Chapter 6
Gio
Ilean against the wall of the campus café in the student center, the morning rush grinding through the building like a machine that chews and keeps moving.
The hum of voices blends into a low buzz that scrapes against my skull.
My phone keeps lighting up in my pocket—vibrations I ignore on principle—but the café is already angled at me anyway.
I catch Maya approaching, expression tight, eyes sharp. She comes in straight. No drift. No smile.
Something’s off. She isn’t here for pleasantries.
“Gio,” she starts, voice low, almost conspiratorial. “Did you paralyze someone?”
My body goes still.
I scan the café. Conversations shift. Heads turn a fraction. The energy thickens, static before a storm. A couple people don’t even bother pretending—eyes dropping to their screens, thumbs moving fast.
“That’s the rumor?” I deflect, keeping my tone light, like I’m amused by my own headline. I feel the weight of her stare like a hand on my throat.
“It’s the one with teeth,” she says, eyes narrowing, gears turning. “Someone got hurt. And you’re involved.”
The words hang there. Heavy.
My stomach knots. Irritation bubbles under my skin, sharp and immediate. It’s a move—a strategic poke at a sore spot. She’s checking the damage, sure. She’s also probing for weakness.
“People talk,” I shrug, giving her nonchalance I don’t feel. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah, but this is different.” Her voice drops as she leans in, building a small bubble around us. “You might want to clarify things before it spirals.”
Steady. Urgent.
My skin prickles. I glance around again. Snippets of conversation. Laughter that slides past my ears like it belongs to another room. Eyes on me now. A performance I didn’t sign up for.
A notification flashes on a nearby screen when someone tilts their phone—Briarcliff Whisperer—and I don’t even need the whole headline to feel it land.
Rossi. Paralyzed. High school.
Public. Packaged. Ready to spread.
“I don’t have to explain anything,” I say, sharper than intended. “I’m not the one spreading rumors.”
Maya doesn’t flinch. She holds my gaze, unyielding.
“No,” she says. “But you’re the one who has to handle the fallout. This won’t blow over.”
There it is.
It isn’t gossip. It’s a weapon. Deliberate. Aimed.
Fuck. Great.
My irritation simmers. “I’ll take care of it,” I say, forcing certainty into my voice as the ground shifts under it.
She nods slowly, reading the tension in my posture. “Just remember what’s at stake, Gio.”
She isn’t worried. She’s measuring cost.
“Thanks for the warning,” I say, letting the words hang there. A thin line drawn in sand. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to deal with this.”
Maya steps back first. Not retreating. Just done. Message delivered.
I push off the wall and don’t look around. If people are watching, that’s their problem. I don’t owe this place anything.
The rumor isn’t noise. It’s placement. Timing. Someone moved a piece to see what shook loose.
And I can feel the hand that moved it.
Rylan’s voice threads in, uninvited—last time we were face-to-face, his grin too casual, his eyes too mean. Guess I’ll find another way to get noticed.
Good. Fucking good.
If he wants attention, I’ll decide the shape of it.
Without urgency, I cut through the café. The murmurs can travel without me. They always do. By the time I shoulder out into the cold, the shape of it is clear—what they’re saying matters less than why they’re saying it now.
Rylan doesn’t throw punches. He leaks poison and waits.
I let it stand. Correction can wait. Chasing it can wait too.
Not yet, though.
Straight to the rink.
The locker room smells like sweat, metal, and ice burn. Normal. Familiar. It’s the first skate of two-a-days—morning practice before classes—and everyone’s half-dressed in gear with that disciplined, contained restlessness that comes from chasing the Frozen Four.
Skates clatter. Tape rips. A stick thumps the floor once—sharp, impatient.
Adrian’s voice cuts across the room, dry and low, aimed like a blade at someone within arm’s reach. It earns a brief reaction—no laughter that loosens anything, just a tight exhale that says message received.
Dante and Cole aren’t arguing. They’re measuring sound—playlist choices like they’re discussing tempo and control, not fun.
Declan doesn’t laugh. He clocks everything. Always has.
Coach Addison steps in and shuts the door.
The sound lands wrong. Too final.
Conversation dies mid-syllable.
I don’t look at him yet. I don’t have to. The room recalibrates around his presence—attention angling without permission.
“Rossi.”
That gets me.
I stand.
Adrian’s expression blanks out. Dante stills. Cole’s jaw tightens, and he looks down like the floor owes him something. Declan’s eyes flick to the door, then back to me, sharp and unreadable.
