Page 18 of Nowhere to Hide
“Come to Luca’s thing on Saturday,” he says. “I’ll save you a drink.”
“I’ll be there.”
He smiles like I’ve given him something. “Good.”
Mason rattles on about bits of Halden gossip — a tradition, a place to eat, a place I should see — and I’m nodding and laughing and being exactly who I came here to be. But it’s not the real laugh, the one Rowan got from me twice now.
It’s the other one. The one I packed in my suitcase in August.
four
ROWAN
Mason’s armis along the back of her chair, and I watch her lean toward it.
Seb steals another sip of my coffee. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh.” He glances across the table at Mason and Sloane. “Sure.”
I know what my face did, and it won’t be happening again.
I drink what’s left of my coffee as the others talk on, only looking at Sloane once, just as Mason says something and she laughs. But it’s the same polished laugh she’s been running since he sat down, not the one from the courtyard. Then I turn away because lingering on them would be weird, and if I’m here, I can’tnotlook.
Which means it’s time to go.
I’ve got other stuff to do, anyway, I tell myself.
At the top of the list is a shoulder that needs ice. But there are also texts to reply to, an early lift in the weight room, no doubt I’ll need to catch Theo to see if Mason taking his seat has turned into something he’ll carry for days.
“Heading out,” I say.
“Boo,” Luca says.
I push back from the table, pull a twenty from my wallet, and tuck it under my mug. Then I head for the door, clapping Seb on the shoulder on my way past and telling Luca his wreaths are going to look great. He flips me off, pleased.
I don’t look at Sloane and Mason.
As I head out and start walking, the campus is mostly quiet now, its post-game energy scattered into house parties and dorm rooms. The path is empty except for a couple holding hands near the library steps, and a handful of people seated outside the cafés and restaurants.
Then I cross the courtyard, and that moment comes back.
Her crouching on the brick, laughing at her own disaster for a full second before she caught it and tucked it back in. That’s the part that stayed with me: the practiced face cracking, and seeing the girl underneath before she locked it down.
My apartment is off-campus, at Ridgeview, ten minutes from Ironwood House and all its hockey share-house noise. I moved in halfway through last semester, and haven’t really regretted the choice, because it’s always dark and quiet when I get in.
Tonight is no exception.
I kick off my shoes at the door and line them up beside the other pairs before heading to the freezer for an ice pack. It’s the shoulder I put into a Briarhaven kid in the first period — the hit Sloane stood up for — and it gets fifteen minutes of treatment while I sit on the edge of my bed, waiting it out like a kid at a clinic.
When I’m done, I set the alarm. Five-thirty, to get me to the gym by six.
I last about forty minutes in bed before I decide sleep is going to stay elusive. But even though my mind keeps circling back to Sloane, I tell myself it’s the shoulder and the other things I need to do, because at least they’re problems I know how to handle.
I get up, pull on sweats, and go to the kitchen. The counters are clean, but I run the sponge over them anyway. As I do, my legs feel like concrete from the knees down, the post-game ache finally hitting me, but that’s nothing new.
I rinse the sponge between sections of the counter and keep going, but I can’t escape thoughts of her. The way she laughed in the courtyard, loud and real. Then the café, where she needled me and we volleyed — quick, dry, the easiest thing I’d done all week — and then the real laugh escaped again before she could catch it.
