Chapter 41 Theo
Caramel.
That's what I keep coming back to. Her lips tasted like caramel — the Chapstick, the gloss over it, the specific sweetness of her mouth when she finally stopped fighting what she wanted and just kissed me back.
Serena is in my bed, saying my name, and I am thinking about caramel.
"Theo."
"I heard you."
"You're not here."
"I'm right here."
She makes a sound that tells me she knows the difference and resents it. I look at the ceiling and wait for her to decide what she's going to do about it, which is nothing, because Serena always decides nothing when the alternative is leaving.
I got what I needed from her. The information, the confirmation, the relief of knowing she hasn't given me up to Cody yet.
What she gets from me in return is this — proximity.
The idea of me. The version of Theo Rhodes she's constructed has nothing to do with who I actually am and everything to do with what she wants me to be.
It's a fair enough trade.
It just isn't interesting.
"I have a game tonight," I say.
She stills. Then sits up. She knows a dismissal when she hears one. I've never had to say it twice. She finds her clothes without drama, and I watch the ceiling and think about Sunday morning.
She agreed because she wanted to. That's the part I keep returning to. Not because I pushed, maneuvered, or gave her something she needed in exchange. She said okay because she wanted to be there.
I felt her holding back when I kissed her. The tension. But I also felt the moment her brakes slipped. That sound she made. The way her hands found my jacket like she needed something to hold onto.
Her confession that she'd been imagining it.
She told me that directly, which she didn't have to do. Which means she's further gone than she knows.
The bedroom door closes.
I sit up.
I reach under the bed — not far, just past the edge of the frame where the floor meets the wall — and pull out the book. And with it, her note, folded once, the forward-leaning handwriting pressed hard into the page.
You took the book.
I know it was you.
Bring it back.
I look at it and feel the smile come before I can stop it. Not the controlled almost-movement I allow in public. An actual smile, which she has apparently decided to make a habit of making me produce without permission.
Cody has a photograph of this note on his phone right now. He's probably trying to build a picture of a tall, dark, serious man who isn't on the team. Running it through every possible permutation and coming up with nothing useful.
He has no idea his girlfriend is demanding things from the person who put him in a hospital bed.
I fold the note and put it back inside the cover.
I get up to get dressed and think about tonight.
I don't like it. I've not been liking it since Beckett told me about her little date night with him, and I've been filing the not-liking-it in the same place I file everything I can't act on immediately — organized, contained, accessible when needed.
I pick up my keys.
I reach the rink and pull into the same parking spot I do every time. I'm reaching for the volume knob to turn down the music before shutting off my car when Beckett drops in.
I sit back, staring at him.
His face is contained. Whatever this is, it's not an emergency. But it's not nothing.
I wait.
He stares forward. "Cody is asking Adela for the laptop."
"And?"
He looks at me. "And…what is he going to do to her when she doesn't have it?"
I consider that.
"You seriously think she's safe in all of this?" Beckett says.
“She was always collateral.”
He scoffs.
I shrug. "There's a reason he's kept her in the dark this long."
"She thinks I was in on it." He says it without looking at me. "The night of the break-in. She told me."
I glance at him.
"She figured it out."
I think about this for a moment. About a girl who arrives on campus knowing nothing and, three weeks later, is sitting across from Beckett in a coffee shop, telling him she knows he was in the room. Not asking. Telling.
I laugh.
Beckett looks at me.
"That's because she's not afraid of you anymore," I say. "Congratulations. You're not the monster."
He doesn't find it funny. "She's afraid of him." He says it more to himself than to me. "I think we need to stake out his house tonight."
"Why?"
"Because she's walking in there alone and Cody wants the fucking laptop. His dad knew she had it. I told her to lie—"
"Adela is his gem." I cut through it cleanly. "He won't sabotage what he has with her."
"How do you know?"
"Because I know how he thinks." I look at him. "He’s spending his healing time to build something. He's not going to blow it up the first night he has her alone. That's not how Cody operates."
