Page 60 of Nowhere to Hide
“No idea,” Luca admitted. “But hope is a beautiful thing named Theo, and it’s his first time cooking for everyone.”
Theo has taken to calling us campus royalty, which Sloane hates and I pretend to hate but don’t entirely mind. Seb has said only a few things at all, mostly positive, which from Seb is about as effusive as he gets.
And it’s not just the hockey guys.
Ivy has inserted herself into every interaction with the energy of a UN observer monitoring a fragile peace accord. She’s madeevery excuse to be around us at all times, right up until I drew a line at her sleeping on my couch.
I’m lacing my left skate, half-smiling at something Theo said about my hair looking different — “Is this a girlfriend haircut? Did she do this to you?” — when Gavin walks into the room.
That’s the first thing wrong.
Gavin hasn’t been early in months. He’s become the captain who slides in three minutes before the coach, usually with a coffee. But today he comes in fifteen minutes early and sets his bag down on the bench like it weighs more than it should.
His face is wrong. Not angry, not upset. Just… nothing.
I’m the first to notice. I’m watching Gavin, but he isn’t really watching anyone else. The others, slowly, figure it out. Luca looks up, then Theo — halfway into shin pads, hair in his eyes, freezing mid-motion — and then Niko.
Then Gavin clears his throat, which gets the others.
Seb, already dressed, lifts his head from his half-taped stick. Mason crosses his arms. The rest of the guys drop the practice prep and the shit-talking and lock in on whatever’s about to happen.
“I’m leaving,” he says.
It lands like a bomb.
“I’ve already talked to Coach,” he says. “I’ll catch you guys around.”
That’s it.
He looks at the room for a long second, not at any of us specifically — more at the laundry bin and the stick rack and the rafters, the sort of things he’ll try hard to remember — and then he picks his bag back up and walks out the door.
Nobody breathes.
“Was that a joke?” Luca says, already knowing it wasn’t.
Seb shakes his head once.
“What the fuck.” Theo stands up, then sits, then stands up again. “He’s just — gone?”
Park, a quiet senior two stalls down, pulls out his phone and starts scrolling to see whether the news is already out. Holloway, our freshman goalie, is looking between the room’s three oldest players with the specific expression of somebody who would like an adult to appear.
Eventually, every pair of eyes ends up on me.
Not all at once. Not in any coordinated way. It’s more like the panicking freshmen look to the seniors, the seniors look sideways at each other, and then everybody settles on me. Because Gavin has been wearing the letter, but he hasn’t been carrying the room for a while.
And everyone in here knows who has.
“Okay,” I say. “Everyone breathe.”
“Rowan—” Theo starts.
I hold up a hand to cut him off. “Breathe.”
He breathes.
I exhale slowly. “Put the phones away. Nobody posts, nobody texts, nobody calls anyone. We don’t know the full story, and the last thing we need right now is for the story to get out before the coaches have talked to us.”
Phones go down.
