Chapter 38 Theo
I don’t want to admit that I’m holding my breath as I round the last shelf and look towards the carrel Adela always claims.
But I hesitate when another figure is there.
Serena.
She’s standing at the table with her phone raised over the desk.
She lowers the phone, and her thumb moves fast — sending something to someone. The phone disappears into her bag in one clean motion.
Then she looks up, and she sees me.
One second surprise, maybe guilt, or pure shock catches on her face. Then it closes off and rearranges into a smile. The one she deploys when she's decided offense is better than defense.
"Theo." Warm. Delighted. "What are you doing here?"
I walk toward her slowly.
I don't speak.
I watch the smile hold and then flicker as I get closer. I don't stop and don't give her anything to read in my face because there is nothing in my face right now. I've taken everything out of it.
She takes one small step back.
Good.
I stop at the carrel and look down at the table. There’s a note. Is Adela playing a little game of clues with me now? It’s folded once, but I don’t bother with what it says.
Not when I have a massive problem in front of me.
I look at Serena's bag, and then back at her face.
"Whose number did you just send that to?"
My voice is the kind of quiet that has nothing to do with calm.
She opens her mouth and closes it.
Then the smile comes back — sharper now, the one she uses when she's decided she has something. Her eyes move from my face to the carrel to the note and back to me, and I watch the moment the understanding moves through her.
It's not a slow realization.
It's immediate.
"Oh," she says softly.
Then she laughs.
It's not a nice laugh.
"It's you." Her eyes glaze over with pure amusement. She looks at the note again. Then back at me. Her head tilts and laughs. "You're the one she's been meeting here." Another look at the carrel. "Cody's girlfriend." A beat. Slower. "And you."
I say nothing.
"God." She laughs again, shorter this time. "I always knew she was a whore."
The word lands between us.
I look at her for a long moment. At the bag. At the fake smile. At the slight tension in her shoulders that tells me she knows she has gone somewhere she can't easily come back from, and she's hoping the performance covers it.
It doesn't.
"Let's go," I say, grabbing the note and shoving it in my pocket.
"Excuse me?"
I lean in. "You’re walking out with me." I don't touch her. I don't need to. I hold the space between us at exactly the right distance and look at her with exactly the right expression and wait while she decides.
She decides correctly.
We walk out of the library side by side. I hold the door. I don't rush her. I don't put my hand on her anywhere. I move at a pace that requires her to match it, and I don't speak, and I don't look at her.
My car is closest.
I unlock it without asking.
She gets in.
I get in.
The doors close, and the library disappears behind us. I start the engine, pull out, and I still haven't said anything. Serena is sitting in my passenger seat with her bag in her lap, and the smile is gone now. Completely. The performance stripped back to whatever is underneath it.
She's looking straight ahead.
"Theo—"
"Who did you send it to?"
Not a question.
She swallows. "You already know."
"I want to hear you say it."
A beat. "Cody."
I nod once and drive. I take the route along the water because it's long and there's nowhere to go. Serena has always responded to being somewhere she can't leave.
"What did you tell him?" I say.
She doesn’t answer right away, staring out at the water.
"That she's been in the library." Her voice is careful now. Stripped of everything decorative. "That she wasn't alone."
"What did you tell him about who?"
She's quiet.
"Serena," I seethe.
"I told him the guy was dark." She says it quickly. "Tall. Serious. Not on the team."
I take my eyes off the road long enough to look at her.
She's looking at her hands. "I didn't tell him it was you."
The water moves past the windows. Gray and flat. I drive. She’s been following me?
"Why not," I say.
She makes a sound that might be a laugh. "Because I'm not stupid." She looks at me, finally. "Cody finding out it's you changes everything. I told him what I could say without saying that."
I consider this.
"He has a description that doesn't match anyone obvious," I say. "So, he's looking."
"And you're helping him look."
She's quiet for a moment.
"He called me," she says. "Twice. He asked questions and I—" She stops. Starts again. "You know what he's like. When Cody Ravenshaw decides he wants something from you, you just—" A small helpless gesture. "You answer."
I know exactly what she means.
I pull into the overlook above the water and cut the engine. The sound spreads out below us, still and cold, nothing ahead but water and distance.
