Page 48 of Puck Wild
My digital watch glowed 11:24 PM from the nightstand, same stupid green numbers I'd been staring at since I was fifteen.
I replayed our fight like game footage, freezing the frame at each moment where I could have chosen differently. I saw the hurt in Jake's eyes when I snapped about his chaos, how his shoulders had tensed when he said project. The brutal stillness when I insisted I was the first on the team to believe in him.
I didn't fight to win. I fought to maintain the illusion that I could predict and control every variable in my life, including Jake Riley.
Especially Jake Riley.
I reached out for the watch. It was ten years old, with a digital display slightly cracked on the left side where I'd caught it against a locker door during a particularly brutal practice. I'd worn it through three different foster placements, two junior teams, and every apartment I'd lived in since aging out of the system.
It was the only thing in my life over the past decade that had been the same for longer than two years.
I stared at water stain number nine—shaped like a hockey stick if you squinted—and admitted something I'd avoided thinking since Jake moved in:
He terrified me.
It wasn't his unpredictability, and it wasn't his habit of turning every moment into performance art. It was how he looked at me, not the careful teammate assessment or polite roommate acknowledgment—It made me want things.
Dangerous things. Messy things. Things I couldn't file under any heading in my spreadsheets.
I wanted to know what his hair felt like when I gripped it with my fingers. I wanted to hear him laugh when we shared stories. I wanted to watch him move through our kitchen in the morning, singing off-key to whatever pop song he had stuck in his head, and not need to pretend I was updating my practice schedule.
I wanted him to stay.
My breath hitched. All my careful distance, labeled containers, and color-coded systems—none of it was about organization. It was about building walls high enough that it wouldn't leave a scar when people left.
I moved to the living room shortly after midnight, too restless to stay in bed, too wired to pretend sleep was possible. The couch faced away from the door, but I heard every sound: Jake's quiet curse when he stumbled slightly in the entryway, and the scrape of his key against the lock before finding its groove.
He started to walk toward the hallway, and then he froze. He'd spotted me and navigated through the dim light to approach the couch.
He stood there for a long moment, probably letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. A thin slice of yellow from the night lightI'd installed in the kitchen cut across the hardwood and died somewhere near my feet.
"You're late." My voice was quiet, barely a whisper.
"Fuck. Didn't realize I had a curfew."
"Where were you?"
"Driving." He paused. "Thinking."
"About?"
"Whether you'd still be here when I got back."
He moved closer, and I bit my lip.
"You can sit," I said.
"Can I?"
"It's your couch, too."
The cushion dipped as Jake settled beside me, carefully leaving space between us. It wasn't much—maybe six inches—but we weren't touching. He smelled like lake air and something sharper underneath. Nervous energy, maybe.
"Are you still mad?" he asked.
"No, not at you."
"At yourself, then?"
