Chapter Five: What the Ice Remembers

Liam's POV 

Practice is brutal. Not because Coach pushes us harder than usual, but because Kai is everywhere I am, fast, sharp, perfect, and completely unreachable. Every pass he sends me is clean and hard and silent. Every drill he runs flawlessly, like he's decided the only way to survive this is to be better than anyone, including me, including especially me.

By the time Coach blows the whistle for the last time, my whole body aches in a way that has nothing to do with the workout.

I wait until the locker room empties. I've gotten good at waiting, at timing things so nobody notices, and tonight I time it so that when Kai finally heads for the showers, I'm the only one left.

He sees me and stops in the doorway, towel over his shoulder, jaw tight.

"What do you want, Whitemore?" 

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Call me that. Like you didn't say my name two nights ago like it meant something."

Something flashes across his face, anger, hurt, both. "Forget it. It didn't mean anything. Clearly."

"It meant something to me."

The words are out before I can stop them, and the locker room goes very quiet, just the drip of the vent, just our breathing, just the two of us standing there with something enormous hanging in the air between us.

"Then why," Kai says, voice low, rough, "did you let her pull you away like I was something you needed to apologize for? Like I was, what, a mistake? Something you needed to clean up before your girlfriend noticed?"

"She's not my girlfriend. Not really."

"Could've fooled me."

"Kai." I take a step toward him. He doesn't step back, which feels like its own kind of answer. "I panicked. Okay? I've spent my entire life making sure nobody looks too closely at me, and for one second on that ice, somebody was looking, and I panicked, and I hurt you, and I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't unmake what it looked like."

"I know."

"Do you?" His voice cracks, just slightly, just enough that I hear how much this actually costs him to say. "Because I've been telling myself all day that I imagined it. That I made it into something it wasn't because I'm new here and lonely and stupid enough to think the Captain of the team might actually..."

He stops. Doesn't finish it.

"Might actually what?" I ask, quiet.

His eyes meet mine, and there it is again, that same charge from two nights ago, except now there's nothing in the way, no Bridget, no audience, nothing but the two of us and the truth sitting right there between us like something we could reach out and touch.

"Might actually want me back," he says, barely audible.

"I do." The words come out before I can think better of them, before every instinct I've spent years building can stop me. "I have since the second you walked into this locker room. I just don't know how to..."

I don't finish either. I don't have to.

He closes the distance between us in two steps, and his hand fists in the front of my jersey, and for one suspended, impossible second I think he's going to push me away, and then his mouth is on mine instead, and every single thought I've ever had about being careful, about being controlled, about keeping myself locked down tight where nobody can see, every single one of those thoughts just stops.

He kisses like he plays... fierce, focused, like he's been waiting his whole life for exactly this moment and isn't going to waste a second of it. My hands find his waist, pull him closer, and he makes a sound against my mouth that I feel in my chest, in my spine, everywhere.

This is it. This is the thing I've spent my whole life making sure nobody saw.

The locker room door bangs open.

"Whitemore, you still in here? Coach wants to talk about the lineup for..." 

We rip apart so fast Kai stumbles back into the lockers, the metal clanging loud and obvious in the sudden silence, and Rohan stands frozen in the doorway, eyes wide, taking in the two of us standing there too close, breathing too hard, faces flushed for reasons that have nothing to do with practice.

Nobody says anything.

Rohan's eyes move from me, to Kai, to me again, and something shifts behind his expression, something that tells me he saw exactly what he thinks he saw.

"I'll... uh..." He clears his throat. "I'll tell Coach you're coming."

He leaves. The door swings shut behind him.

And I realize, standing there with my heart slamming against my ribs and Kai's hand still curled in the front of my jersey, that whatever happens next, whatever Rohan saw or thinks he saw, my entire carefully built life just cracked straight down the middle.