Broken play, p.8
Broken Play, page 8
I’m not cool.
I’m never cool.
We start warm-up drills. My skates cut through the ice in long, powerful strokes I don’t feel. My breath plumes out in clouds that don’t slow my heartbeat. Every time I hit the turn on the far end, I look back at the boards.
Wren’s there.
Watching.
But not watching, really.
She’s somewhere else entirely.
Halfway through drills, she checks her phone.
And freezes.
Like she’s been punched in the ribs.
My gut goes tight. I nearly trip over my own skates — something I never do — but recover before anyone notices. Mostly.
Finn notices.
He looks between me and her with this soft, sympathetic expression that makes me want to break something. I don’t need his sympathy. I need the truth.
What the hell happened to her?
We rotate into contact drills — body checks, corner battles, all the shit Coach loves. I slam the biggest rookie into the boards and he rebounds like rubber, groaning as he skates away.
Usually that clears my head.
But not today.
Every time I hit someone, all I can think about is the way Wren flinched earlier. The way she kept swallowing like she was fighting tears. The way she nearly dropped her phone when she saw whatever message she got.
Message.
Someone’s texting her.
Who?
Kael glances at her too often, sure, but he’d never text something that makes her look like that. Finn’s too soft. The rookies? No. None of them have the guts.
So who—
I slam into a second player, harder than necessary. He bounces off me with a grunt.
“Jesus, Ward,” he mutters. “You trying to break someone today?”
Maybe.
Coach blows his whistle, annoyed. “Atlas! Get your head in it!”
My head is in it.
Just not in hockey.
When the whistle blows for a break, I skate straight to the bench. Wren senses me coming before I get there. Something in the way her back straightens, in the way her shoulders pinch tight, tells me she’s bracing.
Not for pain.
For me.
That fucks me up more than any hit I’ve ever taken.
She doesn’t look up as I stop beside her.
“You okay?” I ask. My voice is rough — always rough — but today it sounds sharper.
She nods without meeting my eyes. “Fine.”
That word again.
Her favorite lie.
“I didn’t ask if you were fine,” I say quietly. “I asked if you were okay.”
She doesn’t answer.
Instead, her phone buzzes in her hand.
Her fingers jerk.
She fumbles it — actually fumbles it — and catches it at the last second. Her face drains of color. Not the pale of a trainer seeing blood or injury. This is something else.
This is fear.
Real fear.
Her hands tremble.
She tries to swipe the message open, but her finger misses. She tries again. Misses again.
I swear I can hear her heartbeat from where I’m standing.
This isn’t normal. This isn’t just stress. This is someone tearing her apart from the inside.
“Who’s texting you?” I ask.
She stiffens like I slapped her.
“It’s nothing,” she says too fast. “Just... personal stuff.”
Personal.
From the way she’s reacting, it feels like someone got personal with her throughout last night, too.
“Show me,” I say, surprising myself.
I don’t know why I said it. I don’t know what I expected. But I know I need to see it. I know the look on her face. I’ve seen it before — on people cornered by someone they can’t fight.
Her eyes snap up to mine, wide, wounded, begging me not to press.
“Atlas—no.”
Her voice. That small. That thin.
It hits something in me I don’t like acknowledging.
I reach forward instinctively, hand brushing her elbow.
She flinches so hard she nearly drops the phone again.
Fuck.
My chest goes cold.
Because she’s not just scared of the phone.
She’s scared of being touched.
By me.
By anyone.
What the hell is happening to her?
I pull my hand back immediately, fingers curling into a fist so tight my knuckles creak.
“Okay,” I say softly. “Okay. I won’t touch you.”
The words feel foreign in my mouth — gentleness isn’t a language I speak fluently — but I force them out.
She swallows. Nods.
“It’s fine,” she says. “Really.”
Bullshit.
I push back onto the ice before I do something stupid, like grab her phone and break it or pull her into me and demand answers.
I skate hard.
Fast.
Reckless.
Coach yells. I don’t hear him.
My lungs burn but not enough. My legs ache but not enough. My anger spikes but doesn’t crest.
I need out.
I need distance.
I need—
A crash pulls my attention sharply.
Kael and a rookie collide at the blue line. Not a hard hit. An ordinary mistake. But Kael loses it — not visibly, not loudly, but I can see the edge in his eyes even from across the rink.
We’re all off.
When practice ends, I don’t shower. I don’t tape my sticks. I don’t do anything I usually do.
I watch her.
From the shadows of the hallway.
She’s in the med room again, head bent over her phone. Shoulders trembling. She’s not crying, but she’s close.
Finn stops by the door and hesitates. He’s gentle with her in ways that make sense — he stands close but not too close, offers help without pushing. But even gentle isn’t enough today.
