Chapter 40
Cade
By the time postgame media finally let me breathe, the arena had started emptying in uneven waves of noise.
Reporters packed up cameras near the press backdrop.
Students still roared somewhere beyond the concrete corridors, drunk on a Fury win and whatever mythology they wanted to build around a hockey team in October.
Staff moved equipment with clipped efficiency while Coach Little finished talking to a guy from local sports radio near the tunnel, his expression caught somewhere between proud and pissed because we had won ugly and apparently winning ugly still came with a lecture if you were unlucky enough to make eye contact.
I should’ve been listening.
I was not.
My head was already outside.
Bliss had texted me before wrap-up started, letting me know she’d meet me near the main exit with her family, Aura, and Charm.
Her dad was there. Her brothers were there.
The girls were with her. She was surrounded by enough Bennetts to make a small country reconsider invasion, and still, my entire nervous system had been grinding its teeth for the last twenty minutes because she was somewhere I wasn’t.
That was my life now.
I had become a man who scored twice, took a late hit without reacting, answered questions about neutral-zone pressure like a functional human being, and still spent the entire media scrum thinking about a five-foot-two blonde menace waiting outside wearing my number.
Pathetic.
Accurate, but pathetic.
“Mercer,” Briggs called from a few feet ahead of me, already walking backward down the hallway with his suit jacket thrown over one shoulder and a grin sharp enough to be illegal.
“You coming, or are you doing that haunted-captain thing where you stare into the middle distance and make the interns nervous?”
Ryan snorted beside him, tugging at his tie. “He’s not haunted. He’s wondering how fast he can get outside before Bliss decides she’s cold and steals another article of clothing.”
“She can have whatever she wants,” I said, pushing past them toward the locker room.
Briggs slapped a hand to his chest. “Disgusting.”
Ryan shook his head. “Terminal.”
“Both of you are annoying as hell.”
“Yet we stand correct,” Briggs said.
I ignored him and shoved through the locker room doors into the stale, familiar air of wet gear, tape, sweat, disinfectant, and victory.
The room was mostly cleared out now, most of the guys already dressed and heading toward whatever postgame chaos waited outside.
A few freshmen lingered near their stalls, speaking too loudly because they were still trying to prove they belonged in the room.
Rider was gone already. Easton too, probably out front pretending not to orbit Aura while she pretended not to enjoy it.
My stall looked like every postgame version of me had exploded in one place.
Suit bag half-zipped. Tape balled up near my skates. Water bottle on its side. Duffle open beneath the bench.
I crouched in front of my duffle and started digging through it, moving faster with every second that passed.
Gloves, hoodie, extra socks, the roll of athletic tape I always kept in the side pocket, the folded team-issued warmups I didn’t remember shoving in there—none of it mattered.
My phone wasn’t there. Irritation pulled tight through my jaw as I stood and checked my suit pocket, then the inside pocket of my jacket, my patience thinning when my fingers came up empty again.
My pulse stayed even, but irritation sharpened under my ribs. Not because it was just a phone. Because Bliss was outside waiting, and I did not like being unreachable with Luke Dempsey still breathing the same air as her.
“Mercer,” Ryan said from the doorway. “We’re heading out.”
I looked up. “Meet you in a minute. I gotta grab my cell. Left it in my locker.”
Briggs leaned around Ryan, brows lifting. “You lost your phone? That’s so unlike you. Should we notify the authorities?”
“Leave.”
“Your tone wounds me.”
“Good.”
Ryan grabbed Briggs by the back of his jacket and hauled him away before Briggs could turn the moment into community theater. Their footsteps faded down the hall, followed by Briggs saying something about calling Bliss to report my technological vulnerability.
I stood alone in the locker room for three seconds longer than I should have.
Then I checked the locker.
Top shelf.
Bottom shelf.
Behind my shoes.
Inside my hoodie.
Nothing.
A cold thread pulled tight through my chest.
I did not lose things. Not important things. Not things that could put me out of reach when people I loved needed me.
People I loved.
The thought landed hard enough that I paused with one hand braced against the locker frame.
No.
Not now.
