2. Mason #2
Humiliation roiled in my stomach like I’d skated drills for hours. I’d have preferred that. At least that pain would have a purpose.
The idea painted itself in my mind. Lilah Byrd wanted to play games. She’d fucked me over, smiled in my face and whispered sweet promises of what our senior year would be. All while laughing with her boyfriend the second my back was turned. No, she wasn’t getting away with this.
Calder tossed down the controller, shoved up from the couch and picked up his beer. “Thinking of launching yourself off the balcony to fight Ferris?”
“I don’t care about him.”
Calder reached for the curtain with his permanent clenched-jaw expression. “Then what’s little Lilah got going on today?”
I grabbed his arm. “You want them to think we’re up here thinking about her—about him?”
He tilted his head and squinted. “But you were.”
I flung his arm away from me. “I wasn’t.”
He stared at me with an almost-smile but backed away from the curtain. “You know I’ve got a hell of a lot more riding on this season than you do. We’re winning this shit.” His eyes filled with steely determination.
“A hell of a lot more? How many commitment letters have you gotten already?” The contracts we signed would secure a spot with our college of choice. There was only one I cared about—Rhode Island. But the rest of the guys had more choices.
He cracked his neck. “Michigan, Boston, Minnesota, Colorado and Yale.”
“Yale? And you haven’t signed already?”
He leveled his gaze at me. “Do I scream Yale material?”
Erik walked into the room carrying an XL Gino’s pizza with grease seeping through the box and a container of wings.
Calder folded his arms across his chest. “What happened to more beer?”
“I got hungry, so I ordered this. They always get it to me fast.” Erik hefted up the food and walked to my desk. “And I thought you guys might be hungry.”
“And then you bypassed the basement where all the alcohol is stashed and came back up here empty-handed?” I was being a dick. But Lilah had been in her house with Ryker alone for ninety-seven minutes.
“Food isn’t empty-handed.” Erik inhaled an entire slice, crust and all, in three seconds before dropping into one of the armchairs in the living room off my bedroom.
My bedroom that was five times bigger than any of the shitty studios, motel rooms, or even cars we’d lived in with my mom.
Before my dad showed up, some nights I slept in the rink manager’s office, at least until Zoe was born. Our mom had been clean when she was pregnant, but that didn’t last longer than it took the ink to dry on Zoe’s birth certificate with a blank for the father’s name.
From then on, every other cent my mom got disappeared, and so did she. But Zoe and I had rink pizza or chicken fingers to keep us going.
Once my father watched me skate, he fully funded my hockey.
Hockey had always been the one constant—my salvation.
Even if social services hadn’t taken me and Zoe from my mom when I was eleven, my father would’ve come for me once I’d proven myself. So I dedicated every minute on the ice to destroying my opponents.
Making him proud was a survival instinct.
The deal was easy to accept without my father even saying a word. He’d take care of Zoe and me and pay for whatever help Mom needed.
All I had to do was listen to his guidance, follow his rules—and win. So simple.
And a dark, twisted part of me was relieved each time Mom relapsed and had to go back to rehab. Because her loving drugs more than she’d ever love us meant we stayed with my father. Even I could admit it was fucked up.
But I’d screwed up the deal this summer. I’d gotten distracted by Lilah. It wouldn’t happen again.
Galen walked in and tossed the case of beer onto my couch. “You’re welcome.”
Erik bounded over to it.
Calder planted a hand on the center of his chest and gave him a sharp head shake. “Can’t open those until the first game of the season.”
“Sounds like a you problem.” Galen sat on the leather chair beside the couch, opened a water and slid his coin out of his pocket.
He passed the shiny silver disk over the backs of his fingers.
“What were you two fighting about before Erik showed up?” He used his water bottle like an accusing pointer.
“We weren’t.” Calder and I answered at the same time.
Galen’s sixth sense was a freaky curious thing. He could block a puck out of nowhere or anticipate a backward pass or fake out better than any other goalie I’d ever played with.
Calder tossed his empty beer into the trash. “No fighting.”
I relaxed a little. At least we didn’t need to bring up my spying to the rest of the guys.
“Only me asking about the deal with Lilah,” he said.
Erik and Galen made noises of understanding.
A shot of irritation surged through my veins, but I stifled it. “There is no deal.”
No one needed to know Lilah had gotten under my skin.
If I’d been more focused, our groundkeeper’s house wouldn’t still call to me like a siren, inviting disaster.
