Chapter 2
two
Jackson
I’ve seen Elijah angry before.
I’ve seen him drop men twice his size without blinking, seen the way he moves when something crosses a line, the way his control tightens instead of slipping, like violence is something he knows how to hold, not lose, something he channels instead of being consumed by, something that always feels deliberate even at its most brutal.
What I just saw wasn’t that.
It stays behind my eyes as I skate, not as one clean memory but as a series of flashes I can’t stop replaying, his fist connecting, Vargas’s body twisting under him, blood on the ice, blood on Elijah’s hands, the way it took half the team to drag him off and even then it didn’t feel like enough, because nothing about him looked interrupted.
It looked unfinished. It looked like if they hadn’t physically hauled him away, he would have kept going until there was nothing left of the man underneath him.
That’s the part that won’t leave me. Not the violence itself, not even the brutality of it.
It’s the fact that there was nothing in Elijah’s face except the need to kill.
No hesitation. No awareness. No line left in him that mattered more than what he wanted to do.
A cold sliver of something settles low in my chest as I push forward into the play, my body moving automatically while my head stays caught on that moment, still trying to make sense of the fact that I have never seen him like that, not once, not in all the time I’ve known him, or watched his career, not through fights, not through pressure, not through anything.
Elijah has always been the kind of man who is more dangerous because he is controlled, because he chooses exactly how far to go and knows exactly what he is doing when he gets there.
Tonight he didn’t look like a man choosing anything.
He looked like something in him had been cut loose.
And if that’s where he is already, if this is what Lia being taken has dragged out of him before we even know where she is, then there is no version of this where it gets better on its own.
There is only worse.
Only darker.
Only a version of Elijah that doesn’t stop next time.
The thought settles hard in my stomach as the puck moves past me and I react a fraction too late, my stick missing the clean connection it should have made, the play slipping out of reach before I can recover it.
“Fuck,” I mutter, turning hard and forcing myself back into position.
I need to focus.
I know I need to focus.
But every time I drag my attention back to the ice, it slips again almost immediately, pulled under by the same sick, relentless awareness that has been sitting in my chest since Evelyn called.
Lia is gone.
The game keeps moving anyway.
It doesn’t care that something just broke open in the middle of it.
It doesn’t pause because one of our players nearly beat a man to death in front of a packed arena.
It doesn’t stop because the woman who has somehow become the center of all of us is out there somewhere with no idea if she’s hurt, no idea who has her, no idea what they’re doing to her while we skate under bright lights like any of this still matters.
The whole energy on the ice has changed.
Every hit comes in harder than it needs to.
Every pass carries a fraction too much aggression behind it.
Every collision lingers just a little too long, like both teams can feel that something has shifted and neither side knows how to settle it back down again.
No one is playing clean.
Not us.
Not them.
Zach resets in the net, but I can see it in him too, the way his movements are just slightly off, like he’s forcing himself to stay locked in and failing every few seconds.
He tracks the puck, adjusts, resets again, but none of it looks natural.
It looks mechanical. Forced. Like his body knows what to do, but his head is somewhere else entirely.
Mine is too.
The puck cycles back around, their line pressing hard, and I move to cut the angle off, but I’m a fraction too slow, just enough to feel the miss, just enough to know I’m not where I should be.
None of us are.
And underneath all of it, beneath the noise and the skate blades cutting ice and the crowd roaring every time the play shifts, there’s the same thought, over and over, pressing harder each time it comes back.
She trusted us.
The realization lands heavier now than it did before. She trusted us.
And we left her.
I can see her, the way she looked at us when we left, relaxed, safe, unguarded in that way she only is when she’s with us, like she believed nothing could reach her there.
My jaw tightens so hard it aches.
The clock ticks down in my peripheral, the final minutes dragging in a way that feels wrong, stretching and collapsing at the same time, and every second we stay out here feels like a second too long.
One of their forwards drives into the crease too hard, pushing well past where he should have pulled up, his shoulder colliding straight into Zach as he drops to cover the puck.
