1
Caleb
By the time Blake knocks on my apartment door for the third time, I'm already running on fumes.
"Dawson!" he yells, his voice muffled by the heavy oak. "If you make me late because you're in there pouting, I'm telling Coach you cried during film this morning."
I drag a hand over my face, the stubble along my jaw a rough reminder that shaving didn't make it onto this morning's list. For a second, I just stare at the microwave clock.
6:42 p.m.
I've got maybe four minutes before Owen gets out of the shower, realizes I'm not in the kitchen anymore, and starts yelling my name like the building is collapsing.
"Caleb!" he shouts from down the hall, right on cue. "Did you put my hoodie in the dryer?"
I close my eyes and press two fingers against the dull throb behind my temple.
"Yeah."
"What?"
"Yes, Owen."
Another knock rattles the door.
I yank it open.
Blake is leaning against the frame with his truck keys looped around one finger and a grin already in place. He takes one look at me and laughs.
"Wow. You somehow look worse than I thought you would."
"You're so fucking annoying."
"And yet, here you are." He pushes past me without waiting for an invitation. "Still coming out with me."
It isn't a question.
I shut the door behind him and glance automatically down the hallway.
The apartment is clean in the rushed, surface-level way it always is when I'm trying to be a parent, student, and athlete in the same twenty-four hours. There's a cereal bowl in the sink, one of Owen's school binders spread open on the counter beside my stats notes, and a pair of sneakers kicked off beside the couch. Size nine now, which seems impossible considering I swear I bought him new shoes three months ago. My practice bag is still by the door exactly where I dropped it when I came home.
Blake notices.
He notices everything. He just pretends he doesn't because paying too much attention would interfere with the carefree asshole persona he's spent years perfecting.
"You know," he says, surveying the room, "for a guy who claims he never has time to breathe, this place is weirdly not disgusting."
"That's because I cleaned."
"Obviously. For me?"
"For the thirteen-year-old who has to live here."
"Aw." Blake presses a hand to his chest. "Look at you. Practically domestic."
I ignore him and cross back into the kitchen. My phone lights up on the counter with a reminder I set this morning.
Sign Owen's field trip form.
Shit.
I pull the paper from beneath one of his notebooks, scrawl my signature across the bottom, and leave it where he'll see it before school.
"This," Blake says behind me, some of the teasing disappearing from his voice, "is exactly why you need to come out tonight, C."
"No." I set the pen down. "This is exactly why I shouldn't."
Before he can argue, Owen comes flying out of the hallway in wrinkled athletic shorts, his damp hair sticking up in a dozen different directions. He stops when he sees Blake and immediately narrows his eyes.
"You're early."
"Good to see you too, menace." Blake grins.
Owen ignores him and looks at me. "My hoodie."
"In the dryer."
"Did you actually switch it over?"
"Yes, Owen."
He studies me like he's searching for some tell that'll prove I'm lying.
At thirteen, he's in that awkward, beautiful stage where he somehow looks older and younger every time I blink. He's getting too tall, his voice occasionally does things neither of us acknowledges, and the sarcasm gets worse by the day. But there's still too much kid in his face. Still enough of the little boy I remember that sometimes I look at him and wonder where the hell the years went.
Apparently deciding I'm telling the truth, he mutters, "Fine," and heads toward the laundry.
"He gets meaner every time I see him," Blake whispers.
"He learns from experience."
"He learns from you."
I glance at the clock again.
6:45.
I shouldn't go.
I have a paper due Monday that I've barely started. Practice is at eight tomorrow morning. And every time I step onto the ice lately, the possibility of what comes after this season feels less like something I've spent my entire life working toward and more like a weight strapped to my back.
Scouts are watching.
Coach knows they're watching.
My teammates know they're watching.
And I'm painfully fucking aware they're watching.
I'm still producing. Still playing well. Nobody looking at my numbers would think anything was wrong.
But I feel it.
I'm tight.
Half a second late on a read because I'm thinking about where the puck should go instead of knowing. Holding on to it a beat too long. Carrying every mistake into the next shift when I used to forget them the second my skates hit the bench.
Thinking instead of reacting.
You're pressing, Dawson.
Coach has said it more than once.
Then there's the other thing everyone seems to think has a simple solution.
You need sleep, Caleb.
As if I haven't fucking tried.
I grab my wallet from the counter and shove it into my pocket. "What's the plan? You said Owen is good?" Blake arches an eyebrow at me, clearly skeptical of me leaving a thirteen-year-old at home by himself for a few hours.
From the hallway, Owen calls, "I'm thirteen, not five."
"Debatable!" Blake yells back.
A sock flies out of the hallway and smacks him directly in the shoulder.
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Blake picks up the sock and stares toward the hallway. "See? Mean."
"You deserved it."
"I didn't even do anything."
"Existing counts."
Owen reappears a few seconds later wearing the hoodie in question, his damp hair still a mess. He drops into the armchair and reaches for the controller sitting on the side table.
"I'll be back before it gets too late," I tell him.
"Okay."
"Phone on." He looks up at me. "Charged."
