Chapter 5

Cole pov

My shirt was stuck to my back by the time I got through the front door, the kind of tiredness that lived in my shoulders more than my legs. The coach had run us twice as long as usual, said something about the season opener making us look like we'd never seen ice before. Nobody argued. Nobody ever did.

I dropped my bag by the stairs and headed for the kitchen, already thinking about food, water, a shower, in that order, when I passed the living room and saw Rhys sprawled across the couch, phone in his hand, that stupid half smile on his face he only wore when he thought nobody was watching.

I almost kept walking. Almost.

Then the screen lit up again, another message, and something in me stopped moving before I'd decided to stop.

I told myself I didn't care who he was talking to. I told myself that the whole way across the room, and I was still telling myself that when I leaned over the back of the couch and read the name at the top of his screen anyway.

Kayla.

Her last message still glowing there, something easy about the weekend, a laughing emoji, warmth she'd never once shown me since she walked back into my life holding a cake like ten years could be undone with chocolate and buttercream.

My jaw locked before I'd decided to let it. I didn't examine that either.

"You good?" Rhys said, glancing up, catching me staring at his phone.

"Fine."

I kept walking, straight through the kitchen, straight up the stairs, jaw tight the whole way, telling myself it was nothing, telling myself I was tired, telling myself a dozen things that all sounded like lies by the time I shut my door.

I showered. Ate half a protein bar standing over my desk. Changed into sweatpants and a plain shirt. None of it made the tight feeling in my chest go away.

By the time I came back downstairs, I'd decided I was going to ask him about it, casually, like it didn't matter, like I was just curious the way you'd be curious about anything.

Rhys was still on the couch, phone face down on his knee now, half-watching something on the TV he clearly wasn't paying attention to.

"Who were you texting," I said.

He looked over, easy, unbothered. "Why?"

"Just asking."

"You never just ask." He picked the phone back up, thumb hovering over the screen like he was deciding whether I'd earned an answer. "If you have to know, it's Kayla. New girl. We're going to Dad's thing together this weekend."

I kept my face still. It cost me something to do it.

"Since when do you know her."

"Since this morning." He said it like it was obvious, like it should have meant nothing to me, and it landed like a fist anyway. "Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't."

"Then why are you still standing there?"

I didn't have an answer for that, not one I was willing to give him, so I said the next thing instead, the thing that had been sitting in my chest since I read her name on his screen.

"You barely know her."

"I know her fine." Rhys set the phone down, sitting up straighter now, something sharpening in his expression. "What's this actually about, Cole?"

"Nothing. I'm just saying, you met her this morning and now you're taking her to a family event. Seems fast."

"It's one weekend. As friends." He crossed his arms, studying me in that way he did when he thought he'd caught onto something. "You're acting like I did something wrong."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. You've been weird since you walked in." He tilted his head. "Is this about the cake thing? Because if you've got some problem with a girl giving you a cake, that's a you problem, not a me problem."

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. "This isn't about the cake."

"Then what is it about? Because from where I'm sitting, you ignored her all morning, and now you're upset that somebody else didn't."

"I'm not upset."

"Sure." He didn't believe me. I could see it plainly, and it made the whole thing worse, standing here defending a feeling I hadn't even let myself name yet.

"I asked her too," I said, before I could stop myself.

Rhys went still. "You what?"

"I texted her. About the event. I need a date, she needs one, seemed simple enough."

"You don't even know her." His voice had lost its easy edge now, gone flatter, harder around the words. "You've said maybe ten words to this girl since she got here, and now you're texting her behind my back?"

"I'm not doing anything behind your back. I didn't know you'd already asked."

"Would it have mattered if you did?"

I didn't answer that fast enough, and he took the silence for exactly what it was.

"Unbelievable." He stood up, running a hand through his hair, pacing a short line in front of the couch. "You don't want her. You've made that very clear. But the second somebody else does, suddenly you're interested."

"That's not what this is."

"Then what is it? Explain it to me, Cole, because I'm genuinely trying to understand what you're doing right now."

I opened my mouth. Nothing honest came out. Nothing that didn't involve a summer in Paris and a mother who left without a word and a girl who apparently thought she could just walk back into my life and hand me a cake like none of it mattered.

"Forget it," I said instead.

"No, don't do that. Don't shut down and walk off like you always do." Rhys stepped closer, and for the first time all evening there wasn't anything easy in his face at all. "She said yes to me first. That's it. That's the whole thing. If you wanted to ask her, you had all day. People were already talking about the locker thing by lunch, Cole. Whatever happened there, it wasn't nothing to her."

That last part landed somewhere I didn't want it to.

"Watch it," I said quietly.

"Or what?" He held my stare, not backing down the way he usually did when I got like this. "I'm not doing anything wrong here, Cole. I met a girl. I was nice to her. Somehow that's turned into you standing in my living room acting like I stole something from you."

"I'm not acting like anything."

"You are, and I don't even understand why, which is honestly the worst part." He shook his head, some of the anger draining into something closer to tired. "Whatever this is, whatever's going on with you and her, that's not my problem to fix. I asked her first. She said yes."

He picked his phone back up off the couch, turning it over in his hand like the conversation was already ending whether I agreed or not.

"Kayla's going to that event with me this weekend. Not you." He paused at his own door, like he wanted to say more and thought better of it. "Whatever this is with you two, figure it out on your own time. Not this weekend.”