Claimed By My Hockey Captain

Chapter 2

Grace

The words landed somewhere under my ribs and stayed there, a slow, spreading ache, like he'd reached into my chest and pressed his thumb against the exact spot where the bruise already lived.

"What?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

"Nothing." He was watching me now instead of the screen, which was somehow worse. "Forget I said it."

I couldn't forget it. I was never going to be able to forget it.

"It's my birthday," I said instead, because apparently that was the thing my mouth had decided to lead with. "Today."

I should have asked him how he knew my name. I should have asked him a lot of things. I didn't have the energy left to be curious about anything that wasn't currently breaking my heart.

"This place is too loud to be sad in properly," he said, after a while.

"Is there a quieter place to be sad in?"

"There's a bakery two blocks over. Open till two." He shrugged, like the offer cost him nothing. "Better than crying next to a flatscreen."

I should have said no. I had a whole catalog of reasons to say no—I didn't know him, I'd had exactly enough punch to make poor decisions feel reasonable, Olivia had told me not to go anywhere.

But the bass was still hammering against my back teeth, and my rival's face was still glowing gold on every wall of my peripheral vision, and for the first time all night, someone was offering me an exit that didn't involve a fight I'd already lost.

"Okay," I said.

We didn't talk on the way there.

I noticed that about him before I noticed almost anything else. Most guys filled silence like it was a job they'd been assigned. Mason just walked, hands in his pockets, matching his stride to mine without seeming to think about it.

The night was sharp after the party's heat, cold enough that it sobered me half a degree with every block.

Somewhere a few streets over a siren rose and faded. Streetlights buzzed faintly overhead, throwing pools of orange light across wet sidewalk, and my breath came out in soft clouds I watched dissolve instead of words I had to find for anyone.

By the time the bakery's sign came into view, something in my chest had loosened half a turn, just from not having to perform anything for two minutes in a row.

The place was bad fluorescent light and a case of half-sold-out pastries, presided over by a guy behind the counter who looked like he'd rather be literally anywhere else. Mason ordered a slice of chocolate cake, then paused.

"Do you have a candle?"

"It's a bakery. Not a birthday store."

"Right." Mason frowned at the case like it owed him an answer. "What do people usually do for birthdays in bakeries?"

"Buy a cake. Leave."

"Is there, like, a back room with a junk drawer?" He said it without a trace of irony, dead serious, like this was a tactical problem he intended to solve through sheer persistence.

A six-foot wall of muscle, dead serious, negotiating emergency candle logistics with a guy who clearly wanted to go home. It was the first thing all night that made the corner of my mouth move without my permission.

The guy disappeared into the back and reappeared two minutes later with a candle that had clearly been liberated from somewhere it wasn't supposed to leave, stuck it into the frosting, and lit it without further comment.

Mason slid the plate toward me. "Make a wish."

I stared at the little flame, ridiculous and small and somehow the kindest thing anyone had done for me all day, and felt my throat close around something that came out half laugh, half sob, entirely undignified.

"Sorry," I said, swiping under my eyes with the back of my wrist. "This is so stupid."

"It's not stupid."

"It's a liberated candle in a B-minus slice of cake."

"It's the first time tonight somebody asked you what you wanted instead of telling you what you should've done differently." He said it plainly, no weight behind it, and then seemed to hear how that sounded and looked briefly uncomfortable with himself for saying something that earnest out loud. "Anyway. Blow it out before it drips."

I blew it out before I could fall apart completely.

"So you're an athlete," I said, mostly to give myself somewhere else to look, and also because I'd noticed the way he sat—economical, like he didn't waste motion.

"Hockey. Captain, this year." He said it the way other people mentioned the weather.

"That sounds exhausting." I meant it. "Being the guy everyone looks at when something goes wrong."

Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, like he hadn't expected the question to come back at him. "Yeah," he admitted, like the word cost him something to say honestly. "Some nights."

"You don't look like somebody who sleeps much."

"I sleep fine." A beat. "Most nights."

It wasn't much. It was the first thing he'd given me back instead of just absorbing what I handed him, and something about that small admission—some nights, most nights—sat easier with me than anything else he'd said so far.

"My mom doesn't think I'm good enough," I said, before I'd decided to say it. The liquid honesty I'd been holding off all night just tipped over, simple and small, with none of the rest of it attached. "She's never said the words. She doesn't have to."

Mason didn't say anything right away. When he did, it came slower than I expected, like he was building the sentence one piece at a time instead of reaching for one that was already finished.

"That's not—" He stopped. Tried again. "I'm not saying this well."

"You're allowed to not say things well."

That got something out of him, almost a laugh, more breath than sound.

"I don't think parents get to charge their kids for choices they made." He said it like he was setting something down carefully, unsure if it would hold weight once it left his hands. "Before the kid had any say in it."

It was such a clumsy, unpolished thing to say. It also went through me cleaner than anything two different sports psychologists and one very expensive, mother-approved therapist ever had.

My phone buzzed against the table.

Olivia: WHERE ARE YOU?

"You should probably tell her you're alive," Mason said, watching me stare at the screen.

"I will." I picked it up and typed fast, before I could overthink it.

I'm okay. Needed some air. Don't wait up. I'll text you later.

I hit send and set the phone face-down on the table. "There. Proof of life. She just doesn't get to know where yet."

I pushed the last bite of cake toward him, an offering. "I'm not ready to be found yet."

He ate it without comment, which I was starting to understand was simply how he agreed with things—by doing them instead of saying so.

Then he stood, gathering the plate, glancing toward the door like he was already mapping the walk back. "I should get you home. Or back to the party. Whatever you want."

I thought about both—the party, with its wall of light and my rival's gold still hanging in the air like smoke; the house I still shared with my mother, dark by now, quiet in the specific way she'd perfected, the kind that filled a room even from down the hall.

"I don't want to go home," I said.

He didn't ask why. He just waited, like he had all night to give me if I needed it.

"Walk a little longer?" I said. "Before you take me back to either."

Something in his face eased, like that had been the right answer, or at least one he could work with.

"Yeah," he said. "I can do that."