No needling inside my chest at how Lilah had played me.
No panic that I’d exposed the guys’ weaknesses to our biggest enemy.
No fucks given about Ryker’s hands all over her.
But the only way any of that would make sense to them was if I let them know about the pathetic moments I’d had with her icing my shoulder after practice, bandaging up my knee or lying with my head in her lap while she read that vampire book.
Galen sat back in his chair. “What is the deal? You’ve had a hate-boner for her from the second senior year started. The dining hall thing was fucked.”
Every time she sat down at lunch, the people sitting at neighboring tables had gotten up and walked away. Was it my fault people had so little backbone that a mention of her rival school affiliation and how Havoc wouldn’t look kindly on those who associated with her was interpreted strictly?
Galen paused his coin play. “She always seemed nice. Quiet, but nice.”
A heated spike of annoyance stabbed through my head.
“She smells good,” Erik added.
I rounded on Erik, who looked up from his makeshift plate using the torn pizza box.
He jolted at my glare, set down the crust of an already-devoured slice of pizza, and leaned over to pick up another while avoiding my eyes.
“I sat behind her in Spanish last year,” he mumbled and shoved more food into his mouth.
Galen’s shrewd gaze probed and prodded. “You’ve already got all the girls ganging up on her. Will you maroon her on a deserted island next? Doesn’t seem worth it for a girl who barely registers on the social radar.”
The way many of the Hawthorne hockey devotees had taken it upon themselves to become an extension of my feelings about Lilah had been exactly what I was going for.
Although there had been a prickle of aggravation at the spaghetti “incident” in the dining hall.
I’d caught up with the sophomore lacrosse player after Lilah ran out of the room.
He sported a busted lip that week, played it off as a practice injury.
After that, Lilah stopped coming to the dining hall. Did she pack her lunch now?
There was a deep down part of me that reared up, not wanting to hurt her, but I bodychecked those feelings right where they belonged and reminded myself that she’d been laughing at me with our enemy. The fucks I had to give evaporated.
A wrong turn a couple days ago in the third-floor hallway gave me another lucky break. I’d found out where the Little Byrd was hiding. It was stupid I hadn’t thought of it after she’d shown me her little book of dress sketches.
“I don’t want some Verona Viper spy coming in here and getting into our heads.”
Calder tilted his head to the side. “She’s been here since sophomore year.”
“And they’ve won since sophomore year.”
“Didn’t they also win our freshman year?” Erik stopped eating for a second to add.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Galen rolled his coin, looking more bored than usual. “Is she crawling in the locker room vents, reporting back to the Vipers about us?”
Erik looked up from his plate of food, face squashed in confusion. “She got into your head?” Off the ice, always three seconds late.
“No. She didn’t.” She had. Sliced her way into my brain, and seeing her every day only made it worse.
At school. At home. There was no escape.
If she weren’t steps away from me most of my waking and even sleeping hours, I could try to forget about the summer and chalk it up to one of the concussions I’d racked up playing hockey, but she was always there.
A reminder of my stupidity and her deception.
“Then why—”
“She’s already got Ryker Ferris invading my house. I’ve got to see her every day at school. I don’t have to be nice to her.”
“Icing her out of most social interactions and goading people into dumping food on her is just ‘not nice’?” Galen made a noncommittal sound, the coin moving at a maddening pace across one hand while he swiped on his phone with the other.
He swore it was for stickhandling dexterity.
Right now, it made me want to rip his damn hands off.
I glared at the three of them. “Fuck you. I get to deal with her the way I want to deal with her.”
“Not the least bit odd.” Calder grabbed the last of my non-shaken beers from the small glass-front fridge beside the subwoofer. “Was she all over you this summer?”
This time, I grabbed a real puck and launched it at Calder. “Enough talking about Lilah.”
He ducked, and the sickening pop of the puck against the TV was followed by a spiderweb of destroyed pixels across the screen. Scathing anger rushed through me—though at myself or at Calder, I wasn’t sure.
“Mason!” Zoe raced into the room, hockey stick still in hand.
“Temper, temper. That’s my thing.” Calder, wagging his finger at me, tucked his bottle behind his back, then ruffled the hair of the out-of-breath ten-year-old grinning at us. “Yo, Zoe. Your big bro’s in a shitty mood.”
I stabbed a finger in his direction. “Don’t curse around my sister.”
Zoe laughed and ran to me. I gave her a one-armed hug and glared at the rest of them. “Get the fuck out of my house.”