I remembergood boy.
He didn't say it tonight. He said it on the ice two nights ago. After he hit me. After he put a hand under my arm and lifted me off the ice in front of the whole team and murmured it into my ear where only I could hear.Good boy.Like I'd done something right by being knocked down. Like I'd done something right by being the thing he could knock down.
I remembergood boyand I come.
I come hard enough that my teeth close on the inside of my cheek and I taste blood and I don't care. I don't care that I'm twenty years old in a locked bedroom in my father's apartment and I just came thinking about a man who has bloody knuckles from a fight he started over me, and I don't care.
For a second, for a second only, I'm not afraid of my father.
For a second only, I'm not afraid of anything.
Then the second ends.
I clean up.
I put my jeans back on. I unlock the door. I don't want Paul to find a locked door in the morning. I leave the door how he knows it.
I lie on the bed in my clothes.
The ceiling has a crack I've been learning. It's in the shape of the letter Y with an extra branch. I stare at the Y.
My face is wet again.
I'm not sure when that started.
I wipe my face with the back of my wrist. I wipe it again. I do the breathing. In four, hold seven, out eight. The breathing does nothing. I do it anyway because my body still thinks the breathing is an option.
My phone is on the nightstand. Dark. No message. No notification. I don't know what I expected. A text from Maddox that sayssleep, sweetheart? A text from Maddox that saystomorrow? Maddox doesn't have my number. Maddox has my name. My team. My father. My mouth on his body tomorrow orthe day after because I know—I know in the place my body keeps knowing—that the alley was not the end.
The alley was the part before the part.
I lie on the bed in my clothes and I watch the Y on the ceiling. I think about what a man who wants to take me apart against a brick wall does next. Under the thinking there is a small bright thing that hasn't been in me before tonight. The small bright thing is not fear. The small bright thing is not shame. I don't have a word for the small bright thing. I lie very still. I let it be there. I watch the Y. I wait for sleep.
It doesn't come until the heater has clicked off three times.
6
MADDOX
Igo back in.
Phoenix told me to go home. I'm not going home. I stood in that alley for I don't know how long after Theo walked back inside. I counted to a number I wasn't reaching. My hand on the brick wall was the hand that a minute ago had been on his chest. When I took the hand off the wall it was shaking. I watched it shake. Then I laughed, because I haven't in the adult portion of my life stood in an alley and watched my own hand shake.
I'm going back in.
Paul is gone. I saw him take Theo out the front. I waited long enough to make sure the car was gone. Then I pushed open the back door of Vigil and walked through the stock corridor past a guy stacking crates who didn't look at me. I came out behind the bar like I worked there. The bartender clocked me and nodded and didn't care because I tip him in twenties.
The team is still here.
Phoenix is at the rail of the bar with a beer in his hand and a face that saysI told you to go home.He sees me. He doesn't say anything. He lifts the beer a half-inch and puts it back down.That's the captain sayingI noted that you disobeyed me and I'm filing it.
I nod at him.
He nods back.
That's how it is with Phoenix. We have a grammar.
Grayson isn't here. Grayson, I assume, left with Paul's car in his rearview, probably home to whatever dog he owns. Magnus is at the jukebox punching in something loud. Jax isn't here. Jax is in an urgent care somewhere with a nurse explaining what a fracture is, or he's at home with a frozen bag of peas on his face, or he's in a parking lot crying. I don't care which. I hit a teammate in front of his team and I don't care what happened to him after.
