“You might want to hide that before anyone comes in.”
I turn to my locker and stare into it with the focus of a man trying to remember he wouldn’t do well in prison. Practice hasn’t even started. It’s going to be a very long day.
????????
Apart from the locker room, practice is actually fine.
More than fine.
I ignore Rhys with the focused dedication of a man whose freedom depends on it and pour every single thing I’m feeling —the humiliation, the fury, the very specific agony of having been turned on in a locker room at the break of dawn — directly into my game. Like I wasn’t hard the entire time. Like he didn’t know I was.
My shots are clean. My passes are sharp. I’m everywhere I’m supposed to be and nowhere I’m not. “Nice, Nash!” Fitch thumbs up from the boards.
I nod and keep moving. Kowalski falls into stride beside me on the next lap, quiet for a beat before he speaks. "Heard about the captain thing," he says. Eyes forward. "For what it's worth — still captain to me. Won't be long." It hits somewhere I wasn’t expecting. I’m also not sure what everyone else knows either, but it’s definitely not the full story.
“Thanks, man.” I give him a nod and he knows I mean it — that’s the thing about Kowalski, you never have to over-explain. He’s just solid. Steady. The kind of person who shows up without making it a whole thing. We coast to a stop at the boards, both of us watching Fitch run Rhys through a drill at center ice. Rhys who is skating like he was born to do it, all loose confidence and stupid natural talent, looking unbothered by this morning, by any of it, by me.
I look away.
“There’s another party tonight,” Kowalski says. “You in?”
Normally no. Normally I’d be in my room by nine with the TV on low, running through plays in my head until I fell asleep. Normally I don’t need any of this. But I think about Fitch’s office. About the gap he named. About the fact that Rhys Callahan has been pushing all my buttons and maybe the best thing I can do is make myself harder to isolate. If the team actually knows me, maybe this thing with Rhys won’t matter as much.
“Yeah,” I say. “Pick me up at nine?”
Kowalski’s face splits into a grin. “Fuck yeah.” He claps me hardon the shoulder. “Let’s go.” He skates off and I turn back to the ice. Rhys is looking at me from center ice with that expression — the knowing one, the one he’s been wearing all morning like a second skin.
I hold his gaze for exactly one second. Then I look away first. Not because he won. Because I’m done letting him push me around.
Chapter 25
Jamie
I take my time getting ready.
Jeans — the dark ones, the ones that fit just right. Tight white tee that leaves nothing to the imagination about what's underneath it. Boots. I take my time styling my hair and find the cologne I save for when it matters — woodsy, warm, the kind that lingers.
I look at myself in the mirror.
Rhys thinks this is a one way street. And he's been right — because so far, I've been the one losing control, the one flustered, the one who drove almost an hour and set his keys down on someone else's table like he was planning to stay. I’m the one who keeps losing my cool around him.
But he swiped right on mefirst. He kissed mefirst.
And I don't go down without a fight.
Kowalski picks me up at nine exactly because Kowalski is incapable of being late to anything, which I respect. I'm barely in the car before he's pulling away from the curb.
"You look different," he remarks.
"I look the same."
He glances at me sideways, like he’s trying to figure it out, but says nothing.
We drive. The campus thins out into the stretch of road that leads to Cooper's neighborhood and Kowalski has the gametape from this week running through his head because he always does, I can tell by the way he's sitting, that focused intensity he gets when he's working something out.
"Bryce's backhand," he says eventually.
"Still broken."
