Page 311 of Power Play

The shot sailed wide.

I ripped off my glove and threw it toward the bench before driving my bare fist into the glass. Pain exploded through my knuckles.

I hit it again.

“Fuck!”

My voice came back from the empty seats, but nothing helped.

Lance’s words had blurred together somewhere outside Saginaw. He had called me a thug without using the word, poor without saying it, and foster kid without understanding what it meant. He made semi-pro hockey player sound like an apology.

Wrong history. Wrong bloodline. Wrong fucking man for a Harlen princess.

I had heard worse from people who meant more to me. Charm’s silence had still managed to destroy all of it.

I told her what Thanksgiving could become. I told her I wouldn’t walk into that house and audition for a place beside her. I warned her that I was done playing by the Harlens’ rules and would leave if she tested me again.

She promised she understood.

Then I stood beside her while her father pulled apart every piece of my life, looked at the woman I loved, and asked for one fucking sentence.

Dile que importo.

Her eyes dropped.

My fist struck the glass a third time, and blood smeared beneath my knuckles.

“Feeling better?”

The voice came from behind the boards.

I spun and found Briggs standing at the end of the tunnel with a duffel hanging from one shoulder and a backward KFU cap covering his hair. His coat was open despite the cold, and his face had been stripped of every trace of the easy grin he usually carried into a room.

He had found me.

The fucking audacity of him to know exactly where I would go after reaching Flint made my temper climb higher.

“What are you doing here?” My voice traveled cleanly across the rink.

Briggs stepped through the gate and lowered his bag onto the rubber floor. “Making sure you’re alive.”

“You knew where I was headed. You were on the call and saw the text.”

“I saw words on a screen.”

“Then you know I’m alive.”

“I know you were alive when you were on the phone.”

“Go home.”

“No.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

I skated closer. “Cade send you?”