38. Silas
SILAS
The locker room is louder than usual. It’s the kind of nervous energy that only comes before a championship game. When everything is on the line. For some of these guys, it’s their first Frozen Four, while for others, it is the last game they’ll ever play, and that brings its own sort of energy.
Around me, guys are taping sticks, lacing skates, checking gear for the fifth time. Coaches move through the room offering final reminders no one is really listening to.
I should be focused. Instead, my attention keeps drifting.
To a girl with honey-brown eyes who has turned my world upside down. Who has given me light after years of living in the darkness. Who healed a scar I thought had closed over with three simple words. I love you.
A smile threatens before I shove it down. I need to get in the zone ahead of tonight’s game. Settling onto the bench in front of my locker, I close my eyes and begin my breathing routine.
Six in.
Hold.
Six out.
The familiar weight of the coin I’ve been carrying around with me since the first night I laid eyes on Wren rolls between my fingers. It’s become a routine motion. Something I turn to occupy my hands when I need to focus.
I don’t even remember consciously picking it up anymore. I just do.
The metal catches against my thumb as I rotate it.
Breathe.
Rotate.
Breathe.
Slowly, the chaos around me subsides, a meditative quiet taking its place.
Another turn of the coin.
Except this time it catches, jarring against my finger before it slips free. I feel it leave my fingers.
My eyes snap open in time to watch the metal disk bounce against the concrete floor. Then it rolls, fast, directly across the locker room. Jumping to my feet, I follow it as it spins beneath benches and skates, past bags and sticks, before circling and—
A foot stomps on top of it.
Isaac bends at the waist. Peeling off his glove, he reaches for the coin.
He turns it over in his hand, then laughs. A surprised exhale. “Holy shit.”
Running his thumb over the engraving, he lifts his head and looks directly at me. “Where the hell did you get this?” He shakes his head, one side of his lips hitched. “I thought I lost this thing.”
The world narrows, just slightly, and for the first time since I stopped speaking to others, I hate that I can’t just ask him the question burning a hole through my tongue.
“Looked everywhere for it. It was my lucky charm all through high school, then I lost it freshman year.” He chuckles to himself.
“Was convinced I’d wash out without it.” He flips the coin in the air.
“And you’ve had it this whole time?” He shakes his head, catching the coin in his hand before depositing it in his locker and going back to his pre-game routine.
My stomach twists.
There has to be another explanation. Maybe he dropped it somewhere before the party and someone else picked it up. Maybe Wren found it herself. The problem is, every explanation sounds weaker than the one I don’t want it to be.
Isaac laughs at something one of the guys says. Around me, life goes on. Everyone is oblivious to the fact that the ground has just been pulled out from beneath my feet.
All I can see is Wren. Bruised, terrified, and alone.
I’ve spent years thinking about the man who hurt her. Years carrying that coin. Replaying that night. Wondering who he could be. And all along he’s been here. Twenty feet away, sharing a locker room with us, and wearing our jersey.
Standing there, I can’t look away from Isaac. My teammate. A guy who, only moments ago, I would have said I know well enough. Now, I’m questioning everything I thought I knew about him. Questioning everything I see.
He claps Brenner on the back, appearing cool, calm, and collected.
Is it all a ruse?
I know some of it is. Beneath his charismatic veneer, Isaac is arrogant. He can be as hot-headed as Lucian at times, and he doesn’t take criticism well.
However, none of that means he’s a cold-blooded rapist.
He’s never once acted like he knows Wren, that he recognizes her from that night. Although he was initially flirting with her and was definitely jealous when he found out she was dating us. Ever since their confrontation, he has left her alone. In fact, he has gone so far as to blank her.
I continue to watch him while Ronan gives his pre-game speech. While Coach goes over last-minute plays. While everyone lines up.
If he is the one who raped her that night…guilt threatens to swallow me whole.
How many times has he been around her?
How many times have I stood in the same room as him?
How many times did he look at her, and I missed it?
Monsters are supposed to look different. They’re supposed to announce themselves somehow.
But Isaac just looks like…Isaac.
The first period passes in fragments. The most important game of my life, and I don’t remember half of it.
The crowd is loud, the game is fast, and the Steelhawks are playing aggressively.
None of it matters.
Every time I step onto the ice, my eyes find Isaac.
Every shift. Every whistle. Every line change.
I watch his every move; study his every play.
No matter how much I watch, though, nothing changes.
Nothing negates the fact that I found his coin by Wren’s body that night, and no matter how many scenarios I invent for how it could have ended up with her in that abandoned plot, none of them make as much sense as the simple fact that it got there because he was there.
And there is only one reason for why he would be there.
The buzzer sounds, announcing the end of the first period. The teams head for their respective locker rooms. I barely make it through the door before Ronan grabs my shoulder. Concern fills his face. “What is going on with you?”
I search his eyes before looking across the room. He follows my gaze…straight to Isaac.
Ronan’s expression changes immediately. “Silas.”
Lucian looks over from where he’s pulling off a glove. “What’s going on?” he asks, coming over.
Both of them stare at me expectantly, and I know I have to tell them. Grabbing the notebook I keep in my locker, I scrawl out five words I never thought I’d write.
Isaac was there that night.
They immediately know what I’m referring to. Lucian’s face turns thunderous.
“We know he was at the party,” Ronan says, stating something we all know. We’ve been sleuthing through everyone’s socials, going through photos of that night, asking around to figure out where each team member was. But this is different.
That coin I found with her? It’s Isaac’s.
Ronan’s brows dip in a frown. “Did he say he was there?”
I shake my head.
No, but he said he lost it freshman year.
Lucian is stock-still, although his body vibrates with the rage he’s impressively controlling. Still, I notice the flex of his jaw and the way his eyes never leave Isaac.
Across the room, Isaac is still laughing, completely unaware.
“Are you telling me…” Lucian’s voice is quiet. Deadly quiet. “...that he’s the one who hurt her?”
His question hangs in the air between us.
I can’t know for certain. And yet…I know. There is this feeling in my gut that won’t leave me alone. I also know what I found that night. I know where I found it. And Isaac just admitted it was his.
Slowly, I nod.
Lucian closes his eyes. Just for a second. When he opens them again, the light that was there has gone out.
“Lucian,” Ronan says his name carefully, like he’s trying to defuse a bomb.
“Two minutes!” Coach calls.
The locker room erupts into motion. Players grab helmets, bumping sticks. Water bottles are set aside as the team gets ready to head out for the second period of the game.
This is our last shot at winning the Frozen Four. It’s everything we’ve spent years working toward, and yet none of it means a damn thing anymore. Not when there is so much more at stake.
Ronan swears under his breath.
“We do nothing until we can talk about this,” he hisses. “We don’t yet know anything for certain.”
Lucian whips his head around, and the look in his eyes could cut Ronan in half. “Fuck that shit. I know all I need to.”
The two of them stare at each other. Logic versus fury.
“Go time, boys,” Coach bellows. “Get your asses out there.”
With no more time to discuss this, we head back onto the ice.
Right before the whistle blows, Lucian looks over, and he smiles. Every hair on my arms stands up because it isn’t a happy smile. It’s the smile he wears before a fight. The smile he wore before putting Isaac through plexiglass. The smile that means somebody is about to get hurt.
Badly.
For the first time, I’m afraid of what Lucian is capable of.