No one speaks as I cross the room.
Addison doesn’t bother closing the distance.
“Optics are becoming a problem,” he says.
Straight to it.
Fuck. Figures.
“Rumors,” he continues, arms folded. Controlled. “About an accident in high school.”
My throat tightens in a way I refuse to acknowledge. The room feels smaller. Hotter. Like it remembers for me.
I don’t blink. “People talk.” Flat.
“That’s not the point,” he replies. “Timing is.”
Silence stretches. Heavy. Intentional.
And in it, something else needles—Zoe’s face flickering in memory like a blade. How she watches. How she keeps her edges. How she decides what silence costs.
“You don’t get to ignore this,” Coach adds. “This is on you right now.”
I nod once. Not agreement. Acknowledgment. “You want me to manage it.”
“I want you to contain it,” Coach corrects. “Before it spreads past campus. Past this building. Past the program.”
Contain. Not clarify. Not deny. Control.
“I’m not the one talking,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “But you’re the one they’re watching.”
That lands heavier than an accusation.
“If this turns into a distraction,” he says, “I’ll act. For the team.”
No threat. Just fact.
“I won’t let it touch the ice,” I say.
He studies me a beat longer than necessary. Measuring. Then a single nod. “Be smarter than whoever started it.”
Rylan again. That promise. That smug certainty he could throw anything and I’d be the one to bleed in public.
“I am,” I say.
And it isn’t bravado. It’s a decision.
Coach opens the door. When we step back in, the room goes quiet again.
Adrian watches my face. Dante pretends he isn’t. Cole’s shoulders hold too rigid. Declan meets my eyes and doesn’t look away.
No questions. No cover.
Exactly how it should be.
Coach leaves. The door shuts.
I grab my helmet and don’t explain a damn thing. The rumor isn’t a fire yet. It’s a fuse. And I don’t need every detail of who lit it to recognize the match.
I heard the threat. The grin stayed with me.
I know the type of man who uses a whisper column like a blade because he’s too much of a coward to swing his own.
I make one choice and lock it down hard enough it feels like steel behind my ribs:
I’m not letting this become a story I react to.
I’m making it a story I control.
After the morning skate and a shower that doesn’t touch the pressure, campus feels louder. Class change hits like a wave—bodies moving, noise climbing, everyone pretending they aren’t clocking the tension.
The student center sits on my route to my next class, which means the café is too.
Which means eyes.
I see Zoe near the café before she sees me.
Or maybe she sees me and decides the reaction isn’t worth the cost.
Either way, she’s still. Phone in hand. Posture locked. Holding her ground. Staying out of it.
That’s new.
She’s watching. Not the way people watch when rumors start—curiosity dressed as distance, sympathy that keeps itself clean. Just assessment. Like she’s tracking variables, not people.
It puts me on edge faster than the whispers did.
I move with the crowd, cutting a straight line through it. Pace stays even. If she’s going to look, I’m not giving her anything extra to read.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away. Doesn’t step in.
And other people notice.
A couple of girls near the counter glance at her, then at me. One lifts her eyebrows like she’s waiting for Zoe to do what everyone assumes Zoe does—cut in, cut through, cut someone down. Or defend. Or pile on. Anything.
Zoe gives them nothing.
I pass close enough to register the choice she’s making.
Silence. Deliberate. Controlled.
A test.
And she hasn’t decided the outcome yet.
I don’t want her concern. I don’t want her protection. I don’t want her weighing in at all.
I want her to break the quiet.
My body reacts like it hates me for it—heat low in my gut, pulse sharpening, stupid awareness of her mouth like I can feel it even when she hasn’t spoken.
It’s jurisdiction. It’s wanting to know where I stand in her head because if I’m in there, it matters.
She doesn’t give tells. She gives absence.
When our eyes meet, it’s brief and flat.
No reaction. No soften.
Just confirmation that she’s aware—and opting out.
That irritates me more than noise ever could.
Fuck, seriously.
I keep walking. Behind me, the sound swells back into place like the moment never happened.
But it did. And she knows it did. That’s why she didn’t touch it.
I hate that I want her to say something. Hate that her silence reads intentional instead of passive.
I don’t look back. I don’t slow down. I don’t give the hallway the satisfaction of a reaction.
But the pressure stays.
She chose silence on purpose.
By lunch, the student center is a different kind of crowded—lines, trays, loud conversations performing normalcy. This is where teams and their orbit overlap; it’s why people linger. It’s why stories get oxygen.
