MY HOCKEY SECRET

This One Looked Better

Team dinners were mandatory, loud, and the closest thing Riley had to dangerous territory outside the locker room.

Thirty-two guys crammed around long tables, plates piled with more food than she'd seen in her life, everyone talking over everyone else. Someone had brought a speaker. Someone else was arm wrestling for the last plate of wings. It was the kind of noise that should have made it easy to disappear into, and most nights it did.

Riley slid into a seat at the end of the table and kept her head down, hoping nobody would notice her enough to ask questions.

She'd learned that the safest place at these dinners was the edge, close enough to belong, far enough that nobody studied her too closely while she ate.

Down the table, two freshmen were arguing loudly about whether Coach would run doubles again this week. Someone else was recounting last season's championship game for the third time that month, the one everyone still talked about, the one that had ended Theo's career. Riley had learned to nod along at the right moments without really listening. It was easier than admitting how much that story still made her stomach twist, knowing whose shoes she was standing in.

Marco dropped into the chair beside her before she'd even unfolded her napkin.

"You survived the week. Barely."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"I call it like I see it." He stole a roll off her plate without asking. "You're not like the other rookies, Rey. You know that, right?"

"People keep telling me that it's a bad thing."

"It's not a bad thing." Marco's grin was easy, familiar, the kind of grin that made her forget for a second how careful she had to be. "It's just different. And I like different things."

Down the table, Jackson sat across from a teammate, deep in some conversation about line changes, not looking her way once.

Then, without a word, without any explanation, he stood, picked up his tray, and walked the length of the table.

He sat down directly across from her.

Marco blinked.

"Captain."

Jackson gave a short nod back, nothing more.

That was the whole exchange.

Jackson didn't explain why he'd moved. He just started eating like it was the most natural thing in the world, like he hadn't just crossed an entire table to do it.

Riley kept her eyes on her plate, heart hammering against her ribs.

"So," Marco said slowly, glancing between them, "this a thing now? You just relocate whenever you feel like it?"

"The seat was open."

"There were six seats open."

"This one looked better."

Marco raised both eyebrows, looked at Riley, looked back at Jackson, and said nothing else. But his grin had changed. Sharper now. Watching. It was the same look he'd given her the day she stole the puck off the captain, the look that said he was filing something away for later, even if he wasn't sure yet what it meant.

The rest of dinner passed in strange, careful silence between the three of them, while the rest of the table roared around them, oblivious.

Jackson didn't say much. He didn't need to. Every time Riley reached for something, he'd already noticed, sliding it toward her before she had to ask. Every time she went quiet, his eyes found her first, like he was keeping some private tally of every small thing about her that didn't quite add up to the picture everyone else saw.

She told herself she was imagining it.

She told herself a lot of things these days, and lately she was having a harder time believing any of them.

Later, walking back to the dorms, Marco fell into step beside her, hands in his pockets, quiet for once.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Depends what it is."

"Has Jax ever done that before? Moved seats like that for anyone?"

Riley shook her head. "How would I know?"

"Because I've known him for three years, and I've never seen him do it once." Marco's voice had lost its usual joke. "Not for Theo. Not for anybody."

Riley said nothing.

Marco studied her for a second too long, like a puzzle he hadn't finished putting together.

"Careful, Rey," he said finally, but he wasn't smiling when he said it. "Whatever's going on with you two. Just be careful."

He walked ahead before she could ask what he meant.

Riley stood alone in the cold, watching her breath fog in the air, wondering the same thing herself.

She thought about the dozens of small moments she'd stopped counting. The seat at dinner. The way he'd carried himself differently around her lately, less like a captain handling a problem, more like someone working something out in his own head that he hadn't found the words for yet. She'd told herself none of it meant anything. She wasn't sure she believed that anymore.

Because if Marco could see it, whatever it was, sooner or later somebody else would too. And she couldn't afford for anybody else to start looking that closely. Not when the one thing holding her whole life together was a lie she had to keep perfect, every single day, without a single c***k.

She pulled her jacket tighter and walked the rest of the way back alone, the lights of Residence Hall C glowing ahead of her like a countdown she couldn't stop.