Page 63 of Hard Check

I picked up my phone, thumb hovering over Pike's contact. Three different messages sat in my drafts folder—variations on apologies and explanations that I'd typed and deleted over the past hour. Each one sounded either too desperate or too casual, missing some essential element that would bridge the chasm I'd helped create.

We need to talk.

Delete.

About tonight—I didn't mean to

Delete.

I'm sorry.

Delete.

What could I say that delivered some version of the truth? That watching him celebrate felt like a preview of my funeral?

None of it was his fault. He hadn't asked to be twenty-three with hands that could make pucks dance, or vision that could thread passes through microscopic gaps in defensive coverage. He hadn't chosen to be everything I'd wanted to become when I was his age.

I set the phone aside and scrubbed my hands through my hair, suddenly aware of how thoroughly I'd fucked up the evening. Pike had gotten the biggest news of his career. Instead of celebrating with him or even pretending to be happy, I'd spent the night brooding in corners like some emotionally stunted adult who'd never learned how to process feelings like a functional adult.

Get your shit together.

Chapter sixteen

Pike

Thelockerroomgreetedme with its familiar cocktail of eucalyptus balm and stale coffee, but everything felt wrong. My clothes from yesterday clung to my skin—same jeans, same wrinkled henley that still carried the ghost of that sandalwood smell Carver loved. I'd managed maybe two hours of sleep, mostly staring at my ceiling and replaying his words on an endless loop.

We were always temporary.

The phrase continued to burrow under my skin like a splinter for two nights now, working deeper with each passing hour.

I rounded the corner to find him already at his stall, methodically threading laces through eyelets with the precision of a surgeon. His shoulders hunched forward, creating a wall of muscle and silence that screamedstay away.

My feet carried me closer before my brain could intervene. I blurted out the question that haunted me. "Was this just... exploration? A phase you're gonna forget the second I'm gone?"

Carver's hands froze. He didn't look up.

"It wasn't nothing."

The non-answer provided zero comfort. "Then what the hell was it?"

He looked up, dark circles under his eyes. "Pike..."

"No." I stepped close enough to smell the mint toothpaste on his breath. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to look at me like I'm some naive kid who doesn't understand how the world works."

His back straightened. When he spoke, each word was calculated. "The timing's shit. You've got this opportunity, and I won't be the thing that distracts you from—"

"You already let it mess with everything." A sharp, brittle laugh escaped me. "You think pretending none of this happened will make it easier? You think I can flip a switch and forget?"

Carver's knuckles went white around his skate laces. "We agreed—"

"We agreed to honesty. Remember that rule? The one about telling each other the hard stuff?" My voice cracked, showing more emotion than I wanted.

He stood then, towering over me in the narrow space between stalls. For a second, I thought he might reach for me. Instead, he grabbed his helmet and stick.

"I need to get on the ice."

He brushed past me, with his shoulder grazing mine with enough force to send me stumbling back a step. It was a brutal reminder of everything we'd built that he was determined to tear down.

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