The dining hall is loud in the way places get when everyone’s pretending not to listen. Trays slide. Chairs scrape. Laughter hits in uneven bursts.
I clock my teammates before they clock me—Adrian at the long table near the windows, Declan across from him, Dante and Cole shoulder to shoulder with food they’re barely touching. Normal setup.
I grab a tray anyway. Muscle memory. Habit. Control.
The line moves slower than it should. A couple heads turn. A couple voices drop. Nothing dramatic—just enough to register.
Phones are out. Screens flash as people scroll.
Briarcliff Whisperer again.
I don’t rush. I don’t hesitate. I take my time, load my plate, pay, move.
By the time I reach the table, the conversation has shifted.
Not stopped. Shifted.
Adrian glances up, meets my eyes, then looks back down at his phone like he’s deciding which problem deserves attention first.
Declan gives me a nod—neutral, unreadable.
Dante scoots his tray half an inch to make room without speaking.
Cole doesn’t look up.
No one asks where I’ve been. No one says anything stupid.
I sit.
That’s when it registers: they’re letting me stay. They’re just not giving me cover.
The silence sits heavy between us, a third party at the table.
It isn’t the comfortable quiet we usually have—the kind built on shared plays and inside jokes.
This is the silence of a bomb ticking under the floorboards.
My phone buzzes once on the table. A preview flashes before I can stop it.
WHISPERER: “Rossi’s ‘sealed record’ isn’t sealed anymore. Ask around.”
Sealed. Sure.
My jaw locks so hard it aches.
They don’t know the truth. The paperwork got signed and changed and buried back then, and they don’t know why. The cost of “family protects each other” stays invisible to them, along with the kind of promise made over your head when you’re too young to refuse.
All they know is I’m hiding something massive—and now the campus has a headline-shaped version of it.
I pick up my fork, metal cold against my fingers.
The food—steamed vegetables, a piece of chicken—looks gray. I take a bite, chewing mechanically, barely tasting. Texture like sawdust.
I’m not being judged for being an asshole or a diva. That, I can handle. That’s part of the game.
I’m being watched like I’m the kind of man who leaves a body behind and buys his way out of it.
The weight sits in my stomach like lead. Suffocating.
If I open my mouth now, I don’t just set myself on fire. I light up everything connected to my name—people who didn’t ask to be collateral and people who made sure I was.
So I swallow it with tasteless food. Wash it down with water that tastes like nothing.
Someone at the next table laughs too loud. A fork clinks. The sound grates against my nerves.
Adrian clears his throat like he might say something, then checks the time instead.
“Practice in an hour,” he says to the table.
Not to me.
I nod once.
Letting it sit stays an option. Playing contained stays an option. Doing what Coach wants and keeping it from spreading stays an option.
But containment is only half the job.
The other half is deciding who bleeds first.
“Didn’t know I was this interesting,” I say, dry enough to cut. “Usually I have to score a hat trick to get this kind of attention.”
Dante huffs a short laugh. Not relief. Recognition. Acknowledge the blade, don’t flinch.
Across the room, near the glass wall that separates the dining hall from the café line, I catch movement.
Zoe.
She’s in her own lane—coffee in hand, bag slung over her shoulder like she belongs to no one. Lunch traffic flows around her because people make space without realizing they’re doing it.
She’s angled just enough that I know she sees the table.
Sees me.
She doesn’t react. Doesn’t look away. Doesn’t step in.
Everyone else is reacting.
She’s waiting.
People pass between us—students, noise, motion—but the line holds. That deliberate stillness from earlier is back, sharpened. Like she’s watching what silence does to me. What I do with it.
My pulse trips. Annoyed at my own body.
The awareness of her lands in the wrong place—low and hot, like the idea of getting close enough to make her break would feel like winning.
Like losing.
Like both.
I push back from the table and stand.
No announcement. No explanation.
As I dump my tray, I make another choice, clean and cold: I’m not answering a whisper column. I’m not begging campus to believe me. I’m not performing innocence for people who want spectacle.
I’m going to find where Rylan hid the blade. And then I’m going to decide when to turn it.
I glance once more through the glass.
Zoe’s eyes are on me—steady, unreadable, sharp enough to cut.
She gives me nothing.
Which means she’s giving me something.
Pressure. Public. Chosen.
I let it settle in my body like a promise I don’t say out loud.
This won’t burn out. This isn’t something I can outlast.
And when I finally speak, it won’t be to defend myself.
It’ll be to detonate something that’s been waiting way too long to go off.