Chapter 28
twenty-eight
BEN
“Kellerman!” Schmidt’s voice cuts across the rink, disappointment sharper than any blade.
I don’t look up. Can’t. I’m too embarrassed, watching the puck slide into the corner after I’d missed a pass, mocking me with its lazy rotation while Schmidt retrieves it with the effortless grace of someone whose brain hasn’t been hijacked by a week of self-inflicted misery.
Cass, I’m so sorry. Please let me explain.
I didn’t mean it. You have to know I didn’t mean it.
Please.
Three texts sent into the void.
All marked “read.”
Zero replies.
Coach blows his whistle, setting up the next drill. I fall into position at the blue line, legs moving on autopilot. All the while, I just replay the same crushing moment on an infinite loop—a modern Groundhog Day without the funny bits, and which cost my team a goal the other night.
Halfway through the drill, a freshman forward cuts toward me, a guy I’d usually eat for lunch. But I hesitate—just a fraction of a second—long enough for doubt to smother instinct, and he blows past like I’m a traffic cone and puts the puck in the back of the net.
Rook fishes it out without a word, but the weight of his gaze says plenty.
I’ve been useless for a week. Two games—both disasters.
The first, I coughed up a turnover that led to a breakaway goal.
The second, I got benched in the third period after taking a penalty so stupid even Stiles winced.
The coaches haven’t even bothered yelling at me for a few days; that’s how I know I’m terminal.
A lost cause.
It’s the sort of situation that sees a few guys on the team get moved on quietly at the end of each season, replaced by freshmen or transfers from other schools.
Because the brutal reality of collegiate athletics is if you’re not on top of your game, there are thousands of guys who’d like your slot.
Yet all I can think of is her amp in the corner of my dorm room. I haven’t touched it since. The power supply components sit unopened on my desk like a rebuke—capacitors, a transformer, precision resistors that would’ve made her signal chain sing.
It’s everything I needed to prove I could be both versions of myself, but instead my life feels like one giant crossed wire—energy going everywhere except where it’s supposed to, but with absolutely nothing working the way it should.
“Three-on-two!” Coach calls. “Kellerman, you’re back.”
I skate into position and wait as Nash carries the puck across the blue line, flanked by two wings.
It’s a standard breakout drill. I’ve done this a thousand times.
But I hesitate, just like in that hallway, a half-second pause while I try to calculate which choice will cost me less. He scores a moment later.
The whistle screams.
“Kellerman! Center ice. Now.”
I skate toward Coach Pearson with the heavy shuffle of a man who already knows the verdict. The ice feels thinner under my blades, like it might crack and swallow me whole. Coach meets me at the faceoff dot, hands on his hips and his face a picture of frustration.
“I think you already know this, Ben,” he says. “But you’re benched for Saturday.”
Around us, drills continue, but I feel every eye in the rink pivot toward me. Nash pauses mid-stride. Schmidt’s stick goes still. Cooper is watching from the far end, expression unreadable. Because a permanent benching—from first line to zero—is huge news on a team.
The championship defense continues, just without me.
I stare at the Devils logo painted beneath my skates.
“You’re a liability right now. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but you need to sort it out before you get your spot back.” A flicker of disappointment crosses his face, like I was an investment that crashed. “One week to sort it, or someone else takes your ice time permanently.”
He skates away without waiting for a response.
What would I even say?
Hey, Coach, quick update: I’m emotionally compromised because I publicly disowned the only person who ever saw me clearly, and now my brain won’t stop replaying her face crumpling like paper. Anyway, go team, or something like that, I guess…
Yeah. That would go over great.
I stand frozen at center ice. Practice continues around me the way traffic reroutes around a wreck—everyone careful not to look too long at the carnage, but slowing down just enough to watch it a little—and soon I’m actually in the way.
“Hey.” Nash glides over with Stiles in tow, their faces arranged in clinical assessment. “What happened with the punk chick?”
I don’t respond.
Stiles fills the silence. “Look, girls like that are fun for a weekend, but they’re not relationship material. You were basically renting.”
Girls like that.
Something ignites in my chest. Not the familiar panic. Not the desperate scramble to belong that’s ruled me since junior year of high school. Not even the urge to shrink, to deflect, to laugh along, or, if all else fails, to get the hell out of there.
