Page 117 of Oh, Puck!
"Beck!Beck, wait—"
He didn't wait. He didn't even slow down. He walked straight to Mason's car with his shoulders locked, and when I grabbed his arm he shook me off like I was a stranger.
"Don't," was all he said.
My little brother, the loudest human being I have ever known, the kid who narrates every spoonful of his own breakfast… gave me one single word and then put his headphones in.
Behind me, somewhere back in all those lights, Josie was standing in the wreckage of the thing she built, and I couldn't be in two places at once.
I had to choose. And I hated myself for every step I took away from her.
That was seventeen hours ago.
Seventeen hours, and I still haven't fixed a goddamn thing.
I can hear every decibel often thousandpeople through the locker room walls. The whole arena is sold out. The thing Josie bled for her entire life is roaring above our heads like an ocean that finally decided to show up.
But in here? Inside this locker room?
It's pure silence.
Tonight should be a celebration.
The Bear Cave is louder than I've ever heard it, but instead of celebrating, I feel like I'm at a goddamn funeral.
Beck still won't speak to me.
He hasn't evenlookedat me since last night. Even on the drive home from the boardwalk, he sat in the back of Mason's Audi with his headphones in and his hood up like a kid being driven home from a funeral. We got back to the mansion, and he just walked straight past Diego's outstretched arms and shut his door without a sound.
Beck Morrison has gone silent. And it's the most terrifying fucking thing I've ever witnessed.
And Josie.
Fuck.Josie.
I haven't spoken to her since the boardwalk went silent and Rose stood there apologizing for Josie's world falling apart before our very eyes.
My confession. Her scandal. Both of us gutted on the same broadcast, and neither of us with a single second to hold the other one together since.
I swallow down some water in my stall, nervous energy bubbling all through my body. My knee won't stop bouncing up and down, because I know, right now, Josie is somewhere up in that building with her mother sitting beside her while the whole world whispers about the hockey scandal blowing up every news center in the country.
Fuck.
I pull my chest protector over my head and my eyes drift to Beck's stall. He's taping his stick over and over again, wrapping it so tight the blade's going to suffocate.
Mason catches my eye from beside him. He gives me the smallest shake of his head.What the hell do we do?He's been trying to bridge his brothers together all morning. He made Beck's favorite breakfast and left it outside his door like an offering to an angry god.
It's probably still sitting there.
Screw it. Enough's enough.
I cross the room and plant myself in front of my little brother's stall, folding my arms over my chest and glaring down at him.
"Beck. Come on, let's talk it out."
He keeps taping his stick.
"Beck. Look at me."
