Chapter 28 Grayson
GRAYSON
Ifucked up. I fucked up big time, and all I can seem to do is lie in my bed and replay every stupid thing I did or said. My insomnia reaches an all-time high, and it’s my own fucking fault.
Not because my brain is spinning in its own version of the worst-case scenario, but because I’m actually living it. Will she forgive me? Will she talk to me again? Or did I completely fuck up any and all chances of us ever making things work?
I stare at the ceiling until it starts to look like something I could map out—lines and shadows and little imperfections that feel meaningful because I need something to be.
The apartment is too quiet. The kind of quiet where you can hear the vent rattle and the refrigerator click and the exact rhythm of your own heartbeat—steady, steady, steady—like it’s trying to convince you you’re fine.
Maybe this is the part where she decides I ruined the only safe place she had.
Maybe this is the part where she disappears.
The thought makes my stomach roll, sharp and sudden, because I’m not supposed to be the guy who gets gutted by a maybe.
I’m built on routines. On control. On doing what I’m supposed to do even when my mind tries to sabotage me.
But Harlow isn’t a drill.
She’s a person.
A person who looks like the world costs her something sometimes, and my brain won’t stop noticing the exact places it drains her.
A person with a past she carries like it’s heavier than it should be.
A person I’ve grown attached to in a way that makes me feel stupidly hopeful and violently protective and—worse—greedy.
Because now that I’ve seen her, really seen her, it feels impossible to go back to the version of my life before her. And I don’t want to even imagine a version after her.
Want is a dangerous thing to carry when you don’t know how the story ends.
So, I drag myself out of bed before the ceiling can start giving me answers it doesn’t have. Shower. Coffee. Captain’s skate. Anything that puts me in motion, anything that makes me feel like I’m still the same guy I was yesterday—before everything cracked and turned into something I can’t unsee.
The water doesn’t fix it. It never does. It just makes me look awake enough to pass.
By the time I step onto the ice, my body moves on muscle memory. The cold air bites my lungs clean. The blade edges bite back.
For a few minutes, I can almost pretend the rink doesn’t hold a second life for me—one that lives in a forum window, in late-night jokes, in “unfortunately. you?” and “talk or quiet?” and a username that has been carrying more of my truth than I ever meant to hand anyone.
Kai runs captain’s skate the way he runs everything: sharp, efficient, no wasted movement.
He doesn’t need to raise his voice. His presence already does it.
Today, his eyes are too sharp. He clocks me the way he always does—like a teammate, like a roommate, like someone who knows when I’m off by an inch and will still call it out like it’s a mile.
A pass hops my blade because my grip is too tight. The puck taps off and skitters.
Kai glides up, effortless, like he’s made of something sturdier than the rest of us.
“You good?” he asks.
It’s casual, but it isn’t. Not really. I could lie. I’m excellent at lying. But Kai Mercer is the human version of a penalty box—you can argue all you want, but he’ll still put you in there.
“Yeah,” I say anyway.
He holds my gaze like he’s deciding whether to push. He doesn’t. Not on the ice. Not in front of the guys. Captain Mercer locks certain things down, even when he’s suspicious. It should make me grateful. Instead, it makes me feel like a bomb with a timer.
We run a few quick reps—high tempo, short shifts, puck movement that forces your brain to stay present or get exposed. Weston chirps when someone’s head dips. Asher sits in front of the net like a statue made of focus, tracking every shot like it personally offended him.
Normally, this is where my head clears.
Today, my brain keeps drifting anyway.
Not to the forum.
Not to the words.
To the look on Harlow’s face when I said it out loud.
To the way her body went still, like it always does when something is too much.
To how badly I wanted to reach for her—and how I didn’t.
Because I’m not allowed to take. Not from her. Not from anyone.
The skate ends. Guys peel off. Laughing, sweating, complaining like it isn’t a privilege to hurt this way. Kai’s gaze catches mine again as I step over the boards. It’s not a glare. It’s not anger. It’s a warning without words.
Get your head right.
I nod once.
I leave the rink with my chest full of noise and my mouth full of things I can’t say.
The day is a blur of class and film and pretending I’m normal. The kind of normal that says sure, I’m fine when you’re actually holding a secret that isn’t finished hurting people. Except that isn’t the only thing trapped inside.
Owen’s birthday sits on the horizon like the weather.
