Chapter 12
CONNOR
This can’t wait until morning.
Fowler gets here ten minutes after Zev. He bangs twice on the door before I get over there to let him in. Then the two of them raid my fridge. I let them finishing foraging what little I have in there before calling their attention.
“So, the article.” I lean against the back of my couch. “Did you guys actually read it, or did you just click the thumbs-up and move on with your lives?”
Zev waves an apple like a tiny flag. “I read it. Twice, actually. You’re right, it’s a hatchet job.”
Fowler drops onto the couch behind me, which groans under his weight, and scratches his jaw. “It’s not just a hatchet job, dude. They’re going after Grace, and you. Especially Grace. Not happy about either.”
I toss my phone onto the coffee table. It lands with a hard thump next to the stack of rehearsal schedules I keep pretending I’ll organize one day.
“That’s the thing, it’s one thing if they want to torch me.
But dragging Grace into it? She didn’t ask for any of this.
She just wanted to skate and we blew that all up. ”
“She didn’t exactly nail the dismount on the first night,” Fowler points out.
I cut him a glare.
He puts up his hands. “Just saying. That’s not your fault.”
“We’re the reason she’s being targeted,” Zev cuts in. “Someone on the cast probably tipped off a reporter. Only the cast knew about Grace and us.”
Fowler’s eyes light up. “And reporters.” He throws his head back against the arm of the couch.
“Son of a bitch. I was trying to apologize to Grace with reporters right there during that false alarm the other night. They probably took things out of context and ran with it, then some assholes from the cast commented on the article.”
“Wasn’t that out of context, now was it?” I don’t ask the question of anyone in particular. The answer is no.
“So what do we do about it?” Zev asks. “We can’t just—what, let these people shit on her forever?”
“We can’t control other people,” Fowler says.
I lean forward and put my elbows on my knees. “I think the first step is to make damn sure Grace shines in the show. Like next-level, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her kind of shining. If they’re going to smear her, let them try doing it when she’s absolutely out-skating the entire cast.”
Fowler’s mouth pulls sideways into a smile. “That’s step one? What are Zev and I doing, then?”
I nod. “She needs to know—fuck, she deserves to know—that we know we screwed up. Beyond what we all might have already said.” I cut my gaze toward Fowler. “Like you said, we can’t control other people. But we can start healing this from the inside out.”
Or, we can at least try. Whether Grace wants it to happen is another story entirely.
Fowler raises his eyebrow. “And how do we do that?”
“We tell her the truth,” Zev says.
I snap my fingers in his direction. “Exactly. We tell her we didn’t bail on her because she wasn’t ‘good enough,’ or because ‘omegas are exhausting’ or whatever the fuck we said months ago.
We tell Grace that we bailed because we were terrified.
All three of us. The bond was—” I gesture, because there’s no word for it, “—too much. Too fast. And none of us were ready.”
There’s a long pause while this seeps into the room.
“That’s weak sauce,” Zev says softly. “But it’s true.”
Fowler shakes his head. “She’s not going to want to hear it. She’ll tell us to fuck off.”
“She might,” I admit. “But she should know anyway.”
Silence falls between us while steps one and two process. Then Zev asks, “And step three?”
“Action,” I answer while staring at the stack of rehearsal schedules. “No more bullshit. We show up. We help and support her.”
“Seems like something easier for you to accomplish,” Fowler comments. “You see her every single day.”
I shrug. “Then find ways.”
They both sit with that. We are, in the very least, on the same page about how to handle this, assuming we get a chance to handle all of it.
The clock ticks over to 1:00 a.m. We linger a while longer, talking about old NHL games we played together before Zev and Fowler head. Tomorrow is day one of the new plan.
I hope it works. When I saw Grace for the first time since returning here for the summer, I wasn’t sure what would happen or that I still cared.
But the truth is I’ve been looking for a way to set this all right from the very moment I could see her heartbreak in her eyes.
This is our last chance.
Better make it count.