Zach goes down badly enough that something in my chest spikes instantly, sharp and hot and immediate, and I’m already moving before I’ve thought it through, crossing the distance between us in seconds and shoving the guy off him with both hands hard enough to send him stumbling backward.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
He shoves back without hesitation, his gloves jamming into my chest, and before the refs can get there another body slams into me from the side and everything breaks open.
It isn’t a clean fight, not a dropped-gloves moment with space around it and rules everyone understands.
It’s messy and fast and full of too much heat, bodies colliding all at once, hands grabbing jerseys, sticks dropping, players piling in because the aggression has been building all period and this is all it needed to spill over.
Someone grabs at my shoulder from the left and I wrench free, shoving another Vegas player back when he comes too close to Zach.
“Back the fuck off!”
Voices overlap all at once, shouting, swearing, referees forcing themselves into the middle of it, but it takes longer than it should to separate us because no one wants to let it go. Not tonight. Not with all of us already riding too close to the edge.
Zach has pushed himself halfway upright by the time I get a clear look at him again, mask off now, expression tight and distant in a way I don’t like. He looks pale under the lights, jaw rigid, eyes fixed somewhere that isn’t actually here.
“You good?” I ask, low enough that it doesn’t carry.
He nods, but there’s a lag to it, like the question has to travel further to reach him.
“Yeah.”
It doesn’t sound convincing.
Nothing about any of us is convincing right now.
Eventually the refs drag enough bodies apart to force space back between the teams and the game resumes, but it’s already over in the only way that matters.
We aren’t in it.
Not really. Not mentally. Not emotionally. Not in any way that can actually win something like this.
The last stretch plays out in a blur of forced movement and missed instincts, and when the final horn cuts through the arena it feels almost surreal in its finality, the scoreboard confirming what we already know before any of us even really look at it.
Vegas wins.
We lost.
The crowd surges into noise around us, but it all feels distant, muted under the pounding in my head, under the weight pressing into my chest.
Because the game doesn’t matter.
Not compared to where she is.
Not compared to the fact that Elijah is somewhere behind closed doors looking like he wants to tear the world apart with his bare hands.
As we skate off, I scan the ice automatically even though I already know he isn’t there.
“Elijah?” I mutter, more to myself than anyone else.
Of course he’s gone.
The image comes back again, him on top of Vargas, the way he kept going, the way his face looked when he said my wife, and that same cold understanding settles deeper.
He meant it. Not just the word. The violence behind it. He would have killed him, and if we don’t get Lia back before this gets worse, I don’t know what Elijah is going to become when there’s nothing left holding him in.
“Where’d they take him?” I ask as we hit the tunnel.
Nobody answers right away. Everyone looks wrecked. Not just physically. Mentally. Something about the whole team feels shaken loose, like we all saw something out there none of us were meant to see.
When we push into the locker room, Coach is already waiting, tension carved into every line of his face.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Security’s holding him,” Coach says shortly. “He’s not coming back in here right now.”
My chest tightens.
“I need to talk to him.”
“No, you don’t,” Coach snaps. “You need to get changed. You’re up for media.”
For a second I think I’ve heard him wrong.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can,” he says immediately, like this is obvious, like this is normal, like everything hasn’t gone to complete hell in the last twenty minutes. “You will.”
The words hit wrong. Too casual. Too disconnected from the reality pressing at the base of my throat.
Media.
Questions.
Cameras.
While Lia is gone. While Elijah is locked somewhere with security because he nearly beat a man to death on live ice.
I look over toward Zach and the sight of him does nothing to steady me. He’s still standing there in half his gear, staring at nothing, completely fucking gone. I cross to him and grab his arm hard enough to get his attention.
“Zach.”
Nothing.
I tighten my grip.
“Zach. Look at me.”
His eyes finally flick to mine, but it takes effort, like he’s dragging himself back from somewhere deep and ugly.
“You need to find where they’re holding Elijah,” I tell him, keeping my voice low and steady because one of us has to. “We need to know what the hell is going on with him.”
He stares at me for a second, face blank in that dangerous, shut-down way of his, then nods once.