All Chapters of Offside with the hockey bad boy: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Ava’s pov I made it to Hargrove Hall eleven minutes late, locked myself in the third stall of the second-floor bathroom, and stayed there until my hands stopped shaking.They took longer than I wanted.You have his eyes.I pressed my back against the cold metal door and breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way the school counselor had taught me the winter Ethan came home. I had practiced this moment on the bus. I had practiced a hundred different versions of who? and no, never heard of him, delivered with just the right amount of bored confusion. In none of the rehearsals had Damien Cole looked at me like I was a ghost.In none of them had I felt like one.Ethan used to say I had the worst poker face in Ohio. You lie like a toddler, Ava. Chin up, eyes sideways, voice about two notes too high. He had been right. He was always right, back when he still talked. Back when he was the loud one, the golden one, the boy who burst through the kitchen door every Saturday with

Ava’s pov I didn't have time to run.An arm hooked around my waist, a hand clamped over my mouth, and I was hauled sideways through a door I hadn't known was there. It clicked shut behind me.Darkness. The smell of rubber and tape and old leather. A solid wall of heat against my back, a heartbeat hammering through two layers of cotton."Don't scream," a voice breathed into my hair. "Please."I knew that voice. I went rigid. Then, very slowly, I nodded.Outside, footsteps stopped. The pause stretched so long I could hear water dripping in the showers. Then a locker clanged, the steps retreated, and the heavy outer door groaned open and closed.Silence.The hand left my mouth. The arm around my waist did not, for a full three seconds, let go."You can," I said unsteadily, "let go now."He let go.The closet was the size of a coat rack. Neither of us could move without touching the other, so neither of us moved. A strip of light under the door showed his face in pieces: the line of his

Ava's PovI gave him the phone in the end.Damien read the two messages once, and the rooftop went silent around us. Wind snapped the edge of the blanket. Somewhere below, a car alarm chirped and died.I watched his face. I had spent a year studying that face in photographs, trying to find the lie in it. I had never once seen what I saw now: all the color leaving it at once."Say something," I whispered."Where did you get this?" He asked."It came right now. Same number as the one that texted me after the closet." I hadn't meant to confess that. It tumbled out, and his head snapped up. "There was a photo, Damien. Of us. I should have told you.""They're watching," he said slowly. His eyes swept the dark rooftops, the stairwell door, the empty rows of vents. "They knew exactly when to send it.""Where were you?" I asked. "The night it happened."He closed his eyes.For one wild second I thought he might say it, whatever it was. That the thing under his silence might finally crack open

I don't remember deciding to run.I remember Priya's voice saying my name. I remember grabbing my coat, my keys, and the small bag I kept packed under the bed. I remember stopping on the stairwell landing with my phone in my hand and a single name glowing on the screen.I called Damien before I could talk myself out of it.He answered on the first ring. "What's wrong?""Ethan's missing," I said. My voice shook so hard I barely recognized it. "He's gone, he walked out of the house, my mom doesn't know where, and I don't have a car, and the last bus to Dayton left an hour ago, and I don't know who else to...""Where are you?" Damien asked."Maplewood," I answered."Stay there." The line already sounded like wind. "Four minutes."He made it in three. His black truck jumped the curb in front of Maplewood Hall, and he leaned across the seat and threw the passenger door open. I climbed in. He didn't ask a single question until we were on the highway, taillights bleeding red into the dark."

There are three kinds of trouble. The kind you see coming, the kind you walk into, and the kind that gets posted online while you're asleep.I woke up on the couch in my mother's living room with a blanket over me, the sun in my eyes, and nineteen missed calls.Priya. Priya. Priya. The Courier. Priya. An unknown number. Priya.I stared at the screen. Then my phone buzzed again, and a text from Priya filled the display.Ava. Call me NOW. Don't read anything before you call me.I read everything.The account was called @WolfWatch, an anonymous Westbridge gossip page with eleven thousand followers. The photo had been posted at 3:12 a.m. It was grainy, shot from a distance with a telephoto lens: a girl in a blanket and a boy with a paper cup on a hotel rooftop, her fingers curled into his jacket, his hand at her jaw. Their foreheads touched. Even in the pixels, you could see what it was.The caption said:WESTBRIDGE'S NEW HOCKEY REPORTER HAS FOUND A SOURCE. WHO KNEW "FULL ACCESS" MEANT TH