37. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THEO
Ishoot, and the puck sails wide, cracking hard off the backboard with a sharp echo that rattles through the empty rink and settles somewhere behind my teeth.
“Fuck.”
I exhale through my nose and roll my shoulders, trying to shake some of the tension loose before lining another puck up with the blade of my stick.
It doesn’t fucking work. Nothing does. I’ve been out here long enough that sweat is cooling beneath my gear and my legs are starting to feel heavy, but whatever’s been crawling beneath my skin for the last few days is still there.
Usually I can skate until my head shuts the fuck up.
Apparently Connor’s found a way around that too.
I push the thought away before it can settle, shifting my grip on the stick and staring down the net. My arms ache. My thighs burn. There’s a dull pull across my shoulders every time I move, the kind of exhaustion I’d normally chase because it means I’ve finally pushed hard enough to stop thinking.
Except I can still fucking see him.
Standing outside the house, looking at me like I was ripping something out of him when I left.
Baby, stop.
I grit my teeth and draw the stick back.
The rink door slams open before I can shoot.
The sound cuts straight through the quiet, followed by heavy footsteps hitting the ice, and I don’t need to turn around to know who it is. I close my eyes instead, dragging in a breath that doesn’t go nearly deep enough before letting it out slowly.
“I’m really not in the fucking mood, Marcus,” I say, tightening my grip until my knuckles ache as I line up the shot anyway.
“What the fuck did you do to him, Knox?”
Everything in me goes still.
My teeth grind together, but I keep my back to him, staring at the net because I already know exactly who him is and I really don’t fucking need Marcus saying his name right now.
“I said,” I repeat, slower this time, forcing each word out evenly as I pull my stick back and shoot, “I’m not in the fucking mood.”
The puck snaps off the blade and buries itself in the net.
It's not enough.
Not for this. Not with Connor still sitting raw beneath my ribs and every thought of him scraping against something I’ve spent the last few days trying not to fucking touch.
“I didn’t fucking ask.”
Marcus’s hand clamps down on my shoulder and yanks me around before I can move.
I slap it off, anger flaring hot enough to cut through some of the exhaustion. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
I step around him, already done with whatever the fuck this is supposed to be, but Marcus follows.
“Do you have any idea how fucked up he is?”
My steps falter.
Barely fucking anything, but Marcus knows me too well not to catch it.
I keep moving, tightening my grip on my stick as guilt sinks its claws into the same place it’s been digging at since I rode away from Connor.
Good.
He’s fucked up.
Fantastic.
That makes two of us.
“You fucking used him,” Marcus spits behind me, and my stomach twists. “And tossed him aside like another one of your fucking whores.”
I stop.
Completely.
For a second, I don’t even turn around. I just stand there staring at the ice, listening to my pulse hammer in my ears while the words sink in.
Used him.
Something hot and vicious tears through my chest.
I turn slowly.
“You have no idea what you’re fucking talking about.”
My voice comes out low, forced through teeth clenched hard enough to hurt, but Marcus doesn’t even fucking hesitate.
“I know enough.”
He closes the distance between us and jams a finger into my chest.
“I know my brother’s a mess because of you,” he says, every word low and vicious. “And I know he’s better off without you.
I hate the way something in my chest seems to hollow out at that, because I’ve already thought the exact same fucking thing more times than I can count.
Connor is better off without me.
He probably always was.
Doesn’t mean Marcus gets to fucking say it.
I smack his hand away from my chest, harder this time. “You think you’re so much better, huh?”
A dark laugh drags out of me as I shake my head, because this is fucking rich coming from him. Marcus, who thinks being Connor’s older brother means he gets to decide what’s good for him. What he should want. Who he should fucking be.
Marcus’s jaw tightens, his eyes narrowing.
“What did you fucking do, Theo?”
I scoff and roll my eyes, already opening my mouth to tell him exactly where he can shove the question.
The rink doors slam open again.
I know those footsteps before I even look.
Fast. Uneven. Fucking panicked.
Connor.
Of course he followed Marcus here.
“Ask your brother,” I spit, bitterness cutting through the words before I can stop it. “Since he apparently feels like sharing now.”
I turn away as Connor rounds the corner because I can’t fucking look at him. Not now. Not when Marcus has already dragged every thought I’ve spent days trying to bury straight back to the surface and Connor’s standing there close enough that I can feel him without even seeing him.
A hand slams into my shoulder.
I stumble forward a step, my skate scraping hard against the ice, and every muscle in my body locks.
For fuck’s sake.
I swallow the growl that tries to tear out of me, rolling my shoulder as heat surges straight back through my chest. I’m already hanging on by a fucking thread and Marcus apparently wants to see exactly how far he can pull it before it snaps.
“Marcus, stop.”
Connor’s voice cuts across the rink, breathless and sharp, and it hits me harder than the shove did.
My eyes close for half a second.
