23
Ryan
My duffel hit the floor inside my Flint apartment and stayed there.
I locked the deadbolt and stood in the darkness for several seconds before turning around and leaving again. The apartment was too quiet, too small, and too full of plans I couldn’t face until morning.
I couldn’t breathe inside it.
The Furnace was dark except for the maintenance lights burning over the practice ice.
Long strips of white reflected across the sheet that had been resurfaced before everyone cleared out for Thanksgiving.
The stands disappeared into shadow above the glass, Frost logos blurred along the boards, and every sound inside the empty arena traveled farther than it should have.
My stick struck the puck, sending a crack through the rafters. I caught the rebound off the end boards, cut hard across the slot, and fired again.
The puck clipped the post.
“Fuck.”
It ricocheted toward the corner. I chased it, dug the blade beneath it, and snapped it toward the net hard enough to bury it in the mesh.
I had been on the ice for almost an hour, maybe longer. I stopped checking after my lungs began to burn.
My phone sat facedown on the bench beside the clothes I dropped when I changed. It had vibrated so many times that I no longer heard every notification. I blocked Charm’s number before leaving Kimball Falls and then spent most of the drive imagining every message she couldn’t send me.
I hated myself for wondering what they said. I hated her for still existing inside my head, but that was the one door I couldn’t slam on her.
My edges carved violently into the ice as I turned. I collected another puck near the blue line and drove forward, building speed until cold air cut through the sweat on my face.
The shot sailed wide.
I ripped off my glove and threw it toward the bench before driving my bare fist into the glass. Pain exploded through my knuckles.
I hit it again.
“Fuck!”
My voice came back from the empty seats, but nothing helped.
Lance’s words had blurred together somewhere outside Saginaw. He had called me a thug without using the word, poor without saying it, and foster kid without understanding what it meant. He made semi-pro hockey player sound like an apology.
Wrong history. Wrong bloodline. Wrong fucking man for a Harlen princess.
I had heard worse from people who meant more to me. Charm’s silence had still managed to destroy all of it.
I told her what Thanksgiving could become. I told her I wouldn’t walk into that house and audition for a place beside her. I warned her that I was done playing by the Harlens’ rules and would leave if she tested me again.
She promised she understood.
Then I stood beside her while her father pulled apart every piece of my life, looked at the woman I loved, and asked for one fucking sentence.
Dile que importo.
Her eyes dropped.
My fist struck the glass a third time, and blood smeared beneath my knuckles.
“Feeling better?”
The voice came from behind the boards.
I spun and found Briggs standing at the end of the tunnel with a duffel hanging from one shoulder and a backward KFU cap covering his hair. His coat was open despite the cold, and his face had been stripped of every trace of the easy grin he usually carried into a room.
He had found me.
The fucking audacity of him to know exactly where I would go after reaching Flint made my temper climb higher.
“What are you doing here?” My voice traveled cleanly across the rink.
Briggs stepped through the gate and lowered his bag onto the rubber floor. “Making sure you’re alive.”
“You knew where I was headed. You were on the call and saw the text.”
“I saw words on a screen.”
“Then you know I’m alive.”
“I know you were alive when you were on the phone.”
“Go home.”
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I skated closer. “Cade send you?”
“Cade told me not to come.”
That stopped me for half a second.
Briggs unzipped his duffel and pulled out a beer.
“You brought fucking beer into the arena?”
“I always bring beer.”
“I don’t want one.”
“They aren’t for you.”
He opened the bottle and took a drink.
My temper climbed another degree. “Get the fuck out.”
Briggs leaned one shoulder against the glass. “No.”
“This is my rink.”
“It’s the Frost’s rink. Unless you bought the franchise on the drive up, your ownership claim feels shaky.”
“I’m not in the mood for your bullshit.”
“I didn’t bring any.”
The absence of humor in his voice pissed me off worse than any joke would have. Briggs met my stare through the glass without smiling, moving, or pretending he didn’t see the blood on my hand.
“I’m not talking tonight.”
“I don’t need you to talk.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?”
“To listen.”
A laugh tore out of me with nothing funny attached to it.
“?A qué, carnal? Ella no dijo nada.”
Briggs’s expression didn’t change.
“Lo sé.”
I stepped through the bench door and got close enough that he had to tip his chin to keep looking at me.
“Ella no dijo nada. Ni una puta palabra.”
“Lo sé.”
I knew Briggs spoke Spanish. I knew exactly how fluent he was, but hearing him answer me in the language Charm couldn’t understand made the rage inside me turn poisonous.