I look at her.
She looks back.
Something complicated in her face — not just fear, though that's there, but something underneath it that is more honest than anything Serena usually lets me see.
She has always wanted something from me that I've never been willing to give her the right way, and it makes her dangerous and loyal in equal measure, and I have used both of those things without pretending otherwise.
She knows that.
That's why she's still in the car.
"You should have told me he was calling," I say.
"I know."
I state, "Before you answered."
"I know." She looks at her hands. Then up at me. "Are you going to hurt me?"
"Do you want me to?"
She exhales slowly.
"Are you angry?"
"Yes."
She nods. Then fear recedes as she leans across the console. She doesn’t ask permission, she just does what she thinks will cool me. Her lips find my jaw. Then my neck. I let her, but I don’t feel a fucking thing.
"Are you proud of me?" she murmurs against my skin.
I put my hand in her hair. Not gently. "You should have told me."
"I know." She pulls back enough to look at my face. Her lipstick is smudged. Her eyes are bright. "But I didn't give you up."
I grab her throat. “And if you do.”
She shakes her head. “I won’t.”
She takes my silence as permission, which it is, and I let my head fall back against the headrest while her lips do all the work. I look at the gray water and think.
Cody has the note now.
He's probably looking at a photograph of it right now in his father's immaculate house and filing it alongside everything else he's been quietly building.
He doesn't know it's me.
Not yet.
"Why are you still reporting to him?" My hand tightens slightly in her hair.
She pulls back and looks up at me through her lashes. Her tongue traces a slow, deliberate line down the center of my chest, and she holds my gaze the entire time.
"Because if I didn't," she says, voice low, "it would be bad for me. I don't want to be in the middle of this, Theo." She reaches for my waistband. "You know I don't."
"And yet."
"And yet." The smile again. "I'm still protecting you."
I look at her for a long moment. She keeps her eyes on me, kissing my V-line and licking it.
"Good girl," I say quietly.
She looks satisfied with that and pulls out my throbbing dick and starts working her mouth on me.
I look at the water, allowing her some fun.
Cody doesn't have the most important piece yet. He doesn't know the man in the library is the same person who put him in a hospital bed. What I love most about this is that Adela has no idea I’m Cody’s teammate. She hasn’t learned that piece of the puzzle yet.
I pull my pants down a little further, giving Serena more room to do her thing. She spits on my cock and works her hand.
“Theo,” she says, sucking me off.
I glance down at her.
“Are you going to come for me?”
My eyes flick to her glistening lips. She slides me down her throat, keeping her eyes on me.
I rub the back of her head and say, “Depends.”
“On what?” she whispers, jerking me off.
“If you’re going to do everything I tell you from now on.”
She smiles, swallowing me again. Her eyes water when she works her hand again. “Tell me what you want me to do after you fucking come.”
Afternoon skate is sharp.
Coach Crick runs us harder than usual, the Denver loss sitting in his jaw. He doesn't yell. He just sets the pace and raises it and raises it again until the ice is telling us everything we did wrong in Colorado without him having to say a word.
I skate through it cleanly.
My edges are where they should be, and my reads are a half step ahead of everyone except Beckett, who is skating like he has something to prove or something to forget, and I can't tell which one it is today.
After the drills, Coach pulls us into systems work, and I move through it on autopilot — breakout, neutral zone, defensive zone.
The note is in my jacket pocket in the locker room.
You took the book.
I know it was you.
Bring it back.
Cody has the same exact note in his phone.
At the very least, he’ll know it’s about a stupid fucking book and not anything serious.
I can continue that, but I can’t take any more chances on the library again.
Cody is smart. He knows Serena was mine first, and I don’t doubt that he doesn’t trust a single word she says.
The whistle blows. I redirect to the drill.
Beckett cuts across my path, and we exchange a look that communicates nothing yet everything at once.
He knows something is running underneath today, and he's leaving it alone, which means he's leaving something alone too, and we are two people keeping our own counsel inside the same silence.
After skate, I shower, change, and tell Silas I'll see him tomorrow. I'm in my car and pulling out of the athletics lot before most of the team has their gear off.
My parents' house is twenty minutes from campus on a good day.
I make it in fifteen.