Chapter 2
Cade Mercer
Coach Little had been talking for nine minutes and thirty-two seconds when Easton leaned close enough for me to smell spearmint gum and bad judgment.
“Throwing a party tonight,” he whispered.
I kept my eyes on Coach. “No.”
Easton’s shoulder knocked mine lightly. “That wasn’t a question.”
“It should’ve been.”
Across the film room, Coach Little paced in front of the whiteboard with a dry-erase marker in one hand and the exhausted patience of a man who had spent too many years trying to convince twenty-year-old hockey players that talent did not make them invincible.
Behind him, the projector showed last season’s final rankings, preseason conditioning expectations, and a neatly organized list of ways we could apparently embarrass the university before October if we forgot how to act like adults.
I was trying to listen.
Actually trying.
Preseason mattered. Structure mattered. The first meeting back always set the tone, and the tone for this year needed to be clean, disciplined, and ugly in the ways that won games.
We had the roster for it. Speed. Depth. Goaltending.
Campus worship. Alumni pressure. The kind of preseason attention that made everyone outside this room think the Frozen Four was already ours to lose.
Which meant Coach Little was already irritated. Which meant I needed my Goalie and friend, Easton Wade, to shut the hell up.
“You hear me?” Easton whispered.
Unfortunately, yes.
I heard him, the hum of the ancient projector, Briggs tapping his pen against his knee three seats ahead of us, Chris Rider tearing the label off a water bottle with surgical precision, the air vent rattling overhead every fourteen seconds, and the faint squeak of somebody’s shoe dragging against the floor behind me.
I heard all of it whether I wanted to or not.
My brain had never been polite enough to filter the world down to one thing unless that one thing mattered enough to devour everything else.
Hockey usually did… Bliss Bennett sometimes did.
Which was inconvenient as hell, considering she was not currently in this room, not remotely related to Coach Little’s preseason expectations, and not something I needed taking up space in my head while my team was being reminded that half the school expected us to become legends by Christmas.
“Mercer,” Coach Little snapped.
My eyes cut to him immediately. “Yes, Coach.”
His stare narrowed. “Since you look so focused, tell me what I just said.”
Easton coughed into his fist like the coward he was.
I did not look at him. “No off-campus incidents, no stupid fights, no viral videos, no hazing, no running your mouths to campus media, and if anybody gets arrested before the season opener, you’ll personally make sure we wish we’d picked golf.”
A low ripple of laughter moved through the room.
Coach Little stared at me for two seconds longer before pointing the marker in my direction. “Correct. Which tells me you can listen while Wade flaps his gums in your ear, but I’d prefer you didn’t encourage him.”
“I’m not encouraging him,” I said. “That is all natural.”
“You exist,” Briggs called from the front row. “That encourages him.”
Easton grinned like an idiot.
Coach Little rubbed a hand over his face. “Lawson, I have not missed you.”
“Hurts, Coach.” Briggs mocks with a pout.
“It was meant to.”
The room settled again, but the energy had shifted into that familiar Fury rhythm I knew better than almost anything.
Too many bodies in one space, all of us fresh off summer conditioning and already restless for ice.
The film room smelled like athletic tape, cold coffee, laundry detergent, and the faint chemical bite of the rink that seemed permanently embedded in every wall of the building.
Some guys sat forward, elbows on knees, already locked in.
Others sprawled like they were allergic to authority.
Briggs looked like he was one bad decision away from turning the meeting into performance art, and Rider sat beside him with that infuriating calm he had, like nothing in the world could surprise him because he’d already decided he was too pretty to react.
Easton, unfortunately, was still breathing next to me with purpose.
That meant he wasn’t done.
Coach Little turned back to the board. “You want to enjoy the fact that this campus treats you like royalty, fine. Enjoy it. But understand something right now. The second you put on that jersey, every idiot thing you do becomes bigger than you. It becomes the program. It becomes Kimball Falls University. It becomes my blood pressure, and I am trying very hard to stay alive long enough to retire somewhere warm where none of you can find me.”
Rider raised his hand without changing expression. “Would we be invited to visit?”
