Page 71 of The Triple Play

Two days. Two days since we landed, and we’d barely heard from Annie. Cole’s assumption was she just needed a few days to unwind from so much travel, but Xavi and I had both been worried, especially when we’d only gotten one- or two-word text messages when we’d tried to check in with her, and it had only reached new heights when Xavi told me she’d called out of her shift at Smokey’s last night.

So I’d done the only thing I could think of after practice today.

I knocked twice, firm, then lighter. Her apartment door sat there, unmoving, taunting me, but after a minute or so I heard faint movement from inside.

I knocked again.

Slow steps grew closer to the door, and the scrape of a deadbolt unlatching made my hand twitch toward the handle, but I held back.

Annie opened the door just a crack, peering out with eyes that looked almost nothing like her. The blue in them had dulled significantly, the skin underneath dark. She looked exhausted, like she’d been drained fully. Her hair was tied up in a haphazardly done bun, Xavi’s zip-up hanging from her frame like a curtain and almost fully covering her hands, dressed in a pair of pajama shorts and one of my shirts. And her expression was…empty.

“Hey,” I said softly, trying not to let the worry show in my voice. “Can I come in?”

She stared at me,throughme, hesitating. But the door opened the rest of the way, and she turned around and let me in without saying a word.

Her apartment was dimmer than the last time I’d been here, and that was saying something. The curtains were drawn, the living room and kitchen dark, and the guitar that usually lived near the couch was nowhere in sight. Takeout containers littered the counter and the freezer was cracked open, and I shut it softly as I passed it without drawing her attention.

“You ghosting me, sweetheart?” I asked, keeping my tone gentle as I followed her.

She gave a small, barely-there laugh like it took every bit of her to do it. “Sorry. I just… I don’t know.”

She stood in front of the couch like she couldn’t quite decide if she wanted to sit down on it or stay standing on what looked like shaky legs. I wanted to pick her up, wanted to cradle her into my chest, but I did my best to give her at least a modicum of space. “What happened?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she sank down onto the couch, pulled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them like a vice.

I moved until I was standing right in front of her, my hand reaching out to cup her cheek gently, the motion feeling more like something Cole would do than me. “Annie.”

Her jaw trembled beneath my fingers, and I almost lost the restraint I had to not hold her.

“Talk to me, sweetheart,” I murmured, lowering myself down until I was sitting on the wobbly coffee table that I absolutely did not trust to take my weight.

“I saw my dad,” she said, her voice so quiet I almost missed it.

Her dad. Okay. I wracked my mind for anything I knew about her father, but came up almost empty — Xavi had mentioned something about him, I was pretty sure, but I couldn’t remember the context. “Okay,” I swallowed. “Can you explain a little more?”

“He knew,” she said, her voice cracking, her eyes blinking a little too quickly out of nowhere. “He knew I was following you guys from stop to stop. With you, with Cole, with Xavi. I didn’t tell him, and he knew.”

My stomach lurched like my skate had slipped out from under me. “Wait, wait, what? Like, he knew you were withusspecifically? By name?”

She nodded.

What… thefuck? My mind immediately went back to Sergei in the locker room, but as far as I knew, there were no connections between Annie, her father, her family, and the Fire. “How?”

“I don’t know,” she croaked, her sleeve-covered hands coming up to cover her face. “I don’t know, Colton, I don’t know. He had all of your names, where we were. He knew about every stop, every game.”

She wiped her eyes, her breathing a little choked and ragged, and met my gaze with glassy eyes.

“I thought I was being careful. I know we had some close calls, but… I don’t know. I searched for anything on the internet the last few days and as far as I can tell, nowhere is reporting it, so it wasn’t press he learned it from. I don’t understand.”

I reached out, peeling her cold hands from her face gently. “Hey, hey, you’re okay,” I murmured, scooching a little preciously to the edge of the coffee table. “He couldn’t have knowneverything. What did he say?”

She let out a strangled little sound that made my chest ache. “He asked me outright if I was sleeping with all of you. He kneweverything.”

My eyes went wide, surprise rolling over me in waves. “What…?”

“He thinks I’m throwing my life away, that I’m humiliating myself, that I need to ‘step back in line’,” she choked. “I…”

“Okay, well, he’s obviously fucking wrong about that.” I tightened my grip on her hands, trying to ground her, but I couldseeher starting to break apart more in front of me.

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