Chapter 34 #3
By the time we got Bliss into Hockey House, the entire place felt like it had been holding its breath.
For once, there was no music pounding through the walls.
No freshmen lingering on the porch pretending they belonged there.
No half-empty cups abandoned on the kitchen island.
No Briggs shouting from another room. No one laughing too loud or making the house feel like the center of every terrible decision on campus.
Rider and Briggs had cleared the main floor before we arrived, and somebody had opened windows long enough to chase out the stale beer smell, leaving behind cold Michigan air, detergent, pizza grease, and the faint chemical bite of the rink that clung to all of us no matter how many times we showered.
Bliss hated every second of being helped inside.
She hated the arm I kept around her. Hated the way Aura hovered close on one side and Charm on the other.
Hated the fact that Ryker walked behind us like he was prepared to catch her if her knees gave out.
Hated the stairs most of all, because the second she looked up at them, I saw the calculation cross her bruised face.
Pain.
Pride.
Stubbornness.
My girl was going to try to climb three flights of stairs on broken ribs and spite.
“No,” I said before she opened her mouth.
Her swollen eyes cut to mine. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to say you can walk.”
“I can walk.”
“And I’m going to carry you.”
Her mouth parted, outrage flickering through the pain medication making her eyes soft around the edges. “Absolutely not. This is how rumors start.”
Briggs, standing near the bottom of the stairs with both hands shoved into the pocket of his Fury hoodie, lifted one finger. “Technically, they already started.”
“Read the room,” Aura snapped.
He immediately lowered his hand. “Yep. Fair. Bad timing.”
Bliss tried to glare at him and winced instead, which made every person in the foyer flinch like we were wired to her pain now. She noticed that too and let out a careful, frustrated breath.
“I hate this,” she whispered.
I stepped closer and lowered my voice so only she could hear me. “I know.”
“No, you don’t. I look like I got jumped by a disgruntled Sin Binner, I’m being relocated against my will, and now you’re about to carry me through a hockey house like some damsel in distress giving Renaissance era.”
My mouth twitched despite the rage still sitting under my skin. “That was specific.”
“You are specific.”
“I’m carrying you, Pip.”
Her lips pressed together, trembling once before she covered it with attitude because that was what she did. That was how she stayed standing even when she could barely breathe. “If you drop me, I’m haunting you.”
“I won’t drop you.”
“That’s what men say before ruining lives.”
“I’m not men.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
The joke faded for half a second because no, I wasn’t. I was different to her and not part of the male branding she was so proud of.
I slid one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees, moving as carefully as I could.
Even then, pain flashed across her face when I lifted her, and it took everything in me not to turn around, walk out of that house, and start hunting.
She buried her face against my shoulder for one second, just one, while the room stayed painfully quiet around us.
Then she whispered, “This is humiliating.”
I carried her toward the stairs. “You’re handling it with grace.”
“I’m handling it with narcotics and rage.”
“What do you think I meant by grace?”
Charm sniffed behind us. Aura muttered something under her breath that sounded threatening enough to make Easton straighten like he wanted to volunteer to commit the crime for her.
Ryan said nothing, but when I glanced down, he was already at the foot of the stairs watching the front door instead of us.
Good.
Everyone had started looking in the right directions.
I got Bliss upstairs and into my room without jostling her more than necessary.
Charm and Aura followed with bags, blankets, medication, water bottles, chargers, skincare, and enough supplies to survive a minor apocalypse if the apocalypse had a strong preference for lip gloss and soft pajamas.
Easton lingered in the hallway because Aura had not invited him in, which meant he would rather die than cross the threshold without permission.
Ryan stayed downstairs. Briggs and Rider posted themselves near the main floor like they had been assigned positions, which they had, even if nobody had officially said it.
Bliss sat on the edge of my bed looking too small in my room and too pissed off about it to be treated like glass.
“It’s so you in here,” she said as Charm tucked another pillow behind her back.
I glanced around. “What does that mean?”
“Unnecessarily expensive. Emotionally private. Smells good in a suspicious way.”
“It smells suspicious?”
