CHAPTER 25
Jul 10, 2025
LIAM’S POV
I was walking back from the dining hall when I saw them. Kate and Nate, standing outside the tennis courts, and she was in his arms. Again.
The sight hit me like a punch to the gut, knocking the air from my lungs and making my vision blur with something that felt dangerously close to rage.
After everything I’d told her yesterday, after baring my soul and confessing feelings I’d been carrying for years, here she was running straight back to my brother.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, my hands clenching into fists at my sides.
They looked comfortable together, natural in a way that Kate and I had never managed to be.
Nate’s arms were wrapped around her protectively, her face buried against his shoulder, and they were swaying slightly like they were sharing some private moment that I had no right to witness.
But I couldn’t look away. I stood there like a masochist, watching the girl I’d just confessed my love to seek comfort in my brother’s arms, and felt something inside my chest crack wide open.
“This is exactly what you deserve,” I told myself, backing away before they could see me. “You treated her like shit for months, and now she’s choosing the brother who was actually kind to her. What did you expect?”
But knowing I deserved it didn’t make it hurt any less. If anything, it made the pain worse, because I couldn’t even be angry at Kate for making the smart choice. Nate was the better man. He always had been.
I turned and walked away quickly, needing to put distance between myself and the scene that was playing out like my worst nightmare come to life.
My feet carried me automatically toward the athletic complex, toward the one place where I could lose myself completely and forget about everything that was tearing me apart.
The hockey rink was mostly empty when I arrived, just a few guys doing individual practice drills. I grabbed my gear from my locker and laced up my skates with shaking hands, my mind still replaying the image of Kate in Nate’s arms.
“Carter!” Coach Williams called out as I hit the ice. “You’re early for practice.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, which was true enough. I’d been lying awake all night, replaying every moment of yesterday’s conversation with Kate, analyzing every word and expression for signs that she might actually return my feelings.
“Well, since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful,” Coach said, blowing his whistle to get the attention of the other players on the ice. “We’re running scrimmage drills. Carter, you’re on the blue team.”
For the next hour, I threw myself into practice with an intensity that bordered on violence. Every pass was harder than necessary, every check was delivered with maximum force, every shot was fired like I was trying to put the puck through the back of the net.
“Jesus, Carter,” Tyler panted during a brief water break. “What crawled up your ass and died? You’re playing like you’re trying to kill someone.”
“Maybe I am,” I muttered, taking a long drink from my water bottle.
“Well, direct that energy toward the other team during the actual game,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Not toward your own teammates.”
But I couldn’t dial it back. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Kate and Nate together, saw the way she’d sought comfort from him instead of me, saw the proof that my confession had meant nothing to her.
The rage and hurt were eating me alive from the inside, and the only way to keep from completely losing my mind was to channel it all into the game.
“Alright, boys,” Coach called out as more players arrived for official practice. “Let’s run some power play drills. Blue team, you’re short-handed. Red team, make it count.”
The scrimmage that followed was more intense than anything we’d run all season. I was everywhere on the ice, forechecking aggressively, backchecking like my life depended on it, taking shots from impossible angles and somehow making them work.
“Holy shit, Carter,” Jake Morrison said after I scored my third goal of the scrimmage. “Where is this coming from? You’re playing like a man possessed.”
“Just focused,” I said, but my voice came out rougher than I intended.
“Focused on what? Decapitating someone?” Marcus called out from the goal. “That last shot nearly took my head off.”
“Then keep your head up,” I shot back, skating to center ice for the next face-off.
But even as my scoring was improving, so was my recklessness. I was taking hits I should have avoided, throwing my body into checks that left me just as battered as my opponents, fighting for loose pucks in scrums that turned into near-brawls.
“Carter, what the hell are you doing out there?” Coach Williams shouted after I got into a shoving match with Tommy Rodriguez over a disputed call. “This is practice, not the Stanley Cup finals!”
“Sorry, Coach,” I said, backing away from Tommy with my hands raised. But I wasn’t sorry.