“No.”
Briggs nodded. “That means yes.”
“It means I’d fake my own death,” Coach said.
I almost smiled, but Easton leaned in again before it had the chance to happen.
“Aura said she’d come.”
That got through.
Not visibly. I was better than that. My face stayed exactly where I left it, neutral and attentive, eyes still on Coach Little as he launched into a speech about leadership, campus conduct, and the fine line between confidence and stupidity.
But inside, something shifted with the precision of a lock turning.
Bliss did not go to Hockey House unless Aura and Charm dragged her there, and Bliss Bennett did not go anywhere alone if she could avoid it.
The thought arrived fully formed before I could stop it.
Bliss would probably come.
The film room sharpened around me in a way I hated.
The rattle of the vent got louder. Briggs’s pen tapped twice, paused, tapped once.
Coach Little’s marker squeaked against the board as he underlined accountability three times like the word had personally betrayed him.
My pulse stayed even because I had spent my entire life learning how to keep my body from reporting on me, but my attention had already begun rearranging itself around a girl who wasn’t even in the building.
Bliss Bennett.
Sports media major. Junior. Warm smile. Sharp mouth.
Always smelled faintly like vanilla, rain, and whatever expensive lotion girls pretended was casual.
She laughed with her whole face when something genuinely caught her off guard, but most of the time she gave people a lighter version of it.
Pretty. Practiced. Easy enough to satisfy anyone who wasn’t actually paying attention.
I had been paying attention for almost a year.
Not in a way anyone could accuse me of. Not openly.
Not stupidly. I didn’t chase her around campus or crowd her at parties or make a spectacle of wanting her because I wasn’t Briggs and I had no interest in being obvious.
I saw her through mutual friends, at games, at The Sin Bin, in the student media office when the team got dragged into interviews, at group hangouts where she was always somehow the brightest thing in the room without trying to be.
And every time, my brain kept her and details stuck when they usually didn’t.
The way she twisted rings around her fingers when conversations got too serious.
The way she checked exits in crowded rooms so quickly most people would never catch it.
The way she angled her body when men stepped too close, still smiling, still sweet, still performing okay so well that people believed her because people liked believing beautiful girls were uncomplicated.
The way her real laugh hit lower than her fake one.
The way she looked at hockey players like she’d already learned something about us she wasn’t interested in explaining.
That should have annoyed me when instead, it made me want to know why.
“See?” Easton murmured, smugness threading through his voice. “Now you’re interested.”
I turned my head just enough to look at him. “You’re throwing a party because Aura finally agreed to show up?”
“I’m throwing a preseason party because school starts Monday and our community deserves morale.”
“Our community.”
“The people need us, Mercer.”
“The people you invite need therapy.”
“Also true.”
I faced forward again. “Why did Aura agree?”
Easton’s grin softened in a way most people wouldn’t have noticed. I noticed because Easton did very few things by accident. He played goalie like he was built out of patience and quiet rage, all calm hands and cold reads, and he handled his personal life with almost the same discipline.
Almost.
Aura was the exception.
She had been the exception since sophomore year, when she’d told him he had the emotional range of a locked filing cabinet, and from that moment forward, she became the reason he woke up every day determined to embarrass himself with dignity.
He was down bad for her and Aura knew it, though she couldn’t be bothered to give a single fuck.
“I told her it wasn’t a party,” he whispered.
I blinked once. “You lied.”
“I reframed.”
“You lied to a pre-law student.”
“Future lawyer,” he corrected. “Which means she appreciates wording.”
“She’s going to end you.”
“Probably. But she’ll have to show up first.”
Against my will, my mouth threatened another smile.
Coach Little turned from the board so fast half the room sat up straighter from reflex alone. “Wade, since you’re so chatty today, why don’t you tell me what our defensive priority is coming into preseason?”
Easton leaned back lazily. “Clean exits, tighter neutral zone pressure, no lazy turnovers at the blue line, and if Briggs pinches without support, you’re making him bag skate until he sees deceased relatives.”
Briggs lifted both hands. “I feel attacked.”
“You are,” Coach said.