Something Is Wrong With Me

Ember's POV

After Knox left, the three of us stood in the room and Jessica was going on about the way he had supposedly been looking at her, and Kimberly was shaking her head saying no, she had watched the whole thing and Knox had barely taken his eyes off me for a second, and I was standing there listening to all of it while a completely different conversation was happening inside my head.

"So what do you think?" Kimberly was looking at me with that expression she used when she had already made up her mind and was just waiting for you to catch up. "I think Knox Rivers has a crush on you."

"Knox is a player," I said. "He changes girls like he changes his clothes. He is not my type."

"Knox may be a player," Jessica said, looking genuinely offended on his behalf, "but he is literally everybody's type. Nobody is immune to Knox Rivers. That is just a fact."

"Can we just go to the game?" I said. "I want to sit down and drink something cold and not think about anything for a few hours."

Kimberly smiled. "She wants to see Knox on the ice."

"I want to sit down," I repeated.

We went to the game.

Jessica got us good seats, three rows back from the glass, close enough that you could hear the blades on the ice and feel the cold coming off the rink in waves. The arena filled up fast. People were loud and excited and wearing the team colors, and the energy in the building was the kind that gets into your blood even when you are trying to stay calm and detached and completely unbothered.

I was trying very hard to be unbothered.

I sat between Kimberly and Jessica with my soda in my hands and watched the warmup and told myself I was just here because I had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon. I told myself I wasn't watching the ice any differently than I would watch any other sporting event and last night was over,done and filed away and I had made my peace with it.

Then Knox came out onto the ice and every single thing I had just told myself evaporated.

He was different out here.. He lifted his stick and shouted something to his team and they all lifted theirs back, and the crowd lost its mind.

"Knox! Knox! Knox!"

Jessica was on her feet screaming with the rest of them. Kimberly was clapping. I sat in my seat and watched him move across the ice and thought about the way his voice had sounded at the window in the dark.

Is Ember my fated mate?

I pressed my lips together and looked down at my soda.

Stop it. It meant nothing. You heard something strange and your brain made a story out of it because you were tired and emotional and it was the middle of the night.

The game started and it was a good one — fast and physical and the kind where the lead kept changing and nobody in the stands could sit still. The Fangs were trailing by one heading into the last few minutes and the whole arena was tense with it, everybody leaning forward and holding their breath.

Everybody except me.

I was sitting there with my soda and I was thinking — which I absolutely should not have been doing — about how good Knox was in bed,the way he had looked at me when I told him I had never done this before. The fact that if things had gone differently, if he hadn't panicked at the window and kicked me out, I might have actually wanted to see him again.

I know I told Knox no strings attached. But Knox was so good. Another round couldn't hurt.

I stopped that thought dead in its tracks and sat up straight and reminded myself very firmly of what he had done. He had kicked me out of his apartment in the middle of the night on my birthday. No explanation, no apology, just a shaking hand holding out my coat and a look on his face like I was something dangerous.

I was not going to think about Knox Rivers that way.

I was absolutely not.

"Time out on the ice!" the referee called. "Two minutes remaining!"

"Ember!" Kimberly grabbed my arm. "Why are you so quiet? Are you watching this? The Fangs are down by one with two minutes left, this is insane!"

"I'm watching," I said. "I'm pumped. Go Fangs."

"You don't sound pumped."

"Go," I said, louder. "Fangs."

Kimberly laughed and turned back to the ice and I lifted my soda and took a long drink and tried to pay attention to the game instead of the inside of my own head.

And then something happened that I cannot explain.

A voice appeared inside my skull, like someone had leaned in very close and spoken directly into my ear.

If you have sex with Knox again, you could die.

The bottle slipped out of my hand.

It hit the concrete floor and soda went everywhere — across my shoes and Kimberly's boots, splashing the back of the seat in front of us. Kimberly yelped and jumped sideways and the people in front turned around and I just sat there, frozen, my hands still curved in the shape of holding something that was no longer there.

"Ember!" Kimberly grabbed my arm. "What the hell? You just spilled soda all over my boots!"

"I'm sorry," I said. My mouth was moving on its own. "I didn't — I lost my grip, I'm sorry, Kimberly."

"What happened?" Jessica leaned over. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

What was that? What was that? What was that?

"I'm fine," I said. "I'm fine. I just lost my grip."

I bent down and picked up the bottle and held it with both hands this time so they wouldn't see how badly I was shaking. I stared at the ice and tried to breathe normally and told myself it was stress,sleep deprivation. It was the leftover emotional wreckage of catching Ethan cheating on my birthday and doing something reckless to cope with it. It was not a voice. It was not real.

On the ice below us, Knox scored.

The arena exploded. Jessica screamed so loud I felt it in my teeth. Kimberly threw both arms in the air. The Fangs were going crazy on the ice, jumping and crashing into each other, and Knox had his stick raised above his head and was turning in a slow circle, taking in the crowd.

And then he stopped turning.

His eyes found mine across the full length of the arena, through all that noise and all those people, like there was a straight line drawn between us that nothing could interrupt. He looked at me for one long second that felt like much longer.

Then the team crashed into him from all sides and the moment was gone.

I sat very still and told myself I had imagined it.