Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Miranda
The arena is louder than I remember. The Silverpeak crowd has come out in full today, dark blue from the cheap seats up to the boxes, the cold of the rink rising in waves against the heat of twenty thousand bodies packed into one building.
Derek hands me a bottle of water without taking his eyes off the ice.
“Drink. You haven’t sat down since we got here.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re standing on a healing shoulder, a healing arm, and you’ve been watching the corridor entrances for the last hour.”
I take the water. “I was checking the exits.”
“Sure you were.”
I sit when he tilts his chin at the seat.
The ache in my shoulder pulses once with the motion, so I breathe out slowly through my nose until it eases.
The bullet went through clean. Sera’s come by the house twice this week to do her quiet wolf-healer work, and she’s pronounced it well on the mend.
My arm still complains when I forget to favor it, though I can hold a pen, lift a coffee mug, or write a note without flinching. Today I refuse to flinch at anything.
On the ice, Grayson is fast. Faster than the last time I watched him play, which I’d have sworn wasn’t possible.
He skates with a tightness in his shoulders that won’t loosen, even when Brody throws himself into a check at center ice.
The grin Grayson flashes back is for the cameras.
The look he flicks up at our box every few minutes belongs to me.
“He keeps checking on you,” Derek murmurs.
“I noticed.”
“He’s had one eye on the family entrance since the puck dropped.”
“Vanessa isn’t here.” I’ve swept the away section three times already. “Her seat’s empty. Brent’s little perch beside it too. I checked when we came in.”
Derek’s gaze travels the same arc mine keeps making. “Brent’s on the ice. She turns up for all his games, I heard.”
“Not today, apparently.”
The buzzer cracks. The crowd surges up around me.
Samuel’s just put a clean wrist shot past the Crimson Rock goalie, the puck flashing through traffic into the top corner of the net.
Grayson is half across the ice with his stick raised before the lamp finishes its spin.
I’m on my feet too, hand pressed to my mouth, a laugh punching out of me.
Derek bumps my good shoulder. “You can still cheer.”
The line change comes fast. Grayson coasts to the bench for his water bottle, then his eyes climb to the family section through the glass.
He lifts the bottle in a small private salute.
I raise mine back. His grin shifts to the easy one this time, the one that creases the corners. Heat climbs the back of my neck.
“Look at the two of you.” Derek shakes his head. “Disgusting.”
I grin.
The third period turns brutal. Crimson Rock’s new alpha has clearly sent his team out to draw blood, and twice Brent takes runs at Grayson the refs call too late to matter.
Grayson doesn’t retaliate. He absorbs the hits and recycles them into speed, his line surging up the ice in formations that look rehearsed, his focus never leaving the puck.
The third time Brent comes at him, Grayson slips the check at the last possible second.
Brent goes face-first into the boards with a crunch that makes the whole arena wince.
“Oh,” Derek breathes. “That was beautiful.”
“That was petty.” I smile viciously. “I hope it hurt.”
Grayson sails past with his stick raised, no glance spared for Brent’s crumpled form behind him.
Time bleeds down. Two minutes become one, then thirty seconds, then ten.
Brody intercepts a desperate pass at center ice, finds Samuel breaking free, the two of them working it up the ice in a textbook give-and-go that ends with Samuel burying it under the goalie’s blocker.
The buzzer goes. Silverpeak takes it by three. The arena detonates.
I’m up without deciding to be, both arms in the air, the pain in my shoulder forgotten somewhere behind me.
Derek’s whooping at my side. Down on the ice, the team has piled onto Samuel in a celebration that’s half hockey, half full-pack joy, Brody screaming into Samuel’s helmet while Eric slides out of his crease across half the rink to reach them.
Grayson breaks from the pile, skating straight to the boards in front of our box. He’s beaming, lit up, a man let loose. He bangs his glove against the glass once, pointing at me through it, and the gesture drags a flush up my neck I don’t bother fighting. His chin tips toward the corridor.
“Go.” Derek waves me off. “I’ll meet you at the family entrance.”
I push out of the row, down the stairs at a half jog, my shoulder’s ache nowhere in my mind. Grayson is waiting by the door to the ice when I get there, helmet tucked under his arm, hair damp at the temples. He drops the helmet onto the rubber matting and pulls me in without ceremony.