Something colder.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I say.
Nash’s eyebrows rise. He’s not used to pushback—not from many of the guys at all, but definitely not from the team’s designated little brother, who’s supposed to take the teasing and be grateful for the privilege of belonging in the group at all.
“Whoa, relax. I’m just saying—”
“She was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Stiles snorts. “Bro, come on, you’ve known her for, what, a month or two?”
My voice rises. “‘Bro.’ That’s your analysis?”
Heads turn and drills slow in response to the raised voices. I catch a glimpse of Rook at the far end, his posture shifting in recognition, like he’s seen this movie before. But I don’t care anymore. These two didn’t take Cass from me, but my pandering to them sure as hell did.
Not anymore.
“I threw her away because I was too scared to tell you she mattered.” I take a step toward Nash, and he actually backs up. “Because I was terrified that if you knew I actually felt something real, you’d laugh at me. So just back the fuck off, Nash, OK?”
The rink has gone silent.
Even Coach has stopped, whistle dangling.
“I’m done.” I yank off my helmet. “I’m done pretending you’re worth more than she was, and done making myself small so you feel big.”
Nash opens his mouth, but I’m already skating toward the exit.
The locker room door slams behind me, and I lean against my stall, breathing hard. The adrenaline fades fast, leaving something hollow in its place. It’s some weird combination of exhilaration, liberation, relief, and fear. I sink onto the bench and look at my hands.
In the movies, this is the moment where she’d walk in or I’d run to her. But I respect her far too much to do that to her, after what I’ve already done. She didn’t answer my texts, so the message from her is loud and clear: she’s totally done with me.
I’m not in a movie.
The girl I love still hasn’t texted back.
I stood up to them, but it doesn’t feel like victory.
It’s far too late to matter.
The dorm room has the oppressive silence of a courtroom after the verdict. I’m sitting on my bed, back against the wall, staring at Cass’s amp in the corner like it’s a time machine that actually works, and I can just plug it in and go back to the hallway and unfuck all of this.
But it just sits there, judging me with its peeling stickers and battle scars.
You stood up to those two assholes.
Finally.
Fat lot of good it did.
The satisfaction lasted just long enough for me to make it to the locker room and strip off my gear. But Cass still hasn’t texted back, Coach still benched me, and now I’ve probably nuked whatever fragile social standing I had left with the team.
Gold star, Kellerman. You managed to alienate everyone in a single week.
I shift against the wall, trying to ease the dull ache in my legs. It’s from practice, the kind that usually feels like accomplishment, but tonight it just feels like proof I showed up somewhere I no longer belong and didn’t achieve much of anything.
The knock on my door is so sharp I actually flinch.
“Kellerman.” Rook’s voice. “Open up.”
“Yeah,” I call out, my voice scratchy from four hours of silence. “It’s open.”
The door swings wide, and Rook fills the frame. He’s still in his post-practice sweats, but there’s nothing casual about the way he’s looking at me. His eyes are sharp, assessing—the same look he gets when he’s reading a shooter cross the ice—and I don’t think I stack up well.
“We’re talking,” he says.
Not can we talk?
Not a question.
He steps inside, closing the door behind him. The room feels smaller immediately, like his presence has displaced all the available oxygen. He takes in the scene, and I watch his expression shift from captain-on-a-mission to something softer.
He grabs my desk chair, spins it around, and straddles it backwards, arms folded across the top. “Talk.”
“About what?” I laugh. “The part where I blew my spot on the team, or the part where I drove away the best thing that’s happened since I got to this school?”
“Pick one.” He shrugs. “We’ll get to both.”
Rook used to be the one-man loudhailer, who’d skirt out of any difficult conversations with a joke. But since meeting Morgan, he’s mellowed out, and become comfortable in silence. So now, he just sits there and waits, and I know he’ll still be here in an hour if I don’t start talking.
So I talk.
The whole pathetic story spills out. The fake relationship and how it started as a desperate solution to her stalker problem and my complete inability to function around women.
The way it stopped being fake somewhere between our first kiss and our third shared laugh.
The fact that I love her and let her down.
“I finally got it right,” I say quietly. “With her, I finally felt like myself. Like both versions of me could exist in the same person, you know?”
Rook nods slowly but doesn’t interrupt.