Page 8 of Heart Checked By the Hockey Heartthrob

Or a second period. And this time, I’m not skating off the ice.

Chapter three

Quinn

It’s ridiculous how fast the air shifts in a small, dark hallway. One minute, I’m sarcastically muttering about traps and toolboxes, and the next, I’m surrounded by silence and shadows—with Wes Archer inches from me, his eyes, his face, his lips so very close.

I can’t stop thinking about what just happened. We should’ve walked away when the power went out. But neither of us did. Maybe we couldn’t.

I contemplate.The hallway’s narrow and awkward, made worse by the way the fallen toolbox wedgeditself against the doorwe came through. I tried the knob. It’s stuck. So here we are, jammed in the one part of Beckett and Abby’s house that doesn’t have a working outlet or an emergency light. There’sno easy out. Just me, Wes, and years’ worth of tension thatrefuses to die.

I can’t see much more than a silhouette of him, but I can hear the quiet sound of his breathing. I can feel the heat coming offhim in the close space. My heartbeat ratchets up, and I wish it didn’t.

“Sorry about the toolbox,” he murmurs, his voice low.

“Not your fault,” I mutter. “Unless you planted it there on purpose. Very spy movie of you.”

“Please. If I were planning it, there’d be wine. And backup lighting.”

That draws an involuntary huff from my nose. It’s annoying, how easy he still slips into charm mode. And worse, how easily part of me responds.

“Quinn…”

“No,” I say sharply, before I can stop myself. “You don’t get to ‘Quinn’ me. Not like that.”

He falls silent. The hallway holds its breath with him.

I don’t know what cracks first, my composureor my pride. But suddenly the words areflying out of my mouth before I can filter them.

“You left,” I snap. “No goodbye. No warning. One day we were talking about vacation plans, and the next, you were just... gone.”

“I thought—”

“Don’t. Don’t tell me what you thought. You thought it’d be easier for me? That walking away with zero closure would help me move on?”

“I didn’t think I was good for you,” he says, voice low. “That night at the hospital—after the road game in Chicago. I came in with a concussion, blood on my jersey, and you... you were in the locker room, sitting on the floor with your head in your hands. You thought no one saw you crying. But I did.”

My breath catches.

“You looked so tired. Like you were holding the whole world together with duct tape and caffeine. And I realized I was theone stretching you thin. I couldn’t be the reason you started resenting the life you loved.”

He swallows hard. “So, I left before you had to choose between the life you built and the mess I kept bringing to your door.”

“You were starting this whole new chapter. I was still getting benched some nights and icing bruises from away games. I didn’t want to hold you back.”

“So you disappeared.”

“I thought letting you go was the best thing I could do.”

I laugh bitterly. “And you think that makes you noble?”

“No,” he says quietly. “I think it makes me a coward.”

The honesty stings. Because it’s true. And because I wanted to hate him—want to hate him still—but I know what it costs him to say it.

I press my hand to the wall behind me, grounding myself. “You broke something in me, Wes.”

“You think I didn’t break, too?”

---