Page 16 of The Players We Hate
The second I climbed out of bed, the air felt colder. Sharper. My muscles ached, but not from practice. It was a different kind of sore, a tension wound tight inside me that wouldn’t ease.
I padded across the hardwood floor, the memory of her voice curling around me like smoke.
Promise me you’ll keep this between us.
That whisper played on a loop in my head, quiet but cutting.
Most girls wanted to be seen. Wanted people to know they had been with me. Like sleeping with the guy wearing the “C” was some kind of prize.
But Wren?
She hadn’t even stuck around. And I hated how much that still ate at me.
It wasn’t my ego. Not really.
When her name left Alisa’s mouth, all I had seen was Tatum. Sitting at our old kitchen table with hollowed eyes and trembling hands, pretending she wasn’t shattered. I remembered how she tensed with each buzz of her phone, how her eyes settled on me, expecting me to fix it. And I tried. I had been trying my whole damn life.
She had been barely old enough to lose her first tooth when our dad looked me dead in the eye and told me I was the man of the house. Said it was my job to protect them.Then he left. Disappeared like a coward and dumped all that weight onto a kid who didn’t even know how to tie a tie or fix a busted lock.
So I held it together the best I could. I pushed myself harder on the ice, wanting to be stronger, sharper, more disciplined. My whole life had been about looking out for the people I loved, even when it meant losing parts of myself along the way.
I grabbed a towel and headed into the bathroom, hoping a shower would clear my head. It didn’t.
The moment the spray hit my skin, everything I had tried to bury flooded right back in. Wren beneath me, her breath catching, the taste of her on my tongue as she fell apart.
I braced both hands against the tile, eyes shut, jaw clenched.
I couldn’t stop seeing her. Couldn’t stop feeling her.
She was everywhere—in every breath, every pulse, every aching second. I tried to fight it, but I was already gone.
My body moved on instinct, and I gave in to the storm she left behind. It was fast, desperate, messy, and when it was over, I pressed my forehead to the wall, steam curling around me as I struggled to catch my breath.
She had known.
She had to have known.
There was no way she didn’t know what her brother had done to Tatum. No way she could look me in the eye without feeling the weight of it between us. And still, she had never said a word.
Maybe that was what hit hardest. Not what we did, but that she saw me—every rough edge, every scar—and didn’t back down.
Or perhaps that was why I was only a secret to her. Something reckless and forgettable. Something she could tuck away in a box and pretend never happened.
Just like I was trying and failing to do right now.
She didn’t want word getting back to her brother any more than I wanted Tatum finding out.
The worst part? I wasn’t sure I would choose differently if I could do it all again.
And deep down, twisted and dark as it was… I wanted Wells to find out.
I wanted him to know exactly what I had done. I wanted him to wonder if I would ruin his sister the way he had ruined mine. Let him sweat. Let him question if I was capable of doing to her what he had done to Tatum.
I dried off fast, dragging on sweats and a hoodie without bothering to look in the mirror.
But when I passed the foggy glass, I stopped. Water dripped from my hair, my reflection hazy. I swiped a hand across the surface, and when my face came into view, I hated what I saw.
Not because I felt guilty, but because I didn’t.
