Hating The Captain Who Broke Me

Chapter Four

"I don't think so," I said, way too quickly, already reaching for my bag like it could shield me from the question. "I'd remember."

"Would you?"

"You'd remember me if we'd met, trust me." I forced something that was almost a laugh out of my throat. "I'm memorable. Ask anyone."

He didn't laugh back. He kept looking at me with that same unsettled expression, like he was trying to place a song he half-recognized but couldn't name, and I could feel my pulse in my ears, loud enough that I was half convinced he could hear it too.

"Library's closing," I said, which wasn't even true yet, but it got me moving, and moving was all I needed. "Same time next week?"

"Yeah," he said slowly. "Same time."

I didn't look back until I was outside, and even then I made myself keep walking until my heart rate came back down to something reasonable.

By Saturday, Harlow had decided we were "absolutely, one hundred percent" going to the hockey house, no negotiation accepted, because apparently missing the first big party of the season was a personality flaw she wasn't willing to let me have.

"It's not a hockey thing," she said, doing her eyeliner in our mirror while I sat cross-legged on my bed pretending I haven't already agreed to go twenty minutes ago. "It's everybody 's thing that happens at the hockey house. Completely different."

"Sure it is."

"Micah invited me personally," she added, way too casually for someone who clearly has been waiting all week to say that sentence out loud.

"Did he know?"

"Shut up." But she was smiling at herself in the mirror, and I let her have it, because watching Harlow fall into something easy and uncomplicated was one of my favorite things in the world, even if it did mean I was about to spend my Saturday night in a house full of people I spent years actively avoiding.

The hockey house was loud before we even reached the porch, string lights strung across the yard, somebody's terrible playlist bleeding out through the open windows. Harlow disappeared toward Micah within about ninety seconds, and I found myself alone near the drink table with a lukewarm can of something and absolutely no plan.

"You came."

I turned, and Rhys was standing there in a gray shirt that had no business fitting him the way it did, holding two drinks like he'd been intending to bring one to someone before he saw me.

"Harlow made me."

"Harlow's a menace." He handed me one of the drinks anyway, like it had been meant for me all along. "Glad she did, though."

"Don't get used to it."

"I wouldn't dream of it." He nodded toward the back porch, away from the worst of the noise. "Can I steal you for a second? I want to talk about the project without three hundred drunk freshmen screaming over us."

I told myself that was the only reason I followed him.

The porch was cooler, the noise dropping to a dull thrum behind us, just the two of us and a string of lights half burnt out along the railing. He leaned against the wood, turning his cup slowly in his hands, quiet in a way that felt different from his usual quiet.

"Can I tell you something?" he said. "You can't tell anyone I told you this."

"Depends what it is."

"Fair." A faint, humorless smile. "There was a game a few years back. Juniors. I hit a player clean legal, refs didn't even call it but it ended her season. Maybe her career, I never actually found out." He was looking at the drink in his hands, not at me. "I think about it more than I probably should. Like, randomly. In the middle of practice sometimes. I'll make a hit and for half a second I'm back there instead."

My whole body had gone perfectly, dangerously still.

"You never found out what happened to her?" I asked, and I heard how careful my own voice sounded, like I was walking across ice I already knew was cracked.

"No." He shook his head. "I didn't even know her name or even her face back then. Just…some girl on the other bench who didn't get up right away."

He finally looked at me, and something in his face was more open than I had ever seen. "I know that probably makes me sound like garbage. Not knowing."

"It doesn't," I said, because it was true, and because it was the only thing I could manage to say without my voice breaking in half.

"I used to think if I ever met her again I'd apologize. Properly. Not the scripted thing you say to a ref." He huffed out something that wasn't quite a laugh.

"Not that it'd fix anything. She probably hates hockey players on principle now."

The cup in my hand had gone slick with condensation, or maybe just my own palm.

"I should go find Harlow," I said, already moving before I finished the sentence.

"Josie…."

His hand caught my wrist, gentle, just enough to stop me, and when I turned back his eyes had gone sharp again, searching my face for something I was one wrong breath away from handing him for free.

"Hey," he said quietly. "You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”