Chapter Thirty-Four
Cooper
Brinley is curled against my side when I wake up the next morning. Her hair is a mess across her pillow, and her hand rests over my ribs, like she’s holding me and never plans to let go.
I smile at the freckles that cover the apple of her cheeks.
Last night plays through my mind again, coming back in pieces. How she reclined against me with the controller in her hands. The way she wiped out every opponent as she cleared each level. When she admitted she’s the girl I’ve been gaming with for years now.
Killa.
The girl I’ve spent my teenage years playing games with was right in front of me the whole time.
I let out a slow breath and brush my thumb along her arm, careful not to wake her yet.
My phone is still on my nightstand where I left it. I know without checking there’s a series of missed calls and texts. I just didn’t care to read them last night.
Not with Brinley here and in my arms.
Not when the world felt quiet off the ice for once.
I slide out from beneath her and grab it, expecting the usual spam of the guys joking around in the group chat. Instead, I realize I have two missed calls and a series of missed messages from Reed.
My stomach feels uneasy at the thought of what it could be about.
I glance back at Brinley once more. Her white-blond hair looks almost curly from across the pillows. She looks stunning like this, bare face without a trace of makeup. For a minute, I just stand there and stare at her, letting the weight of how I feel for this girl settle something in my chest.
My phone buzzes in my hand again.
Reed.
I curse under my breath and start moving. I pull on my sweats, then grab my practice gear from where I dropped it on the floor and shove the rest into my bag.
“Brinley, baby, I’ll be back after practice,” I murmur, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple.
She shifts under the blankets.
“Coop?” Her voice is thick with sleep.
“Yeah?”
She blinks up at me, trying to focus. “Will you take me to my place on your way?”
I pause. The idea of her leaving doesn’t sit right with me. I know I need to tell her the truth about everything that’s gone on.
“You could stay,” I urge her.
She pushes herself up a little, rubbing her eyes. “I have class. I need to get my car.”
I nod. Right, class. “Yeah, of course.”
The drive is quiet, mostly because she’s still half asleep in the passenger seat. Her head tipped toward the window while the morning sun streams through the windshield.
When we pull up outside of Broken Saddle, she reaches for the door and then hesitates.”
“You’ll call or text me later?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “After practice.”
She leans over and presses a quick kiss against my mouth. Too quick. When she pulls away, I reach for her wrist and tug her toward me. She hums softly and sighs when my hand settles along her cheek.
She pulls away with a dreamy smile, biting her lip like she’s trying to hold it in.
I watch her climb out and disappear inside before I finally drive off.
By the time I get to the rink, the feeling in my gut hasn’t left. With Brinley gone, I finally open the text thread from Reed.
Reed: I found something.
Reed: Call me.
Reed: Answer your damn phone.
Reed: Rowdy, you alive? Call me back, dammit.
I fire off a quick response telling him I just got his messages and I have to head into practice, but I’ll call him after.
The “off” feeling continues throughout practice. Coach keeps resetting drills. Running us through the same sequence multiple times. Blowing the whistle longer than necessary, something you’d think he’d do if he thought we were showing up hungover, but to my knowledge, none of us are.
It isn’t obvious enough to anyone to call him out, but I notice.
“Rowden,” Coach calls from the doorway after practice. “Hit the showers, then come see me in my office.”
I nod. Kade and Talon both glance at me, trying to read my reaction.
“You talk to Reed yet?” Talon asks.
“I’ll call him when I leave.”
He nods, like there’s more he wants to say, but lets it go.
The locker room fills with noise—guys talking, music blaring, and showers kicking on.
I strip out of my gear and step under the hot water, letting it hit my shoulders for a second before shutting it off. The tension doesn’t go anywhere.
I dry off, throw on my clothes, and head out.
The hallway’s mostly empty now.
I don’t slow down as I walk straight to his office.
He’s already sitting behind his desk when I step inside.
“Close the door,” he says.
I do, then take the seat across from him. The same one I sat in the last time he called me in here.
He settles back, folding his hands together.
“We need to talk about your priorities with playoffs coming up,” he says.
“My priorities haven’t changed,” I answer.
“Is that so?”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I grit my teeth knowing it’s probably Reed, and whatever he wants to talk to me about must be big.
He keeps going, droning on and on about outside distractions and my commitment to the game.
My phone buzzes again.
