I promised not to make her feel watched, even when I am. We made rules at two a.m. when the shaking finally slowed. Soft rules, not hard ones, because trauma laughs at absolutes.
We made a safety plan too, the sort that sounds clinical and boring until it saves your life.
Code word. Who she texts if she can’t talk.
Where the cameras are in the facility. The security office number.
My number, Kael’s number, Atlas’s number—even if she hasn’t used the last two yet.
The campus escort program. What to do if she sees him.
What to do if she thinks she sees him. The difference between those two is the trap, and we named it out loud so it would be smaller.
I was supposed to sleep on her couch. I ended up on the floor by the door because she finally drifted off and I couldn’t make myself put distance between me and the lock.
I picture that lock now. I hate it for existing.
The drawer lights again. Once. Twice. Then stillness.