"I think you're wrong."
I look at him for a long moment. At the certainty in his face.
"If I am," I say, "I'll bury him myself." I push the door open. "I’m not fucking worried about it. We have a game to win."
I step onto the ice.
Portland State is already in warmups at the other end, and I already know we’re winning tonight because I’ve decided. Coach Crick didn’t dedicate this game to Cody Ravenshaw. Thank fuck.
I find my stride in two laps. Sharp, clean.
I run a passing drill with Caleb and feel the communication between us that was missing in Denver.
Still, it’s present now, locked in, two people who understand each other in the language of positioning, timing, and the half-second reads that happen below the level of conscious thought.
I think about Cody.
He's watching this game. I know it the way I know certain things — not because I have evidence but because I understand how he operates.
Cody Ravenshaw does not miss an opportunity to gather information.
He's sitting in his father's house, watching the UW feed, looking at every face on our bench, and building his picture.
He’s probably staring at mine.
I know he remembers that night. I wanted to be the last thing he fucking saw. And tonight, I want him to see exactly what I am on this ice.
The puck drops.
Portland State comes out the way I expected — physical, immediate, their center winning the first face-off and pushing the pace before we've settled. Silas recovers it in the corner, moves it to Beckett, and we start to build.
I play the first five minutes clean and controlled. Nothing exceptional. I let them think they're managing us.
Then I open up.
The shift that changes the game happens eight minutes in.
Their left defenseman — slower than his partner, cheating toward the boards on every possession — leaves a lane that I've been watching since the second minute.
I time it. I read the pass before it happens, cut inside before their winger has fully committed, intercept it clean at the blue line, and I'm through their defense before they've registered what happened.
I don't shoot.
I wait.
One more second than anyone expects me to wait. Long enough that their goalie commits to the angle. Then I move it to Owen, cutting across the slot, and he puts it exactly where it needs to go.
1-0.
I skate back to center ice without celebrating. Without looking at the camera. Without doing anything except taking my position and waiting for the next drop.
The second period is mine in a way that feels almost unfair.
I'm in every play — not forcing it, not manufacturing involvement, just reading it, anticipating it, being in the right place before the right place is obvious to anyone else.
Their top line runs a cycle in our zone for ninety seconds in the twelfth minute, and I dismantle it so cleanly that their center actually stops skating for a half second and looks at me.
I don't look back.
Silas scores on a two-on-one that I set up from behind their net, a pass so precise it doesn't require him to adjust his stride. 2-0.
Between periods, Coach says my name once, just once, in the way that means keep going. I nod and drink my water.
Barnes and Noble tomorrow morning.
She's going to walk in, and I'm going to be there, waiting. I meant what I said to her, that I would meet her at the edge of the earth every day if she asked me. I squirt more water in my mouth and find that camera, staring at it square in the eye.
In the third period, Portland State pushes.
They're not ready to lose on our ice, and they make that clear — harder hits, faster shifts, their goalie finding something in the third that wasn't there in the first two.
They score six minutes in, a deflection that Isaac had no play on, and the arena goes briefly nervous.
I am not nervous.
I win three consecutive board battles in the next four minutes. Not elegantly — elbows and leverage. Their winger, the one who scored, learns quickly that the area within ten feet of me has a cost.
He stops going there.
Beckett seals it with four minutes left. A shot from the circle that Miles should have stopped, and doesn't because Beckett has been setting it up since the second period, the same motion, the same angle, four times without shooting until Miles has the pattern, and then the pattern breaks.
3-1. Final.
The arena is loud.
I skate a slow lap before leaving the ice. Not for the crowd — I don't perform for crowds. For the camera.
I want Cody to see me and froth at the mouth.
I want him to watch me move on this ice and understand, in whatever part of his brain still functions, honestly, exactly what kind of person has been slowly gutting his entire life while he was in a coma.
I’m a force to reckon with.