He pauses, glancing toward my pocket. “This is what I’m talking about distractions.” He shifts slightly. “You can check it.”
I hesitate, almost expecting this to be a challenge. He tilts his head toward me, nodding for me to do it, and I pull it out.
It’s Reed again. I open the message.
Reed: Call me. Now. This can’t wait.
Before I can respond, another message comes through.
Reed: It’s Coach Dawson’s brother.
I stare at the screen. What?
He must realize I’m reading the message, as his replies continue.
Reed: The phone number that sent the photo traces back to him.
For a second, I just sit there, reading it again.
“Everything okay?” Coach asks, but there’s something measured in the way he says it.
I stand slowly. “I need to step out,” I say.
“We’re in the middle of something.”
“I know.”
“Sit down,” he orders, gritting his teeth.
I look at him. “It’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
I don’t answer. I’m already moving toward the door.
“Rowden,” he says, sharper this time. “If you walk out of my office…”
I stop with my hand on the door handle and turn to face him.
“You’ll do what? Bench me again and call it medical?” I quip. “Don’t talk to me about commitment.”
His expression tightens.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” he says. “You let things outside of hockey control you.”
I study him for a second longer.
“Or maybe I’ve found what’s important outside of hockey,” I say.
I open the door before he can respond.
The hallway feels longer than it did before. I jog out of the building as I call Reed.
“You’re absolutely sure?” I ask when he answers.
“Yeah,” he says. “The account is tied to his brother. Same device history. He’s even connected to the same Wi-Fi. It’s not random.”
I stop near the end of the corridor, leaning against the wall.
“They sent that picture on purpose,” Reed continues. “They wanted you to think it was her.”
I close my eyes briefly. “I know.”
“And they timed it.”
My jaw tightens.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I was able to track the metadata and confirmed it was taken the morning you left to play Ashford. I confirmed with Talon when you left town. Was she there when you left?”
I swear under my breath. She was curled up in my bed.
Someone snuck into my house and got into my shit while Brinley was there alone.
When she was there, where she should’ve been safe.
I glance down the hallway toward Coach’s closed office door again. That wasn’t an accident.
“Where are you?” Reed asks.
“Just leaving practice now. Still at the rink.”
“Don’t confront him alone,” Reed says. “You don’t know how deep this goes yet.”
I let out a slow breath.
“I’ll call you right back. I need to call the guys.”
I hang up and push off the wall.
Whatever this is, it’s not about hockey anymore.
I don’t go back to Coach’s office. I just keep walking out the door and toward my truck, pulling up the group chat. My thumb hovers for a half second before I hit call.
I don’t want to sit on this, and I don’t want to sit on this alone.
“Goddammit,” I grunt.
Talon answers first. “What happened?”
“Put me on speaker,” I say, knowing he’s with Kade and Owen.
There’s some shuffling, and then I hear Kade’s voice in the background.
“All right, we’re here. What’s going on? You good?”
“No, I don’t think I am,” I say honestly, as Reed joins the call. “It’s his brother.”
“Whose?” Owen asks.
“Coach’s.”
There’s a pause.
“Wait, you mean the cop brother?” Kade asks.
“Yeah.”
I drop back into the seat, staring at the steering wheel as Reed recounts what he told me about tracing the details on the phone and tying it all to his brother.
Silence stretches for a beat before Reed says, “And that’s not all.”
I shift my gaze to the video call, staring at him.
Reed’s jaw tightens slightly. “There are a few transactions I flagged. I can’t prove it yet, but I’m starting to think he’s tied to the same bullshit we connected to Wren’s dad last year… and it doesn’t look clean.”
He pauses before adding, “After Dave put up the cameras, I’ve been keeping an eye on the footage. Just in case anything out of the norm came up.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“I’ve noticed a squad car driving through the alley. A couple of nights ago, it pulled in and sat there for a while. I checked the dispatch, and there were no calls in the area. The car just parked there.”
“For what?” Talon asks.
“That’s what I couldn’t figure out. So I looked into it a little further.”
“Let me guess, the car is registered to the same officer. Coach’s brother, Allen.”
“Yeah,” Reed confirms.
I start the truck, but don’t pull out yet.
“He was parked next to her car,” Reed says. “He got out and circled it once, like he was checking for something.”
“That’s not normal, man,” Talon mutters.
“No,” I agree.
“Did she ever tell you that she was pulled over by him before?” Reed asks.