I tilt my neck slowly, trying to work out some of the tension before I turn back to Marcus. It doesn’t help. He’s still standing there looking at me like I’m something he scraped off the bottom of his shoe, and my temper spikes all over again.
“You really wanna do this?” My voice drops low as I stare at him. “We’re supposed to be friends.”
“You forgot that first when you screwed my brother.”
He shoves me again.
My gaze flicks to Connor.
Fuck.
He flinches.
It’s small, but I see it. See the way his eyes drop immediately to the ice, the colour climbing up his neck, spreading across his cheeks as his mouth presses into a tight line.
Embarrassed.
Marcus made him fucking embarrassed.
Whatever anger I was holding onto shifts instantly, sharpening into something else entirely.
I smack Marcus’s hands away and shove him back hard enough to put space between us. “Stop fucking talking about him like that.”
Marcus laughs, but there’s nothing funny in it. He’s too far inside his own anger to hear what I’m actually saying, too fucking determined to make me the villain in whatever version of this he’s already built in his head.
“That’s all anyone ever is to you, Knox,” he spits, his voice rising across the empty rink. “A warm hole.”
My fist connects with his jaw before I even realise I’ve swung it.
The crack echoes through the rink.
For one suspended second, everything goes completely still.
Then Marcus’s hand fists in my collar.
He yanks me forward and his fist catches me across the mouth hard enough to snap my head sideways. Pain explodes through my lip, bright and immediate, the metal of my ring cutting into already split skin as blood floods hot across my tongue.
After that, there’s no thinking.
I grab him and drive him backwards, his shoes scraping across the ice as he catches himself and comes straight back at me.
His fist glances off my cheek. Mine catches somewhere near his ribs.
We’re grabbing shirts, shoving, swinging whenever there’s enough space to get a fist between us, neither of us giving a shit about balance or where the next hit lands.
All I can hear is my own breathing and the rush of blood in my ears.
All I can see is Connor’s face when Marcus said it.
Warm hole.
Like that’s what Connor was to me.
Like I didn’t fucking fall apart walking away from him.
“Fuck, Marcus!”
Hands grab at Marcus’s shoulder, trying to wrench him backwards.
“Get off him.”
Marcus fights against him for another second and I almost go straight back in, my hands already curling into fists again, but Connor gets enough of a grip to drag him away and the space opens between us.
I stumble back, sucking air into lungs that don’t seem to want it. My mouth throbs with every beat of my pulse and I swipe my tongue over my bottom lip before immediately hissing at the sting.
Blood.
Fucking brilliant.
I spit onto the ice, red splattering across the white, and drag the back of my hand across my mouth.
“Fuck this.”
My fingers shove through my hair, catching roughly in the strands as I force myself to breathe, and then I make the mistake of looking up.
Straight at Connor.
He looks fucking wrecked.
His face has lost most of its colour beneath the flush still staining his cheeks, his eyes too wide as they move over me, catching on my mouth, the blood, my hands.
Then he’s moving.
I should step back.
I know I should.
But Connor comes closer and my body does what it always fucking does around him.
Nothing.
I just stand there and let him.
His hand lifts carefully between us, almost hesitant, before his thumb brushes beneath my split lip. It catches against my ring, barely touching me, and my breath fucking stutters anyway.
His eyes lift to mine and there’s so much guilt in them that something inside my chest twists painfully.
“Theo—”
I jerk away before he can finish.
“Just don’t.”
It cracks despite how hard I try to keep it steady.
Connor freezes.
His hand stays suspended between us for a second, fingers slightly curled like he hasn’t realised there’s nothing there anymore, and seeing it makes me want to step straight back into his touch.
So I move farther away instead.
I shake my head, swallowing around the blood still coating my tongue and the fucking ache sitting behind my ribs. “You don’t get to do that,” I tell him, quieter now because I don’t trust my voice with anything louder. “Not anymore.”
His hand drops.
I can’t watch it happen.
I turn away, grabbing my bag from the bench and swinging it over my shoulder before Connor can say something that makes me forget every reason I’m supposed to stay away from him.
Marcus is leaning against the wall when I look back, breathing just as hard as I am, his jaw already starting to colour where I hit him.
The anger drains out of me almost as quickly as it came.
That’s Marcus.
My best friend.
And Connor is his brother.
Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess.
“I never wanted this to happen,” I say, holding Marcus’s gaze.
It isn’t an apology. I’m not even sure which part I’d be apologising for anymore.
But it’s the closest thing I’ve got.
I can feel Connor looking at me from somewhere to my side. I don’t need to turn to know he is. Every nerve in my body seems to know exactly where he is at all times.
I tighten my grip on the strap of my bag.
“If I could’ve stayed away,” The words catch somewhere behind my teeth, and I have to force the rest past the pressure closing around my throat. “I would’ve.”
I tried.
I just never stood a chance.