"You act like I'm the one who forgets to plug it in." He rolls his eyes. "That happened to you."
"One time."
"One time is all it takes for the house to burn down." His dry smirk looks far too much like mine.
I point at him. "Lock the door after us. Don't open it for anyone."
"Caleb." He groans. "I know."
I know he knows.
That doesn't stop me from waiting until I hear the lock click behind us.
Something in my chest loosens anyway.
Just enough.
The elevator ride down is quiet until Blake leans back against the mirrored wall and studies me.
"You're doing too much again."
I glance at him. "What?"
"Thinking."
"I don't do it for fun, Blake."
"I know." The elevator doors slide open, and he pushes away from the wall. "That's why we're going."
The late-fall air hits me the second we step outside, cold enough to wake me up better than the coffee I drank four hours ago. I shove my hands into my pockets and follow Blake toward his truck.
Twenty minutes later, we pull onto a side street crowded with student housing. Cars are wedged bumper-to-bumper along both curbs, and groups of people move between houses with their jackets pulled tight against the cold. Somewhere nearby, someone has a fire going. Woodsmoke hangs in the air beneath the sharper smell of beer.
Music leaks through the walls of the house Blake leads me toward, the bass heavy enough that I can feel it beneath my shoes before we even reach the porch.
I already regret coming.
"This better be worth it," I tell him.
"It will be."
"You said that last time."
"And you had fun."
"I left after forty minutes."
He laughs and pulls open the door.
Warm air hits me first, followed immediately by the smell of liquor, and too many people packed into a house that was definitely not built for this many bodies.
The place is crowded enough that I instinctively hang half a step behind Blake as we move farther inside, my attention sweeping over the room without me really thinking about it. Faces. Exits. Layout.
Old habits.
I don't recognize half the people here, which isn't surprising. Between hockey, classes, and Owen, my social life has mostly narrowed to my teammates and whoever happens to be around them.
Blake, apparently, has no such problem.
He lifts his chin toward the kitchen.
"There."
I follow his line of sight.
Three girls stand near the counter.
A blonde. A redhead. And a brunette turned partly away from us.
Blake starts moving again, but I don't.
There's nothing remarkable about the first glimpse of her. Not really. A soft gray sweater slipping off one shoulder. Chestnut hair falling in loose waves down her back. A plastic cup in one hand while she listens to something the redhead beside her is saying.
Then she laughs.
My body locks before my brain catches up.
It's recognition.
Immediate and physical and so fucking familiar that for half a second, I genuinely think my exhausted brain has finally turned on me.
The shape of her profile.
The tilt of her head.
That laugh.
No.
My stomach drops.
No fucking way.
Blake keeps walking, completely oblivious.
"Okay," he mutters. "Don't let me look stupid."
I barely hear him.
My feet have stopped moving.
Then the brunette looks up.
The room doesn't just go quiet.
For one impossible second, it ceases to exist.
The bass vibrating through the floor disappears. The conversations around me blur into nothing. My pulse slams once against my ribs, hard enough to hurt.
Grace.
Three and a half years, and I still know her instantly.
She looks different.
Not so different that I could ever mistake her for someone else, but enough that the years between then and now suddenly feel real. There's something softer about her face and something steadier in the way she holds herself. Her hazel eyes are the same, but there's a guard behind them that wasn't there when we were younger.
She's still tiny. Still small enough that some stupid, buried part of my brain remembers her complaining when I put things on the top shelf just to piss her off.
But she isn't the girl I remember.
Not exactly.
She's a woman now.
And somehow, impossibly, she's even prettier.
The realization hits me like a cross-check to the throat.
"Grace," Blake says beside me.
His voice sounds like it's coming from underwater.
Her eyes flick toward him.
Then they find me.
She freezes.
It only lasts a heartbeat.
Maybe less.
But I see it.
The shock that flashes across her face. The way her lips part slightly. The tiny hitch in her shoulders like her body reacts before she can stop it.
Then she pulls herself together.
"Hey," she says.
Her voice is smooth enough that Blake probably doesn't hear anything wrong with it.
I do.
I hear the tension underneath it.
Blake grins, completely unaware of the landmine he's just stepped on. "Told you I'd make it. This is Caleb." He gestures toward me before looking back at her. "And Caleb, this is Grace."
I nearly laugh.
The sound catches somewhere in my throat instead, bitter and jagged.
I drag my tongue over my teeth and keep my eyes on hers.
"Yeah," I say, my voice rougher than I intended. "I know Grace."
The air around us changes.
The girls beside her go quiet. Blake's grin fades as his gaze moves from Grace to me and back again.
"You two know each other?"
Grace's fingers tighten around her plastic cup.
I notice because I used to notice everything about her.
Apparently, I still do.
"Something like that," I mutter.
Her eyes snap to mine.
And standing there, looking at the girl I haven't seen in three and a half years, I know two things with absolute certainty.
One: I should have stayed home with Owen.
And two: whatever I spent the last three and a half years convincing myself I'd buried is standing ten feet away from me, looking back like she remembers every single thing I tried to forget.
