Page 34 of Ruthless Edge

She came to the game.

She's here again. Voluntarily. She didn't have to be here and she is, and she's wearing a top that looks fucking amazing on her, and something warm moves through my chest that feels dangerously like hope until I notice the person sitting beside her.

There's a guy sitting beside her.

He leans over and says something. Emma laughs. Not the polite laugh, the real one, and I know the difference between those two things because I've been noticing Emma's laughs since freshman year. He takes off his jacket and puts it around her shoulders. His arm stays there.

The warm thing in my chest becomes something else entirely.

"Carter." Declan's elbow catches my arm. "Puck."

Right. Puck. Hockey. The thing I was given a scholarship to play.

I get through the rest of the second period on something that’s between focus and anger but lives in the neighborhood of both. I'm playing well. I know I'm playing well because I'm also playing like someone who would very much enjoy running into something at high speed, which works out fine when you're a right wing and the opposing defense keeps getting in your way. I take three hard checks and give back six, which isn't the ratio my coach prefers but tonight it's the ratio I have.

I don't look at the stands again for almost eleven minutes. I know because I'm counting, which I don't normally do, and that tells me something about the current state of my mental health.

When I do look, they're still there. Him with his arm around her.

I end up in the corner with one of their defensemen and I do something that is technically within the rules and also extremely aggressive, and Declan skates by and says "Knox" in the exact tone he uses when he's telling me to get it together without actually using those words.

I get it together. Mostly.

We win. I score the insurance goal in the third period, which should feel good, and would feel good on any other night, and yet, it barely registers. I tap the boards and skate back to the bench and try to figure out why knowing Emma is in the stands has somehow made this win feel completely hollow, and come up empty.

The locker room is loud. Everyone's in a good mood. Parker is already talking about where to go after. Luca is doing something with his phone that is producing either music or an emergency alert, I can't tell. My brothers, Noah and Blake, are shoving each other around. I sit in front of my stall and work on unlacing my skates and don't say anything, which is apparently noticeable.

Ethan appears next to me.

"Don't," I say.

"I was going to say nice goal."

"Thank you. Don't."

He sits down anyway. "You played like you wanted to put somebody through a wall."

"I played hard."

"You checked a guy who wasn't even near the puck."

"He was near it a second ago."

"Knox…"

I finish with the skate, and I start on the other one. Ethan waits, which is what Ethan is good at, he has an infinite amount of patience for waiting and it's genuinely his most irritating quality. But then, he’d have to be a saint to put up with the Carter triplets this long. My brothers and I were never easy friends to have. I last about forty-five seconds before I ask the question I already know I don't want answered.

"Are they still out there?"

Ethan checks his phone. I watch him read something. His expression does a thing I don't love.

"Rory texted," he says carefully.

"What did she say?"

"We're all going to dinner."

I look at him. "Define all."