She waves him off.
He gives her space, brows furrowed in worry.
Kael walks by next — controlled, careful, keeping a distance that looks like it hurts him. He doesn’t say anything. He just lies with his eyes when she tells him she’s fine.
I stay hidden.
Because if I walk in there right now, I’ll do the opposite of gentle.
I’ll demand answers.
I’ll demand names.
I’ll demand the phone.
She won’t give them.
And I’ll scare her more.
The second she leaves the med room, I follow at a distance. Not enough for her to notice. Enough for me to track her.
She walks too fast.
She doesn’t look around.
She’s in her head and not in her body.
She could be hit by anything—
a puck, a player, a stranger—
and she wouldn’t see it coming.
I clench my jaw, following her all the way to the staff exit. She steps outside, hoodie pulled tight, hands shoved deep in her pockets.
Cold wind lifts her hair.
She shivers.
And then she pulls out her phone again.
The way her face changes — open dread, fear so sharp it cuts — tells me everything.
Someone is hurting her.
Someone is doing it on purpose.
Someone is watching her.
The urge to go to her pulses through every vein in my body. But I hold myself back by inches, by breath, by force of will.
Not yet.
Not until she’s ready to tell us.
Not until she’s ready to tell me.
She disappears around the corner and I stay rooted in place, chest heaving like I ran a marathon.
My hands shake.
Not fear.
Rage.
Someone is in her life.
Someone is messing with her head.
Someone is making her flinch at shadows.
And if I find out who—
I will end him.
I don’t care how.
I don’t care where.
I don’t care what it costs.
Nobody breaks her like that.
Not again.
Not while I’m here.
Not ever.
Chapter 23: Finn
Bars are supposed to make noise.
That’s the whole point — clinking glasses, bad music, people talking too loud because they want strangers to notice them and pretend they don’t.
Tonight, the place is buzzing, but none of it makes it past the static in my head. I sit hunched on a stool at the far end, a beer sweating in front of me, staring at the foam like it might give me answers.
It doesn’t.
Nothing does.
Not the whiskey I had earlier.
Not the noise.
Not the dim lights or the bartender’s half-hearted flirting or the game playing muted on the TV overhead.
My thoughts keep circling back to Wren.
Every time I blink, I see her face when her phone buzzed earlier — that flash of terror she tried to bury in a second.
And every time I breathe, I feel the tight ache in my chest from watching her swallow her panic like it was her job.
I should’ve said something.
I should’ve followed her.
I should’ve been braver.
Instead, I’m here.
Drinking.
Thinking.
Failing.
I’m about to flag the bartender for another when movement at the corner of my vision hooks me by the throat. My stomach drops before my head even turns.
Because there she is.
Wren Harper.
Alone.
In this bar.
At nine p.m.
Looking like she’s barely holding it together.
She slides onto a stool two seats down, unaware of me at first, her shoulders curled inward, her hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands. The bartender asks what she wants, and she murmurs something too soft to hear.
When her drink comes — something pink, something sweet, something she only orders when she wants to forget things — she lifts it with hands that shake.
Fuck.
I straighten, pulse suddenly thundering in my neck.
She doesn’t look up until her second sip. Her eyes flick sideways, land on me, and widen like she wasn’t expecting a familiar face.
“Finn?” she breathes.
Her voice is small, soft, frayed at the edges. It makes something inside me break clean in two.
I lift my hands gently, not moving closer. “Hey. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
She swallows, throat working. “I... needed air.”
Air.
In a bar.
Right.
I want to ask who texted her.
I want to ask what scared her.
I want to tell her she can talk to me, that I won’t push, that I won’t crowd her the way the others might without meaning to.
But she looks like a single wrong question will shatter her.
So instead, I nod toward her drink. “That any good?”
She looks down at the glass like she forgot she’s holding it. “It’s... strong.”
“How strong?”
Her gaze flicks up, cheeks pink. “Pretty strong.”
She tips back another swallow anyway.
My chest tightens. “Maybe slow down a little?”
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t tease me. Doesn’t roll her eyes like she might have yesterday.
She just nods.
Quietly.
Obediently.
Not the good kind of obedient — the scared kind.
I can’t sit two seats away anymore.
Slowly, deliberately, I slide off my stool and take the one next to her. Close enough she can feel me, far enough she can move if she needs space.
“You okay?” I ask softly.
Her breath hitches. “Yeah.”
She’s lying.
Badly.
But she’s buzzed — her pupils slightly wider, her shoulders looser than they were earlier — and when she turns toward me, the truth slips out in a whisper.
“No,” she says. “I’m... not.”
The words hit me like a punch.
