All Chapters of Hate Should Be A Hockey Term: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

SLOANEMy fingers went numb.The phone slipped from my hand and hit the gym floor with a sharp, ugly crack. The sound cut through the music like a slap—too loud, too final.“Shit,” I whispered, dropping at the same time Ethan did.“I’ve got it,” he said.Our hands reached for the phone together. Our fingers brushed first—his knuckles warm against mine. Then my shoulder bumped his. Then I turned my face to apologize at the exact second he turned his.And our mouths touched.Barely.A soft, accidental brush. Not a kiss. Not really.Just one impossible second of contact that should have meant nothing.Except Ethan froze.So did I.The music kept pulsing. Bodies swayed around us. Lights spun slowly over the polished floor. But all I could feel was the sudden, electric stillness between us. Ethan’s breath caught. Mine disappeared entirely. We were crouched too close, his face inches from mine, my phone lying forgotten between our hands with Riley’s message still glowing on the screen.**Ch

SLOANE**CHASE: Parking lot. Now.**For a split second, the words blurred on the screen while the Winter Formal unraveled behind me.Ava sat slumped by the refreshment table, napkins pressed to her bleeding hand, her face ghostly under the gym lights. Ethan hovered over her, suit jacket shoved to his elbows, guilt and panic etched across his features as a chaperone tried to coax her into a chair. Nora was sobbing. Priya spoke in low, steady tones to a teacher. Leah stood frozen with her phone out. Jake looked ready to physically block the rest of the school from getting closer.Then Riley was beside me, fingers brushing my elbow. “Sloane?”I locked my phone so fast my thumb slipped. “Yeah?”Her eyes narrowed. Riley had always been terrifyingly good at seeing through me. “What was that?”“Nothing.”“That was not a *nothing* face.”“I need air,” I blurted. It was the first excuse my brain could grab. “I’m fine. Just… stay with Ava. I’ll be right back.”“Sloane—”“I’m not leaving.” The l

SLOANEI didn’t sleep.How could I? He was six feet away in the other twin bed, radiating silence like a force field. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that text message. The girl. The breasts. *Waiting for Daddy.* Every time I opened them, I saw the back of his head, the rigid line of his shoulders, the way he’d positioned himself as far from me as the tiny room would allow.At some point I must have drifted off, because I woke to gray morning light and the sound of the bathroom door clicking shut.The shower ran. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, counting the seconds until it stopped.The bathroom door opened. Chase emerged in nothing but a towel—a small, white, cabin-issued towel that barely wrapped around his hips—and I forgot how to breathe. Water droplets traced paths down his chest. His shoulders filled the doorframe. His hair was dark and dripping, pushed back from his forehead.His eyes met mine. Flat. Empty.“Bathroom’s free,” he said.Then he turned away, grabbed his cl

CHASEWe walked back in silence.Not the broken kind. Not the kind that pressed against your ribs like a held breath. This was different—looser, warmer, threaded with something I couldn’t name and didn’t want to examine too closely because naming things made them real, and real things could be lost.Sloane went through the side door. I went through the back, lifting the slider on its warped track, easing it shut behind me. We moved through the dark cabin like two people who had done this before—avoiding the same floorboard near the kitchen, skipping the same creaking step near the hallway.Richard’s snore had deepened into something geological. A low, rolling tremor that came through the wall like a sleeping animal. Mom was silent beside him, or at least buried deep enough in sleep that the cabin had absorbed her.We slipped back into the room.I closed the door with my fingertips. The latch clicked—barely, just a whisper of metal.Sloane was already on her bed. Coat off. Boots on the

SLOANEThe first day of second term smelled like fresh floor wax and renewed ambition.Eastlake High in January had that specific energy — everyone freshly showered, temporarily civilized, wearing new Christmas clothes and pretending they hadn’t spent the last two weeks doing things they’d deny under oath. The hallways were louder than usual. Laughter bounced off the marble. Hugs were exchanged between girls who had FaceTimed every day of break but acted like they’d been separated by war.I sat in the senior commons with my coffee — black, scalding, bought from the cart outside the library because the cafeteria version tasted like boiled regret — and pretended to read the syllabus for AP Comparative Government.I was not reading the syllabus for AP Comparative Government.I was thinking about honey.“So,” Riley said, dropping into the chair across from me with the force of a small meteorite. Her bag hit the table. Her iced latte sloshed. Her eyes locked onto mine with the surgical foc