Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

The thought of training privately with Kai hadn’t even finished settling in my mind when a teammate appeared at my locker.“You have a visitor,” he said. “Waiting room.”I looked up slowly. “A visitor?”He shrugged and walked away.I stood there for a moment with my stick halfway into the locker. A visitor. For Noah. I turned the word over carefully. Who would come here to see Noah. Who even knew he was supposed to be here. I ran through the possibilities quickly and none of them felt safe and yet I had no choice but to go and find out.I walked to the waiting room slowly. Praying with every step that whoever was behind that door was not going to make my life considerably more complicated than it already was.I pushed the door open and froze completely.It was a girl.Not just any girl. I recognized her face immediately from the photos I had found on Noah’s Instagram. The girl. His girl. The one Liam had mentioned at the pool hall. The one I had promised to call and never called becau

I stood outside the restaurant and looked at my reflection in the glass for a long moment.The wig was good. Dark and smooth and sitting naturally on my head. The dress was simple but it fit well. I had spent the better part of three days searching online, reading reviews, returning things that didn’t work, starting over. It had to be right. It had to be Ava. Not a costume. Not a performance. Just me, the way I actually was when nobody needed me to be someone else.I took one breath and pushed the door open.The restaurant was warm and softly lit and smelled like garlic and something sweet. My eyes found him immediately the way they always did.Liam was already there. Sitting at a table near the window, his jacket on the back of his chair, looking down at his phone with that easy relaxed posture he carried everywhere. He looked up when I came in and his face broke into a genuine smile.“Ava.”“Hey,” I said and sat down across from him and tried to arrange myself naturally in a way tha

The floor was hard and cold and unforgiving in every possible way.I lay on it with my jacket folded under my head as a pillow and stared at the ceiling in the dark and told myself that people had slept in worse conditions than this and survived perfectly fine. My wet bed sat above me like a monument to everything Kai Bennett had cost me today.But the day had been long. Genuinely, thoroughly, completely long in every direction. And eventually tiredness won the argument that comfort had already lost.I slept.++++++I looked exactly as bad as I felt when I sat down in class the next morning. I could tell from the way a few people glanced at me and then looked away without saying anything. I kept my head up and my expression flat and focused on the front of the room and ran on nothing.The teacher looked up from his notes midway through the lecture.“Noah. Kai.” He looked between us. “I have spoken with your coach. Given the intensity of your training schedule going forward I am cancel

I looked at Liam as Kai held Bella’s hand.Around them my teammates were cheering like he had just scored the winning goal of his life. The noise of it pressed against my chest in a way I couldn’t name properly. What was happening. Why was he holding Noah’s ex girlfriend. Was he trying to provoke me into something. Was this all just another one of his moves, calculated and deliberate, designed to get under my skin the way everything he did was designed to get under my skin.It was beyond provoking.I sighed.Liam’s hand came to my shoulder quietly. No big gesture. Just there. He had seen my face and made a decision.“Do you want to stay in my tent?” he asked.I looked at my teammates cheering for Kai. Not one of them glancing in my direction. Like I was invisible. Like I had always been invisible.I nodded and lifted my bag.++++++Liam had a proper room since he was captain. Two beds, enough space to breathe, quiet walls that kept the noise of the camp at a distance. I sat down on th

The mountain air was turning from biting cold to a lethal, bone-deep freeze as the sun dipped behind the jagged peaks. Back at the base camp, the fire was crackling, but the atmosphere was pure ice.Liam’s knuckles were white where they bunched Kai’s jacket. He didn't care about the "Captain" persona anymore; he didn't care about the Eagles' scouts watching. All he saw was the empty space where the person he loved and the person he thought was his best friend should be standing.“I’m going to ask you one more time, Bennett,” Liam hissed, his voice vibrating with a protective rage that made the nearby teammates back away. “You were his partner. You were the last one with him. Where is he?”Kai didn't fight back immediately. He didn't even raise his hands to break Liam’s grip. He just stood there, his face a mask of calculated indifference. He remembered the way "Noah" had looked against that rock shaking, pale, and looking at the heights like they were an executioner's blade."He told