“Like a man with a trust fund and body wash he didn’t buy from a grocery store.”
Charm nodded. “Accurate.”
Aura set Bliss’s medication on the nightstand. “Deeply accurate.”
“You’re all enjoying this too much,” I said.
Bliss lifted one shoulder carefully. “You brought me here. This is your consequence.”
I leaned down and adjusted the blanket over her legs because touching something helped. Doing something helped. If I stopped moving, I was going to see her throat again. Her face. Luke’s handprint. The way her body had felt too light when I carried her.
Her fingers brushed mine on the blanket, and her expression softened enough to almost break me.
“I’m okay for five minutes,” she said quietly.
She wasn’t.
But I understood what she was really telling me.
Go do what you need to do before you explode.
I bent and kissed the top of her hand, not caring that Charm’s eyes filled instantly or Aura looked away like she was giving us privacy in the only way she could inside a room full of fear.
“I’ll be downstairs.”
Bliss’s mouth curved faintly. “Try not to buy a private army.”
I paused.
Her eyes narrowed. “Cade.”
“I said I’ll be downstairs.”
“That was not an answer.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
I left before she could argue, because if I stayed, I’d sit beside her and hold her hand for the next forty-eight hours without doing the thing I knew had to be done.
Downstairs, Hockey House had shifted into something I had never seen before.
My guys were quiet. Not hungover quiet. Not pregame quiet.
Different. A kind of watchful silence that made the entire house feel braced.
Rider stood near the front windows. Briggs had his laptop open at the kitchen island, not doing a damn thing on it.
Ryan leaned against the counter with his arms folded, eyes on me the second I came down.
And scattered throughout was the entire team, even the freshmen who we didn’t let live here.
This was support, not loud or vain, but my team showing up because one of ours needed it.
“You good?” Ryan asked.
“No.”
He nodded once. “Didn’t think so.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and stared at my father’s contact.
Harrison Mercer.
I had called my father plenty of times in my life.
About schedules. Travel. Donor events. Draft meetings.
Summer training. Appearances. Documents that needed signing.
Conversations that never sounded like conversations because Harrison Mercer had a gift for making fatherhood feel like a board meeting with genetic ties.
I had never called him because I needed him.
My thumb hovered over his name, and Ryan saw it. He didn’t say a word, and that was why he was my best friend.
I stepped into the back hall near the mudroom where the sound wouldn’t carry upstairs, then hit call before I could talk myself out of it.
He answered on the third ring.
“Cade.”
Not hello.
Not concern.
Just my name, clipped and alert, like I’d interrupted something expensive.
“I need your help.”
Silence.
The words felt foreign in my mouth. Wrong.
Weak in a way that made my shoulders lock even though no one was there to see it.
I stared at the row of skates and sticks against the wall while cold air pressed faintly through the back door and reminded myself this was not about me.
Pride did not protect Bliss. Resentment did not lock the doors.
History did not put security outside the house.
My father’s voice changed. Not much, but enough. “What happened?”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
“My girlfriend was assaulted.”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
Then, sharper, “Is she alive?”
The question hit harder than I expected because there was no distance in it. No immediate pivot to liability or reputation or whether this affected my season. Just a clean, brutal question from a man who suddenly sounded like he had stood up wherever he was.
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Hockey House.”
“Is the man in custody?”
“No. Warrant’s out. He’s running.”
“What do you need?”
I leaned my shoulder against the wall, the pressure in my chest shifting because I had been ready to fight him for this. Ready to explain. Ready to turn need into negotiation because that was the only language we usually shared.
But he was already there.
“I need private security here tonight,” I said.
“Not campus security. Real security. Discreet, but visible enough to make anyone think twice. I need an attorney retained before he is arrested, someone who understands assault cases, victim protection, evidence, media exposure, all of it. She needs to know her options before the police interview goes any deeper. Her brother is a cop, but he can’t touch the case directly.
Her family is blue-collar. They’ll fight like hell, but this part—” My throat tightened.
“This part is going to get ugly. The kind with a hefty price tag.”
“What’s her name?”
“Bliss Bennett.”