“She what?” I ask.
Reed nods. “It was almost two months ago now. Looks like he wrote her a warning.”
“That’s not automatically suspicious,” Owen says.
I’m thinking through the timing, about how long it’s been since we first met.
“I think that’s around the time she moved to Rixton,” I add.
“If you know Coach has eyes on her, and she was pulled over around the time she got into town, maybe that’s what alerted him that she was here,” Kade suggests.
“Maybe,” I say.
He’s not wrong. It definitely makes sense.
“If they’ve been watching her since she showed up in town, then this didn’t start because she was talking to me.”
The truck idles.
“What reason would they have to follow her, though?” Owen asks.
“If his brother’s involved,” Talon says, “then Coach has to be too.”
Kade leans back slightly. “And if that’s the case, then her showing up? That’s not nothing. That’s a problem.”
I shake my head. “Because if people start asking questions about her…”
“They start asking questions about him,” Owen finishes.
“And if that’s true,” Kade adds, “then the last thing he wants is anyone sniffing around the fact he’s got a daughter no one knows about.”
I drag a hand over my mouth, trying to piece it together.
“She shows up in town. His brother pulls her over. Not long after, she’s working at the bar.
She gets approached in the alley. Someone gets into the house and takes photos of my notebook.
And now we’ve got proof he’s been around the bar and her place. ”
I exhale slowly. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“Everything with the notebook—they wanted you to doubt her,” Talon says finally.
“I hate that I did,” I admit. That admission sits heavy on my chest.
“She thought I was overreacting about the cameras,” I add. “But something didn’t sit right after he said he had eyes on her. I just… had a feeling I needed to do more.”
“Trust that feeling,” Kade says.
I shift the truck into gear and pull out of the lot.
“I need to call her and tell her to come straight to the house after class.”
I don’t wait. I end the call and dial her number immediately. It rings twice before she answers.
“Hey,” she says. Her voice is cheerful, it’s so normal that it makes me forget what I wanted to say.
There’s traffic in the background, and I can hear her blinker ticking.
“You driving?” I ask.
“Yeah, just leaving campus,” she says. “What’s up? How was practice?”
I should ease into this. I should ask her calmly, but instead I go straight for it.
“Did your father ever talk to you about—” I stop. “Have you met his brother or anyone connected to that side of their family?”
“What?” She laughs softly. “That’s random.”
“Just answer me. Please.”
“No,” she says confused. “Why are you—” She cuts herself off. “Dammit.”
“What?”
“I think I’m getting pulled over.”
I sit up straighter, my hand tightening around the wheel. “What do you mean you think?”
“There are lights behind me,” she says, still too calm. “Hold on a minute.”
“Brinley, where are you?”
“Cooper, hold on a second.” I hear the click of her turn signal and the slight crunch of gravel beneath her tires.
She doesn’t hang up.
“Afternoon, ma’am.”
The voice comes through the speaker. It’s kind of distorted, but it’s enough to make out what’s being said.
“Hi,” she says.
“License and registration.”
I sit there gripping my phone so hard my knuckles ache.
“Brinley,” I shout, hoping she can hear me. “Tell me where you are.”
No answer. I don’t know if she can hear me or if she’s just focused on him.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” the officer asks.
“No,” she says. “I wasn’t speeding, so I don’t have any idea.”
It’s hard to hear over the sound of the wind and passing cars, but I can hear him when he says, “I’m going to need you to step out of the vehicle.”
“Is there something wrong?” she asks.
“Step out of the vehicle.”
My heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest.
“Brinley,” I call out. “Brinley, where are you?”
I hear her door open and shut. The call goes faint for a second, and I lift my phone out of fear that it got disconnected.
Quickly, I shift over to my messages and type out a text to Reed.
Me: Can you track her location?
The typing bubbles appear almost immediately.
Reed: I’ll try.
Talon: Why don’t you have it already?
I stare at it, something hot spreading through my chest.
Me: Shut up.
Reed replies, asking me to give him a few, and I adjust the phone again to press it to my ear.
I can hear voices still but not clearly. The officer speaks, and Brinley answers him.
“Brinley,” I shout even though I know she can’t hear me.
It’s just the sound of the wind and traffic passing by, and the heavy sound of my breathing filling the silence.
This time, when I try to call out for her, her name dies in my throat.
Because right now, there’s nothing I can do but listen.