His mouth finds mine before I’ve caught my breath. Cold air, sweat, the faint copper edge of a man fresh off sixty minutes of hard hockey. His glove is still on the hand that cups my jaw, the leather rough at my skin, his kiss shutting out the whole arena. My hand fists in the front of his jersey.
“You won,” I manage when he pulls away to let me breathe.
“We won because you were watching.” His thumb grazes my lower lip.
“Butter me up more and I’ll start sliding on the floor.”
He laughs against my mouth, low in his chest. “Press scrum’s going to eat an hour, minimum. Derek will take you home. I’ll be right behind you the second they let me out.”
“Be safe.”
“Always.” He kisses me again, slower, harder, his mouth gone possessive. “Wait up for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sir cracks his grin wide open. He kisses the tip of my nose carefully and reverently.
Then a sponsor handler materializes at his elbow with a clipboard, an apologetic smile on his face.
Grayson rolls his eyes, throws me one last look, and lets himself be steered toward the press room.
I press my fingers to my mouth. His taste is still there when Derek finds me.
The drive home goes quickly. Derek takes the back roads around the post-game crush, so we make the gates of the property in under twenty minutes.
The radio keeps replaying Samuel’s third-period goal in louder recaps with every mile.
I rest my head against the cool window, letting myself smile at it.
“He really is good, isn’t he?” I murmur.
“Best in the league this season.” Derek’s voice is calm, pleased. “He’s been playing with something to prove.”
I think of Ethan at home with Linda, ChuChu under one arm, the afternoon cartoons going. Tonight he’ll want his three bedtime stories and the kiss on the forehead, the same as always. The thought of it steadies me for as long as it takes us to turn up the drive.
The gravel crunches under the tires. The house sits quiet in the pale four o’clock light, the windows blank, nothing moving behind any of them.
I’m halfway out of my seatbelt when my eyes catch the front door.
It stands half open, the glass set into it punched inward, bright shards scattered across the porch boards and down the front steps.
Wrongness slides down my spine.
“Derek.”
“I see it.” His voice has changed. “Stay behind me.”
He kills the engine and steps out. I climb out my own side, because stay behind me doesn’t mean stay in the car, and I’m not standing in a driveway while he opens that door alone. The gravel’s loud under my boots. My breath fogs in the cold.
The door gives at a touch, swinging in over the broken glass. Derek goes through first, his shoulders dropping into a low half-crouch, his wolf right under the skin. He crosses the foyer without a sound. I trail him at a careful distance, my heart climbing into my throat.
The kitchen’s still. Linda’s on the floor.
“Linda.”
I drop to my knees beside her. Blood mats the gray hair at her temple, dark and wide across the tile where she went down. One arm’s twisted wrong beneath her. Two fingers at her throat find a pulse, too fast, too thin, her breath dragging shallowly, never filling her chest.
“Linda. Can you hear me?”
She doesn’t stir. I press the heel of my hand to the split above her ear to slow the bleeding, run the other along her skull and her neck, the wrenched arm. She didn’t trip. Something struck her, hard, more than once.
“How bad?” Derek’s voice comes from the doorway behind me.
“Bad. Her head’s open, she’s losing blood faster than I can hold it in. Her breathing’s going.” My voice stays level only because four years of ER nights won’t let it do anything else. “She needs help.”
A cold certainty drops through me, and I’m on my feet before the name forms.
“Ethan!”
I bolt for the stairs, taking them two at a time. The upstairs hall is quiet. His door stands open. I shoulder it open the rest of the distance, then I stop.
His bed’s empty, blanket thrown back. ChuChu lies on the floor at the foot of it, abandoned.
“Ethan?”
The second syllable cracks in my throat.
I tear through the room, dropping to look under the bed, yanking the closet open, checking the little alcove behind the curtain where he hides when we play.
Nothing comes back. The window’s shut but unlocked, the latch turning easily under my fingers. Derek fills the doorway when I turn.
“He’s gone.” The word tears out of me twice more. “He’s gone, Derek. He’s gone.”
I reach for my phone on instinct, every nerve set on hearing Grayson’s voice. My back pocket’s empty. I check the front, my coat, the waist of my jeans, drop to sweep the floor. I had it at the game, I know I did. The last time it sat in my hand won’t come to me.
“I can’t find my phone.” Panic climbs my throat. “I have to find—I have to call Grayson!”
His phone’s already out, his thumb moving over the screen. “I’ll get him.”