Not in the locker room while the arena emptied and Bliss waited outside with a family still bleeding from what one monster had done under their noses for years.
I could have my emotional breakdown later.
Preferably never. Preferably after Luke Dempsey was behind bars and Bliss slept without flinching and I could look at her father without seeing the haunted devastation of a man who had spent years feeding a predator at his table.
My hand curled around the edge of the metal locker, and I slammed the fucker harder than necessary, the clang echoing through the room.
Maybe I’d left it near the interview backdrop.
Maybe it slid under the bench when I changed.
Maybe one of the guys grabbed it by mistake.
Worst case, I’d have Bliss track it from her phone, because the second she realized my cell was missing, she’d say something sarcastic about me being a geriatric hockey captain with the object permanence of a toddler, and I would let her because hearing her talk shit meant she was safe enough to breathe.
I stepped out of the locker room and into the corridor.
The arena felt different now.
Not empty exactly. There were still distant voices, doors opening and closing, a muffled cheer rolling from somewhere near the concourse, but the team hallway itself had gone quiet in that concrete way arenas got after games.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. My dress shoes clicked against the floor.
Somewhere behind me, the ice plant hummed low through the walls, steady and mechanical, like a heartbeat that belonged to the building instead of me.
Then I saw him.
Luke Dempsey stood at the end of the hall near the service exit, half in shadow, one shoulder against the concrete block wall like he had been waiting long enough to get comfortable.
Everything inside me went still.
Not calm. Never calm with this fucker.
Still.
Massive fucking difference.
He looked wrong under the fluorescent lights.
Too pale. Too sharp around the eyes. His hair was damp near his temples, his jaw shadowed, his mouth sitting in that same fake, easy line I’d seen at the Bennett barbecue before he started showing everyone what lived underneath.
One hand hung at his side. The other was tucked close near his jacket.
My attention dropped to the hand he kept too close to his jacket, fingers curled around something that didn’t belong there. The fluorescent light caught it when he shifted, a thin silver flash near his thigh, and the air in the hallway seemed to lose ten degrees all at once.
A knife.
That was the difference between me and him right there. I had come looking for my phone because Bliss was outside waiting for me. Luke had come looking for a corner without witnesses and brought a blade like the coward he was.
I didn’t move back. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing even one inch of retreat. My pulse slowed instead, brutal and focused, every part of me locking onto the same cold truth.
He hadn’t come here to talk.
Distance between us. Twenty feet, maybe less.
Service door behind him. Locker room behind me.
Main corridor to my left. No cameras visible in this stretch, which meant he had chosen it on purpose.
Of course he had. Monsters loved corners.
Loved blind spots. Loved places where they could pretend whatever happened next was an accident or a misunderstanding or someone else’s fault.
My pulse slowed because my only concern was Bliss, and she was safe outside.
That was the only thought that mattered.
Luke smiled like he had been waiting to see whether I noticed the knife.
I did.
I don’t know what he expected, but I kept walking anyway.
His smile twitched. “Mercer.”
I stopped far enough away that he couldn’t reach me without committing to it, close enough that he could see I wasn’t backing up.
“Glory Days,” I said.
His jaw flexed, and there it was, street hockey all over again, only stripped of daylight and Bennett noise and Daniel calling for no blood before dinner.
No kids on curbs. No brothers laughing. No Bliss stepping forward because she thought she could protect everyone by placing herself between a loaded gun and the people who loved her.
Just him and me.
And the thing I saw the first time I met him.
I should have dragged that truth into the light the first time I saw his eyes follow her like she belonged to him.
“You look lonely,” I said.
Luke’s smile thinned. “Funny. I was thinking the same about you.”
“I’m not lonely. My girl’s outside.”
The words hit exactly where I wanted them to.
His eyes changed. There were men who got angry from insult, and there were men who got angry from truth.
Luke was the second kind. He could handle being called old.
Could handle being called washed. Could probably smile through a room full of people accusing him of things he had done because he knew charm worked best when everyone else got emotional first.
But Bliss being mine?
That got under his skin and made the mask crawl.
“She’s not your girl,” he said.
I let my head tilt slightly, like I was considering him. “Yeah, she is.”