All Chapters of My Hockey Alpha Deadly Secret : Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

Ember's POVI finished the dishes.Every single one of them — not just the ones that had been in the sink when I arrived but the ones that came through from the dining room in the course of the evening, brought by Charlotte with the specific pointed cheerfulness of someone performing domesticity for an audience. I washed them and dried them and put them away and did all of it without going back into the dining room once.When the kitchen was done I went upstairs.I did not say goodnight.I sat on my bed in the dark and held my phone and looked at the screen and thought about what I wanted to do.The left side of my face had settled from heat to the dull persistent ache of something that had happened and was reminding you it had happened. I had looked in the bathroom mirror on the way up. The marks from Rita's fingers were visible — faint now, the first red fading to something that would either bruise or not depending on what the night decided to do with it.I had looked at myself in t

Ember's POVI opened my mouth.Then I closed it.Because Rita was looking at me with the expression she had when she had decided something and was not going to be moved from it, and I was standing in the kitchen in the early morning with gardening gloves still on the counter and tea going cold in my cup, and I thought about the argument I was about to have.The argument where I explained that I was stronger than I used to be. That something had changed in my body over the past several months. That I had moved those rocks the same way I had moved the wardrobe at school and the furniture in my room and Knox off the bed that afternoon with one push.I looked at Rita.I thought about how that argument would go."You are right," I said.Rita blinked."You are right that ordinarily I could not move those rocks," I said. "You have a point." I picked up my cup and put it in the sink. "I am going to get ready."I went upstairs.Rita did not call after me. The silence behind me had the quality

Ember's POVKnox apologized before I had fully stopped."I am sorry," he said. "I pushed too hard. I should not have—""No," I said. I pressed the back of my hand against my face. "No, you were right. Everything you said was right and I needed to hear it and the crying is not about that." I took a breath. "The crying has been waiting for a week and you just happened to be the person who was there when it ran out of waiting."He looked at me."That does not make me feel significantly better," he said."It should," I said. "It means I trust you enough to do it in front of you. That is not nothing."He held my gaze for a moment.Then, quietly: "Are you okay? Really.""I will be," I said. "I am not in danger. Rita is not going to do it again because she surprised herself as much as she surprised me." I looked at the water. "She had the expression afterward of someone who had crossed a line she did not plan to cross. She will not go there again.""You are certain," he said."Yes," I said.

Ember's POVThe bus home took longer than usual.Saturday traffic, the driver had said when someone asked at the third stop. I sat in my seat and watched the streets go past and held onto the morning — the bench, the ducks, the sketch pad, the plan for Monday. Knox had walked me to the stop and stood there until the bus pulled away and I had watched him get smaller through the back window and felt the specific reluctance of a person leaving somewhere they would rather have stayed.The house looked quiet when I came up the street.Rita's car was not in the driveway.I stood at the gate for a moment and registered the absence of it. Out, then. Shopping or visiting or wherever Rita went on Saturday afternoons when there was no performance of domestic management required. The house was empty.I let myself in.The ground floor was still. The kitchen — clean from this morning, the work I had done before anyone was awake, the surfaces clear. The living room — Rita's things arranged on the co

Ember's POVThe bus came in eight minutes exactly.I got on and found a seat near the window and watched the streets go past and Knox stayed on the phone for the first few minutes, not talking, just there — the specific presence of someone who had decided that silence on the line was better than no line at all.Then he said, "Tell me what happened."I told him.All of it. Coming home to an empty house. The sounds from upstairs. Opening the door. Charlotte and Ethan on my bed. Ethan's suggestion that I stay, delivered with the flat certainty of someone who had decided that line was available to him. His hand on my wrist. The twist and the stairs and the street.I said it in the specific flat voice I used when I was reporting something I had decided not to feel until later.Knox did not interrupt.When I finished there was a silence that lasted approximately four seconds."He grabbed your wrist," Knox said."Yes," I said."After what he said.""Yes.""And you got out," he said."Yes," I