I shift so my knee brushes hers, barely there, giving her a little pressure point to lean on if she wants it. Her thigh tenses, then relaxes like the contact actually helps.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
Her lip trembles. She doesn’t look at me. “Not really.”
“Okay,” I murmur. “Then we won’t talk.”
She deflates like that was the right answer. Like she needed permission to not explain her pain.
We sit like that for a minute. Two. Her fingers curl around the glass like she’s afraid to let go. Then, quietly, like she’s confessing a sin:
“I hate that he still gets to do this to me.”
My blood goes cold. “Who?”
She shuts her eyes, wincing at herself. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You can say anything,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her breath stutters. She lifts her drink to take another sip, but I gently touch her wrist.
“Hey,” I say softly. “You’re shaky. Maybe let me take that?”
She hesitates.
Then she nods and lets the drink go.
She’s letting me help her.
That alone feels like the kind of trust I don’t deserve.
I slide the glass away from her before she can change her mind. When she looks back up at me, the bar lights catch her eyes — brighter from alcohol, glossy with emotion she’s fighting hard to hide.
“You’re... nice,” she murmurs.
I laugh, but quietly. “Pretty sure that’s the first time a woman has told me that in a bar.”
“No, you are,” she insists, a tipsy conviction softening her tone. “You’re safe.”
The words hit me harder than anything on the ice ever could.
I swallow, feeling heat rise in my throat. “I’m glad you feel that way.”
Her fingers drift toward mine on the bar top. She stops herself before touching me, like she’s afraid she’s crossing a line.
I bridge the distance for her.
I lay my hand gently over hers, giving her a chance to pull away.
She doesn’t.
She lets out a tiny breath — relief, maybe — and her shoulders sink.
“Can you stay for a little?” she asks quietly.
I don’t hesitate. “As long as you want.”
Her head tips slightly until it rests against my shoulder. Light. Careful. Testing.
I go still.
Then softer than soft, I lean my cheek to her hair.
She’s warm.
She smells like vanilla and nerves and something delicate I want to protect with my life.
Her voice is muffled against me. “Today was really hard.”
“I know.”
“It’s stupid.”
“It’s not.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know.”
My chest aches. “You don’t have to hide everything.”
She presses closer — not drunk, not clinging — just... surrendering a little.
And God, it feels like the whole world holds its breath.
“You’re warm,” she murmurs.
“You’re freezing,” I counter gently.
She smiles against my shoulder — small, fragile, perfect.
I don’t know how long we sit like that. Long enough for her breathing to slow. Long enough for her hand to slide against mine like she’s searching for something to anchor her.
When her fingers weave through mine, I feel it everywhere.
“Wren,” I whisper, trying not to spook her. “You’re tired.”
She hums. “Just... don’t leave yet.”
“I won’t.”
But she’s swaying a little now, buzzed more than she realizes. Her head tilts and her lips brush the curve of my shoulder — light, accidental, but it shoots heat straight through me.
I swallow hard.
I need to get her home.
Gently, I slip an arm around her back. “Come on, sweetheart.”
She stiffens for half a second at the endearment — then melts, cheeks flushed.
“Let me take you home.”
“No, I don’t want—” She falters. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be.”
I help her off the stool, steadying her as she leans into me. Her fingers curl in my jacket, her breath warm on my neck.
Her voice is small. “Finn?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
My throat tightens. “Anytime, Wren.”
She’s soft against me — not sensual exactly, but threaded with want and vulnerability that feels like a secret she didn’t mean to share. As we walk out, her body sways into mine, her hip brushing mine with every step, and each touch sparks something warm, something hungry, something I have to hold back for her sake.
When we get outside, the cold air hits her, and she shivers violently. I pull her close, tucking her under my arm.
“You good?” I ask.
She nods against me. “I like this.”
“What?”
“Being close to you.”
My heart trips.
Shit.
I’m falling.
Hard.
I guide her to her building, which, surprisingly, is less than a block from the bar, then help her up the stairs with her hand in mine. When we reach her door, she fumbles with the keys.
“I’ve got it,” I say softly, taking them from her and unlocking the door.
She steps inside and turns to look at me, eyes wide, pupils blown, lips parted — not because she wants something physical, but because she’s raw and unguarded and she trusts me.
“Stay,” she whispers.
Not a kiss.
Not a touch.
Just one word that feels like it carries the weight of her whole chest.
I step inside and shut the door behind us.
“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” I promise.
She nods, relieved, and walks toward her bedroom. I follow at a respectful distance. She sits on the edge of her bed, pulls off her hoodie, then stops — frozen, unsure.
“Do you want help?” I ask gently.
Her breath trembles. “Just... sit with me?”
