He makes me feel violent in ways I don’t know what to do with.
“What the fuck—”
"You've been checked out since you got here," I say, and my voice is shaking with how hard I'm struggling to hold it level. "Half-present, doing whatever you want, showing up when it'sconvenient. I'm putting in everything I have every single day and you're standing here talking shit like you've earned that. I'm your captain. That's not up for debate."
I turn back to my locker to grab my bag. I’m done with this conversation. I don’t have the energy or the bandwidth to deal with Rhys right now. Except my shoulder seizes when I reach for the strap and I stumble forward, catching myself against the locker with a grunt.
There’s a beat of silence behind me.
I force myself upright and stare straight ahead. Looking at him right now feels too dangerous. I grab my bag, slam the locker shut, hard enough to rattle the row, and throw Rhys a middle finger without turning around.
A captain knows when to walk away. Even when every part of him wants to do the exact opposite.
But I’m not perfect.
Chapter 3
Rhys
I get back to the house and I’m ready to collapse. Every part of me is heavy — legs, arms, eyelids, the specific bone-deep tired that only comes after a game where you played your ass off and it still wasn't enough. The worst kind of tired because there's nothing to blame it on except the gap between what we're capable of and what we actually did out there.
How dare he say I don’t put in the work.
Guy’s got a stick so far up his ass I’m surprised he can still skate with it.
If I had more time, I would give it all to hockey. But I don’t. I have a full schedule. Classes, labs, studying, and hockey — that's my entire life, no room for anything else, constantly running on empty. And yeah, I'm occasionally late to practice because the chem lab does not care about Coach Fitch's schedule. But I show up. I always show up. And when I'm out there I'm good and he knows I'm good and the fact that he acts like I'm some kind of liability instead of an asset he's wasting is—
I drop my bag inside the door and then pick it up and throw it across the room instead, because I need to put it somewhere and the wall seems as good a place as any with the way I’m feeling.
A low whistle cuts through the room.
“So. Not a great game, I’m guessing.”
Blake is sitting on the couch with a beer, grinning at me like theasshole he is. My roommate. My best friend. The biggest prick when the mood strikes him, which is always. I cross the room and plop myself down next to him, close enough that it counts as a greeting, and plant my legs on top of Blake with a heavy sigh.
“Not great,” I confirm. “And I hate our captain. Self-righteous douchebag.”
I don’t know when Jamie Nash became the person my entire mood depends on. I just know it’s pathetic.
I pick up Blake’s beer and finish it in one go. He makes a noise of protest that I ignore completely.
Blake and I are both chemistry majors, which means our lives are basically an endless rotation of labs, problem sets, and the quiet despair of people who chose the hardest possible path and have to live with that every day. Blake handles it fine because hockey isn’t in the equation for him — he’s full time academic, zero distractions, the kind of organized that makes me look like a hurricane by comparison.
I handle it by sleeping four to six hours a night and running on pure spite. He doesn’t fully get how I manage it. Honestly, neither do I. You just keep moving until you drop, I guess.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asks after a moment.
“Fuck no.”
We watch some random basketball game playing on the TV in comfortable silence. Neither of us comments on it. That’s what I love about Blake — he knows when to push and when to just exist in the same room as you, and right now existing is exactly what I need. After about thirty minutes I drag myself off the couch and get ready for bed.
Five hours of sleep if I’m lucky. Fantastic.
????????
The next morning I lie in bed for what feels like forever, staring at the ceiling. I keep coming back to the game. To the lockerroom. To Jamie Nash and the way he gets under my skin like nobody else manages to.
I transferred here at the start of the school year in September, so I knew walking in that captain was never going to be mine — you don’t hand that to someone new, no matter how good they are. I accepted that. What I didn’t accept was him constantly pushing me. I don’t see him treating anyone else the way he does me. For the past four months, all he’s done is constantly ride me for every little thing when everyone else gets a pass. He’s infuriating.
