Page 117 of Top Shelf

Licking my dry lips, I rasp, “A hockey player?”

Silas shrugs, and I nod. My thoughts come to me slow and sluggish.

“The street party was open to any BSU student,” I piece together with a numbness I haven’t felt in a while. “Every single student athlete would have been there.”

Plus every Valehurst Kings hockey team player.

“Ronan said you were looking into the Valehurst players…” I begin, scouring Silas’s face.

He nods.

We are. We know most of the team was there, but we’re naturally having difficulties tracing what each of them did and where they went. It’s also possible it wasn’t a player.

I shake my head as frustration wells up inside me. After years of wondering who attacked me that night, I finally have this piece of evidence. This token that belonged tohim. If only it could speak, I’d know who decided destroying my life was a source of entertainment. Who hurt me because they wanted to. Because breaking me meant nothing to them.

Except itcan’t.

Holding it in my hand, I feel so close and yet as far away as ever from finding out who did their best to break me.

I thought I didn’t want to know who it was. But now, staring at the coin and feeling as though I’m right on the cusp of knowing while simultaneously farther away than ever…I don’t know.

Maybe I do want to know.

Want to be able to look him in the eye.

Show him that he didn’t break me.

Fisting the coin in my hand, my teeth grind, and I snap my eyes shut as I struggle to contain the emotions bubbling just beneath the surface. Every time I think I’ve come to terms with what happened. That I’ve found a way to survive. To move on from that night. Something comes along to remind me that I will never escape my past. I will never be allowed to fully heal.

Angry—at myself, at my attacker, and fuckingeverything, I smack my hand against the bar top.

“Why did you keep this?” I snap at Silas. “Why would you carry this around?” My voice cracks. “How could you keep a piece ofhim?”

Unflinching in the face of my anger, Silas holds my gaze. Reaching over, he sets his hand on top of mine. He doesn’t move to give me a written response, but I can see the answer in his eyes.

He couldn’t get rid of it.

It may not have happened to him, but that night changed him in its own way.

And suddenly, the weight in my chest shifts. Because this isn’t just evidence. It isn’t just some forgotten token tied to the worst night of my life. Silas has been carrying this thing around for years. Carryingme. The memory of me broken and bleeding on the ground.

All alone.

The fight drains out of me so fast that it leaves me dizzy. “It’s not fair,” I croak, despair infiltrating the space left in the wake of my anger.

He shakes his head, fingers tightening around my hand. His expression says,it isn’t.

Feeling as though the coin is burning a path through my palm, I extract my hand from beneath Silas’s and hold the coin out toward him.

Keep it, he writes.

I shake my head. “I can’t. I can’t have something that is his when I don’t know whoheis.”

Understanding, Silas takes it from me and pockets it. Still, as I go back to my task, I’m unable to stop thinking about the coin. Who it could belong to. There are no identifying features on it. Nothing that I could chase. I can’t even narrow down what sporting event it was handed out at.

“There’s no way to know whether whoever it was is a BSU or Valehurst student,” I muse aloud to Silas. I’ve never given voice to these thoughts. Never allowed myself to truly give much thought to thewhoof that night for fear I’d drive myself mad.

They could have already graduated.