The anger felt good, the physical contact felt necessary, and the pain was a welcome distraction from the emotional agony that was threatening to consume me.
“You need to dial it back,” Tyler said quietly as we lined up for another face-off. “You’re playing like you have nothing to lose.”
“Maybe I don’t,” I replied, which was closer to the truth than I wanted to admit.
The practice continued, and so did my increasingly dangerous play. I was skating faster than I should have been, taking chances that could have resulted in serious injury, playing with a complete disregard for my own safety that was starting to worry my teammates.
“Liam,” Nate said during another water break, appearing at my side with concern written all over his face. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said without looking at him, focusing instead on retaping my stick with unnecessary precision.
“There’s obviously something going on with you,” he pressed. “You’re playing like—”
“Like what?” I interrupted, finally meeting his eyes. “Like I give a shit about winning?”
“I know you told Kate how you feel about her,” he said quietly. “And I know she’s confused about what she wants.”
“Is she?” I asked bitterly. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like she’s made her choice pretty clearly.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you two together earlier,” I said, the words coming out harsher than I intended. “Outside the tennis courts. She looked real comfortable in your arms.”
Nate was quiet for a moment, processing what I’d said. “Liam, that wasn’t what you think it was. She came to apologize, to try to salvage our friendship. I was comforting her because she’s confused and hurting, not because we’re getting back together.”
“Right,” I said sarcastically. “Just like you were ‘comforting’ her when you declared your relationship was real.”
“Time’s up!” Coach Williams called out before I could respond. “Let’s run one more scrimmage, full contact this time. I want to see some real hockey out there.”
As we lined up for the final drill of practice, I could feel Nate’s eyes on me, could sense his concern even though we were on opposite teams for this scrimmage.
But I pushed his words out of my mind, focusing instead on the rage and hurt that were driving me to play harder than I’d ever played before.
The puck dropped, and I won the face-off cleanly, sending it back to our defenseman before charging toward the net.
I could see the play developing in front of me, could sense the opportunity for another goal, but I was also aware of Tommy Rodriguez lining up for a massive hit.
“Carter, watch out!” someone shouted, but I was beyond caring about self-preservation.
I reached for the rebound that was coming off Marcus’s pads, stretching my body toward the goal, when Tommy’s shoulder connected with my head with the force of a freight train.
The impact was devastating. One moment I was focused on scoring, and the next I was flying through the air, my helmet spinning away as I crashed into the ice with a sickening sound that echoed through the arena.
The world went silent for a moment, then exploded into a cacophony of voices and skate blades scraping against ice. I could hear people calling my name, could feel the cold of the rink against my cheek, but everything seemed distant and muffled, like I was listening through water.
“Liam! Liam, can you hear me?” Coach Williams’s voice cut through the fog in my head.
I tried to respond, tried to tell him I was fine, but my mouth wouldn’t work properly. My head felt like it was splitting open, and there was a strange ringing in my ears that was getting louder by the second.
“Don’t move him,” someone else said – maybe our team doctor. “He took a hard hit to the head. We need to keep him still until the paramedics get here.”
Paramedics. That sounded serious. I wanted to tell them they were overreacting, that I just needed a minute to shake it off, but the darkness was creeping in around the edges of my vision.
“Jesus Christ, Liam, I’m so sorry,” Tommy’s voice was thick with guilt and panic. “I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. The angle was wrong, and you were already falling, and—”
“It’s not your fault,” I tried to say, but I wasn’t sure if the words actually came out.
“Everybody back up, give him some space,” Coach commanded. “Where’s that ambulance?”
Ambulance. The word echoed in my head as the darkness continued to close in. This was not how I’d planned for practice to end. This was not how I’d planned to deal with my feelings about Kate.
The last thing I heard before everything went black was Nate’s voice, closer than the others, filled with genuine fear.
“Liam, stay with us, okay? Stay awake. We’re going to get you help.”
But the darkness was too strong, pulling me under despite his pleas. As consciousness slipped away, my last coherent thought was that maybe this was exactly what I deserved for being too much of a coward to fight for what I wanted instead of fighting against it.
