Every team’s got one — mouth always running, always leaning too far into people’s space, the kind who mistakes getting away with shit for being untouchable. The kind you don’t turn your back on, because they mistake that for permission.
“You’re not his.”
Her eyes come up to mine.
“No,” she says. “I’m really not.”
Griffin Novak.
That fucker’s been a nail in my ass for years. Every time the Cyclones face the Reapers, he’s out there running his mouth, taking cheap shots, skating right up to the line and somehow never catching the penalty because he’s always one step ahead of where the officials are looking.
Now he’s texting Nova out of fucking nowhere.
No.
“He doesn’t get near you again.”
She blinks like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying.
“Jax—”
“I mean it.”
She stares at me. Not scared. Not startled. Just looking at me like she’s taking the full shape of it in.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
“Okay,” I say.
I sit down on her couch. Don’t mean to. Do it anyway.
She sits next to me, and neither of us reaches for the silence.
“You always ask if I’m okay.”
“Yeah.”
“Before anything else.”
“Yeah.”
“Even when you’re—” She gestures at me.
“Pissed off?”
“I was going to say impossible.”
“Same thing.”
That gets the smallest smile out of her.
“Are you?” she asks.
“Yeah. Not at you.”
“I know.”
She does know.