“That what you drove two fucking hours to hear?” I shoved off my helmet and threw it onto the bench. “You know. Great. Conversation over.”
Briggs raised the beer again, and I slapped it from his hand. The bottle struck the floor and rolled beneath the bench, spilling foam across the rubber.
His eyes followed it before returning to me. There was still no grin on his face.
“That was my beer.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“I know.”
I shoved him hard enough to rock him backward one step, but he steadied himself and kept his hands at his sides.
“Do something.”
“No.”
I shoved him again. “You came all the way to Flint to stand there?”
“If that’s what you need.”
“What I need is for you to get the fuck out.”
“That isn’t happening.”
“Then hit me.”
“No.”
My fist closed around the front of his coat. “I’m giving you permission.”
“I don’t need your permission to hit you.”
“Then fucking do it.”
Briggs looked down at my hand twisted into his coat before lifting his eyes to mine. “You’re trying to choose where it hurts.”
My grip tightened. “What?”
“You can’t control what she did, so you’re trying to pick a fight you understand.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“I don’t need my degree to know you’re bleeding all over the place.”
I slammed him against the glass. The boards shook behind him, but Briggs didn’t raise his hands. He let me hold him there while fury tore through muscles already exhausted from the ice.
“You weren’t there.”
“No.”
“You didn’t see her fucking face.”
“No.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know what you told us.”
“You know what I could say without driving through a guardrail with Bliss listening.”
Something finally moved through his expression. It wasn’t fear. Briggs knew better than to pity me where I could see it.
“What couldn’t you say?”
I shoved him harder. “Fuck you.”
“Say it in Spanish if English makes you feel too exposed.”
I swung before the final word left his mouth.
My fist caught the side of his jaw. Briggs’s head snapped sideways, his cap dropping to the floor as blood appeared where his teeth split the inside of his lip.
He slowly turned his face back toward me and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. After looking at the red streak across his skin, he met my eyes.
“You done?”
“Not even fucking close.”
“Good.”
He reached into his duffel. I expected another beer, but Briggs pulled out his skates and dropped onto the bench.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you something sturdier to hit.”
“I told you to leave.”
“You did.”
“I meant it.”
“I know.”
“You think driving here means I’m going to unload all my feelings while you sit there looking like an oversized therapy dog?”
Briggs pulled off one shoe. “You think I’m handsome enough to be a therapy dog?”
“Chinga tu madre.”
“Demasiado fácil.”
Normally, the answer would have dragged a laugh from me. Tonight, I kicked the bench hard enough to send his second beer rolling inside the duffel.
Briggs stopped lacing his skate. “If you break that one, I’m hitting you back.”
“Try.”
His head lifted. We stared at each other for several seconds before Briggs stood.
He carried more weight through his shoulders and chest, built like a goalie who had spent most of his life letting people fire rubber at his body and decided the best response was to become big enough to intimidate a puck.
Tonight, I needed every pound of him.
Briggs stepped past me, grabbed his helmet, and opened the gate. “I’m not here to tell you she was right.”
I said nothing.
“I’m not here to explain why she froze.”
My jaw tightened.
“I’m not going to tell you love matters more than what she did.”
“Good.”
“It doesn’t.”
The answer landed harder than I expected.
Briggs looked back at me. “You love her, and she loves you. None of that changes the fact that she left you standing alone when you needed her.”
My throat closed.
He stepped onto the ice. “You’re done. I heard you the first time.”
I followed because letting Briggs skate alone on my rink felt more offensive than his presence.
He grabbed one of the spare sticks and tested the flex. “That’s a defenseman’s stick.”
“It’s a stick.”
“You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“You punched me in the face while wearing hockey gloves.”
“I’m improvising.”
“You’re doing great.”
I skated straight at him. Briggs barely lowered the blade before I stripped the puck away and drove toward the net.
He chased me, which was exactly what I needed.
I cut toward the boards as he closed the angle. My shoulder dropped a second before we collided, and the impact rattled through both of us. Briggs grunted, but he remained upright.
I kept skating.
“Cheap,” he called.
“Keep up.”
He did.
The next time I touched the puck, Briggs stepped into me first. His shoulder caught mine and drove me sideways. My skate slipped, and I hit the boards hard enough to jar my teeth.
Something inside me came alive.
I spun toward him. “What the fuck?”
“Hockey.”
I shoved him, and Briggs shoved me back harder.