Not a thought I can outskate. Not a date I can pretend isn’t coming.
He would’ve been twenty-four. People say “would’ve” like it’s a kind way to remember him.
It isn’t. It’s a hook. It catches you and drags you back to the moment you still don’t know how to carry.
I don’t talk about Owen much. Not because I don’t want to. Because if I do, I can feel the world tilt. Like if I say his name out loud, something in me will crack, and I won’t know how to put it back together in time for practice, for class, for being a functional human.
I’ve kept him where I keep everything that hurts: in a small box in my mind. It doesn’t mean I don’t think about him; I do, probably more than is healthy, but I don’t share him openly. And now Harlow exists in those same spaces, which feels like betrayal and relief all at once.
By late afternoon, I’m back at the apartment, standing in the kitchen staring at my phone like it’s a door I’ve used too often.
The forum icon sits there. Familiar. A habit. A pressure valve.
My thumb hovers.
I don’t open it.
It’s too difficult to see her name and not talk to her. I promised her space. I don’t want to be the kind of man who says he’ll give someone room and then reaches for them anyway the second it gets hard. I’m not proud of a lot of things, but I’m proud of control.
But I can’t delete it. I can’t, or maybe I won’t, because some part of me knows, even if it’s completely delirious, that we’ll work through whatever this is.
So I set the phone down.
I try to eat. Try to do something productive. Try to be normal. Try not to let the silence get too loud.
I don’t sleep enough to call it sleep.
It’s more like my body shuts down in short intervals out of spite, then boots back up the second my brain remembers it has new material. Like it’s afraid that if it lets go for too long, something will slip through its fingers.
Her name.
Her mouth.
The way she looked at me in the rink bleachers when the last thread of denial snapped and I became real.
I told her the truth.
And I still wake up every hour like I did something punishable, and maybe I did.
By the time my alarm goes off Tuesday morning, my eyes feel sandpapered from the inside. My chest has that tight, held feeling that usually shows up before a game. Except today isn’t a game day.
It’s worse.
It’s a normal day with a truth sitting in the middle of my life like a live wire.
I shower because it’s the closest thing I’ve got to restarting myself. Hot until my skin turns pink. Cold until my lungs seize. Hot again, like maybe I can trick my nervous system into choosing a different setting.
It doesn’t.
—
The guys drift in with the usual morning rhythm—half asleep, half feral.
Weston is already narrating his own existence at a volume he insists is “normal.” Coleson has that too-smooth grin that says he woke up ready to be a problem.
Asher’s in the crease stretching like he’s never had a bad night in his life.
Kai is there early because Kai is always early.
He stands at center ice with a coffee in hand and his helmet tucked under his arm, talking to Coach Graves in that low, efficient way he talks when he’s in charge. Not loud. Not showy.
Just absolute.
When Coach skates away, Kai’s gaze finds me like it’s magnetized.
Not angry.
Not suspicious.
Just…aware.
He does that small chin tip at me. You good?
I give him a nod that feels like lying with my whole face.
Kai doesn’t call me on it. He doesn’t do that in front of the guys. He just clocks it and files it away like a captain.
Like a brother.
Like a guy who’s going to ask later when there aren’t witnesses.
Coach’s whistle cuts through the rink. “Let’s go! White jerseys! We’re running breakouts, then special teams.”
Weston groans, mumbling under his breath. “Come on, Coach. We just did special teams.”
Coach doesn’t even turn his head. “Cooper, if you want to keep talking, I’ll make you run until you find God.”
Weston shuts up.
We start with flow drills—five-man breakout, D-to-D, center swinging low, wingers pushing the wall, quick touch up the boards and out. It’s not flashy. It’s the kind of hockey that looks simple until you’re the one trying to execute with your lungs burning.
Kai runs center, like he’s built for the middle of chaos. Head up. Stick quiet. Everything sharp.
He wins the first draw in the faceoff circle so clean it’s almost rude, snaps it back to our defenseman, then calls the breakout with one word like a command: “Go.”
I take off down the right side, timing my stride with the puck, and for a beat, the world narrows into the only language I’ve ever trusted completely.
The puck hits my tape, and my hands finally stop shaking. I swing it across to Weston, and he drops it back to Kai, who threads it between two sticks like he’s solving a puzzle only he can see.
We’re through.
We reset.
Again.
And again.
For minutes at a time, I’m fine.