The Hockey King I Hated

Chapter 2

THE BRIDGE

I walked until my feet hurt.

That was the only way I could describe the next few hours, I just walked.. Down streets I did not have a destination for, past restaurants still lit up and loud with Friday night crowds, past couples walking close together, past a group of guys in jerseys who were laughing about something like the world was completely fine. I kept my head down and I kept moving because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant seeing it again.

Marcus Mia, The flat look on her face. The laugh he tried to hide.

I stopped outside a convenience store somewhere around midnight and leaned against the wall and pulled out my phone, not to call anyone, just to have something to do with my hands. That was when I saw the notification, then another, Then six more, all in a row.

I opened i********:.

The first post was from Mia's account. A photo of her and Marcus at a restaurant, her head on his shoulder, both of them smiling at the camera like they had been doing this for years. The caption said, Finally free, Finally happy, Life is too short for boring.

Posted forty minutes ago. I stared at it, my head literally gassing out like it about to be blown..

Forty minutes, the sheets were probably still warm and she had already written a caption.

I scrolled down. Marcus had posted a video. The two of them in her apartment, music playing in the background, him pulling her close and kissing her cheek while she laughed. His caption was worse. It said, Real ones know what they want and go get it, No apologies.

The comments were already filling up. People from the league. People I had played with. Some were laughing. Some were tagging each other. Someone had screenshotted my team profile photo and put it side by side with Marcus's post and the whole thing was spreading the way bad things always spread, fast and wide and completely out of my control.

I put my phone in my pocket and started walking again.

I do not know how long it took me to reach the bridge. I was not heading there on purpose. I just kept walking north and the streets got quieter and the lights got further apart and eventually the sidewalk curved upward and I was on it, standing above the river, both hands gripping the cold iron railing.

The water below was dark. The city reflected in it, broken up in pieces by the current.

I took the velvet box out of my jacket pocket. I had been carrying it all night without thinking about it, this small square weight against my ribs. I held it in my palm and looked at it. I opened it. The necklace caught the lamplight, gold and small and carefully chosen. Three weeks of searching for something right and it had never even made it out of my pocket.

I closed the box, I gripped the railing harder. My phone buzzed.

Unknown number again.

Leave the bridge.

I went very still.

I looked around me. The bridge was empty. Both ends of it dark and quiet. No cars, no pedestrians, no movement anywhere that I could see. I looked down at the water, then back at the message, and something uncomfortable moved through me, a feeling I could not name exactly. Not fear, Something closer to being caught.

I typed back: Are you following me?

No response, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around immediately.

He was standing about fifteen feet away, hands in the pockets of a dark jacket, watching me with an expression that gave away absolutely nothing. I knew his face. I would have known it anywhere. High cheekbones, sharp jaw, that particular way he held himself like he was always waiting for someone to challenge him.

Noah Knight.

Captain of the Riverdale Wolves. The team we had lost to in the semifinals two years running. The player who had hit me so hard in the last playoff game that I had seen stars for a full minute, and who had skated past me without looking back while the crowd screamed his name.

I stared at him.

"What are you doing here?" My voice came out rough.

"Standing on a bridge," he said.

"This is my bridge."

"Pretty sure it belongs to the city."

I turned back to the railing. "Leave me alone, Knight."

He did not move. I could hear him still standing there, not coming closer, not leaving, just present in that way that some people are, like they take up more space than their body actually requires.

"I said leave."

"I heard you."

I spun around and the anger came fast, faster than I expected, rushing up from somewhere deep in my chest and filling my whole body with heat. I crossed the distance between us in four steps and grabbed the front of his jacket with both hands and he let me, which made it worse somehow, he just stood there and let me grab him and looked at me with those flat, steady eyes.

"What do you want from me?" I said. My voice broke slightly on the last word and I hated it. I hated that he heard it.

"Let go of my jacket," he said quietly.

"Give me a reason not to put you over this railing."

"Because you would regret it," he said, "and you already have enough to regret tonight."

I released him, I stepped back. My hands were shaking and I pressed them against my sides and looked away from him, back at the water, trying to breathe through the pressure building behind my eyes.

A long silence settled between us.

"How do you know anything about my night?" I said.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said it.

"I have been looking for you all night."

I turned back to face him slowly.

The words landed wrong and deliberate, like he had been holding them and waiting for exactly the right moment to put them down.

I searched his face for something that would explain it, a smirk, a joke. Anything that made sense.

There was nothing. Just Noah Knight standing on a bridge in the dark, watching me like my answer actually mattered to him.

"Why?" I said.

He looked at me for a long moment.

And said nothing.