로그인Reina~ I couldn’t sleep. The clock on my nightstand glowed 11:47 PM, but my mind refused to shut off. Dinner with Melody kept replaying in my head. The way she smiled when I stole her fries, the way her eyes lit up every time I laughed. The way she looked at me like I was the only person in the room. She was twenty-three. I was forty-two. The age difference was a big bother because the last time we spoke, she kept talking about we doing something serious but she was singing a different tune today. Which was good. She was too young to understand what she could want. I turned onto my side and pulled the blanket higher. This was wrong. I was supposed to be the responsible one. The older one. The one who knew better. Yet here I was, lying in bed thinking about a girl nearly half my age and how badly I wanted to kiss her again. A soft knock sounded at my door. I froze. It was late. Too late for visitors. I sat up slowly, heart already racing. Another knock but it was quieter thi
Melody~By the third week of pretending I was fine, I was ready to admit I was terrible at it.Not out loud, of course. Out loud I was doing great. I went to class. Answered questions, held conversations. I even laughed a few times when people expected me to. From the outside, I probably looked completely normal.The problem was that every quiet moment immediately betrayed me. The second I was alone, my brain went right back to Reina. It was annoying. Embarrassing, honestly. I was twenty-three years old. I had survived exams, family drama, terrible relationships, and one particularly traumatic group project that should probably qualify as psychological warfare.Yet somehow one woman had completely hijacked my ability to think about anything else and the worst part, my best friend wasn't here for me to rant about it!I was sitting in a café near campus when I finally got tired of arguing with myself. My coffee had gone cold almost twenty minutes earlier. I hadn't touched it. Instead, I
Noah~ Practice ended an hour ago, but I was still at the rink. The locker room had gone quiet a while back. Even the equipment staff had finished up for the night and left. I should’ve gone home. Instead, I sat on the bench staring at my phone like an idiot. Not doing anything with it. Just staring. Every few minutes my thumb would unlock the screen automatically. I’d check my messages, scroll through nothing important, lock it again, then repeat the exact same process five minutes later. The worst part was that I wasn’t even expecting a text anymore. Theo wasn’t going to text me. That much had become painfully obvious. Still, my brain apparently hadn’t caught up. I unlocked my phone again. Locked it. Unlocked it. Locked it. “Jesus Christ.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. The empty locker room didn’t care. I shoved the phone into my bag and stood up. My shoulders felt sore from practice. My knee hurt. Coach had spent most of the afternoon screaming about defensiv
Theo~ The first thing I noticed about the Super Team training camp was that nobody cared who I was. Honestly, it was kind of refreshing. Back home, everybody knew me. Captain. Starter, Theodore Matthews. People had opinions before I even opened my mouth. Here, nobody looked at me twice. I was just another player dragging a heavy hockey bag through a dorm hallway at eight in the morning. For the first time in months, my chest felt lighter. Not completely. But enough. Enough that I could breathe without feeling like someone was standing on my ribs. Maybe this was exactly what I needed. Distance. Perspective. A few weeks away from everything that had become too damn complicated. A few weeks away from Noah. That thought hit harder than I expected. I shoved it aside immediately. This wasn’t about Noah. I’d been repeating that sentence so often lately that it almost sounded believable. Almost. The dorms at the training facility were nicer than our university housing. Bigger rooms, bett
Noah~I didn’t realize how much of my day revolved around Theo until he wasn’t there anymore.The stupid thing was that I thought I’d gotten used to it. The first few days after he left were rough, sure. But I told myself that was normal. We lived together. We saw each other every day. Anybody would notice when someone suddenly disappeared from their routine.That was a reasonable explanation. Unfortunately, the longer he stayed gone, the harder it became to keep lying to myself.By the second week, I was checking my phone so often that even I started noticing. I’d wake up and reach for it before I was fully conscious. Every morning. Every single morning. The worst part was that I never had a reason. There weren't any messages waiting for me. Theo wasn’t texting. Theo wasn’t calling. Theo wasn’t doing anything.Still, my hand automatically reached for my phone like part of my brain hadn’t gotten the memo yet. I hated it. I hated how pathetic it felt. I hated that I couldn’t seem to st
Joe~The entire team felt weird after the dinner disaster. Nobody talked about it directly. That was the thing about hockey teams. Everyone noticed everything, but most people pretended they didn’t. Especially when it came to personal shit.I walked into practice the next morning already knowing something was off. Theo was there before everyone else. That alone was unusual. He usually showed up early, but not this early. Not sitting alone in the locker room staring at nothing while his gear sat untouched beside him.I paused near my stall. Theo didn’t notice me. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care. For a few seconds, I watched him. His shoulders looked tense. His jaw looked tense. Hell, even the way he was sitting looked tense. Like his entire body had forgotten how to relax.Something twisted uncomfortably in my chest. The stupid part was that I should have been happy. Noah and Theo were falling apart. Wasn’t that exactly what I had been hoping for? For weeks I had watched Noah orbi







