CHAPTER 4 - STUCK BETWEEN TWO BOYS

I watched the entire game in a state of clinical dissociation. My body was in the fourth row. My mind was in a bar bathroom three days ago with my legs wrapped around the waist of the man currently skating circles around every player on the ice. Rhys Maddox. That was his name. The announcer said it every time he touched the puck, which was constantly, because the puck seemed magnetically drawn to his stick like it had a crush on him too. He was unreal. I'd seen four years of Thornfield hockey. I'd watched Caleb play hundreds of games and thought he was good – he was good, objectively, technically, the kind of good that came from discipline and coaching and doing everything right. Rhys wasn't good. Rhys was something else entirely. He played like the ice owed him money. Every stride was faster than it should have been, every turn sharper, every decision made a full second before anyone else's brain caught up. The team tried to freeze him out. First game hazing – I'd seen it before. Passes that went everywhere except where Rhys was. Plays called without him. Line changes that left him stranded. The veteran players closing ranks around their captain, making sure the new guy knew his place. It pissed him off. I could see it in the shift of his shoulders. The way his jaw tightened under his helmet. The way he stopped waiting for passes that weren't coming and started taking. First period. Caleb carried the puck up the right side – clean breakaway, the kind he'd score on nine times out of ten. Rhys came out of nowhere. Stripped the puck off Caleb's stick so cleanly it looked choreographed. Skated past three defenders like they were traffic cones and buried it top corner. The arena went silent. Then it erupted. Caleb stood at center ice with his stick hanging loose and his mouth open. I'd never seen that expression on his face before – not anger, not yet. Pure, unprocessed shock. Like a king who'd just been pickpocketed on his own throne. "Holy s**t," Sienna breathed. Second period. Rhys did it again. Stole the puck from Caleb's line – not from Caleb directly this time, from his winger, but the message was the same. Your plays don't include me? Fine. I don't need them. He swiftly moved through two defenders, faked the goalie so badly the poor guy ended up facing the wrong direction entirely, and slid the puck into the net backhand. The crowd lost their minds. People were standing. Phones were out – recording, posting, tagging. The energy in the arena had shifted from excitement to something more primal. Everyone knew they were watching something they'd tell people about later. "He's got four goals," Zara said, leaning forward. "Four goals in his first game. That doesn't happen." "That can't happen," Sienna said. "That's not real. He's not real. Naomi – Naomi, are you breathing?" I was not breathing. Because every time Rhys scored – every single time – he didn't celebrate with the team. Didn't fist-bump the bench or point to the crowd. He skated past the fourth row. Didn't look at me. Didn't need to. The not-looking was worse. The not-looking said I know exactly where you are and I'm choosing not to look because watching you squirm is more fun. Third period. Five to two, Thornfield. Four of those goals belonged to one player who'd been on the team for less than a week. Caleb had scored the fifth – a power play goal, technically clean, but it looked small next to what Rhys had done. Like hanging a watercolor next to a wildfire. The final buzzer sounded. The arena noise was deafening but underneath it was that other thing – the silence. The held breath. The collective understanding that something had shifted in Thornfield hockey and it wasn't shifting back. Sienna grabbed my arm. "We need to talk about how you haven't said a single word in two hours." "I'm processing." "Processing WHAT? The game or the fact that your bar bathroom stranger just scored four goals and is probably going to be famous by morning?" "Both. Neither. I need air." I grabbed my jacket and moved before either of them could follow. Down the stairs, through the concourse, past the merch stands and the concession lines and the clusters of people already replaying highlights on their phones. I needed to get out before – "Didn't expect to see you here." I stopped walking. He was leaning against the wall outside the locker room. Still in his under-armor, skates off, hair damp with sweat and pushed back from his forehead. The bruise on his cheekbone had deepened since Valentine's night – someone had clearly hit him again since then, or maybe the same bruise was just committed to staying. The tattoos on his neck were visible above his collar, dark ink against flushed skin. He looked like he'd just won a war and was mildly bored by the victory. "You–" My voice came out strangled. I cleared my throat. "You go here." "As of this week." "You're on the team." "Looked like it out there." "You scored four goals." "Wasn't my best game." He pushed off the wall. One step toward me. The hallway was suddenly very narrow. "You look different when you're not crying." "I wasn't crying when you met me." "You had mascara on your cheeks." "That's not crying. That's smudging." "My mistake." Another step. He smelled like ice and sweat and something underneath that my body remembered before my brain did. "Nice hickey, by the way." My hand flew to my collarbone. The concealer. I'd forgotten to reapply before the game. "I don't know what you're–" "I do. I put it there." His voice dropped. Quiet. Just for me. "Looks good on you." My entire body flushed. From my toes to my hairline, a full-system meltdown triggered by six words and the way his grey eyes tracked down to my collarbone and back up like he was remembering exactly how it got there. I opened my mouth to say something – what, I have no idea, probably something stupid and breathless and completely transparent – when a hand grabbed my arm from behind and spun me around. Caleb. Still in his gear. Face flushed. Eyes hard in a way I'd never seen directed at me before. "Naomi. I've been texting you all week." His grip on my arm was tight. Not painful – possessive. "Why are you ignoring me? And why are you back here?" "I was just–" "You don't need to be back here." He looked past me at Rhys. The temperature in the hallway dropped ten degrees. "Who are you?" Rhys didn't move. Didn't shift his weight, didn't cross his arms, didn't do any of the things men do when they're posturing. He just stood there, completely still, and looked at Caleb with an expression of total, unbothered disinterest. "The guy who scored four of your five goals." Caleb's jaw clenched. He stepped forward – physically putting himself between me and Rhys, one hand still on my arm. "Walk away, new guy." "Make me." Caleb shoved him. Both hands on Rhys's chest. Hard enough to push him back a step. Rhys didn't stumble. He absorbed it – took the step back like he'd been expecting it, like he'd been waiting for it – and then he shoved Caleb back so hard that Caleb hit the opposite wall with a crack that echoed down the corridor. "We got a problem?" Rhys said. Quiet. Calm. The kind of calm that wasn't calm at all – the kind that came right before destruction. Caleb's fists curled at his sides. His chest was heaving. Rhys didn't blink. I was standing between them. Two feet of hallway on either side. The air was so thick I could choke on it – testosterone and rage and something electric underneath, something that had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with the bite mark on my collarbone and the boy who put it there and the boy who'd just noticed it existed. Neither of them moved. Neither of them looked away.