Page 7 of The Players We Hate
I soaked up the feeling and the charge in the air. I let myself believe we might actually go all the way this season. The Frozen Four didn’t feel like a dream anymore. It could finally be within reach.
But the second I stepped out of the locker room, the high quickly deflated out of me when I saw Wells Perry leaning against the wall dressed in a fuckin’ polo and an overpriced jacket, wearing the same smug look on his punchable face. I guess not much had changed.
I didn’t speak to him. Didn’t even bother looking in his direction. But the second he opened his mouth, the tension shot through me like a check to the ribs.
“You heard from her?” he asked, voice low.
I kept walking. He followed, oblivious to the storm building behind my eyes.
“I’ve been trying to reach her,” he said. “She blocked me.”
Damn fuckin’ right she did.
“Maybe take the fuckin’ hint, then, yeah?”
I walked away without another word, but it stuck with me all night. The way he looked like he was somehow the one who’d been wronged.
I knew exactly what happened.
He leaked those photos. The private ones of him and my sister, Tatum. The ones she never even knew he took. He made her the center of a scandal so ugly she couldn’t show her face in town without someone whispering under their breath about her.
There was no proof it was him. No face in the pictures. No direct tie to Wells. Just enough implication to wreck her life. The shame was enough to make her run.
She left Rixton quickly after it happened. She didn’t say a word, not even to some of her closest friends. She packed what we could fit in a small trailer and left town without a word.
Except to me.
I’d been there beside her through it all. I helped her pack and drove her to Braysen. Got her set up in a house, staying with two of our childhood friends, Beckham and Hayes. She changed her number, deleted her socials off her phone, and started fresh.
Seeing Wells today, acting like he deserved answers and was owed forgiveness, had my fists curling before I even realized it.
If I didn’t have a letter stitched to my chest and scouts tracking my every move, I would’ve put him on the ice myself a long time ago. But I’d worked too hard to get where I was. I wasn’t about to throw this season or my future for a hit that would only satisfy my pride.
Still, his voice echoed in my head as I pushed through the front door of the hockey house, where I lived with my three roommates.
It was packed. Music pounded from the speakers. People filled every room and spilled out onto the lawn. Solo cups in hand, bodies swaying, laughter floating through the air like victory was already ours.
I should be celebrating. Knocking back a few beers and laughing with the guys.
Instead, all I could hear was Wells’s voice, echoing in the back of my mind.
All that before I saw her.
Wren Perry. Wells’s sister.
Only a Perry would walk into my house and pretend she belonged here. She didn’t, not after what her brother did to Tatum.
She stood in the entryway, framed by the glow of string lights and a blur of movement around her. She looked out of place, polished in a way that clashed with the room, yet trying hard to disappear into it. She gripped the bottle of sparkling water, picking at her nail with the other hand, her gaze darting around the room in search of an exit.
Seeing her here, like this was some casual Friday night hangout, pissed me off more than it should.
She didn’t look anything like Wells, but something in the way she carried herself reminded me of the mold Wells tried to force on Tatum. The version he thought would play well in the media and could win over his family.
The version he could use.
The version she never wanted to be.
Wren didn’t notice I was watching. She had no idea I’d already clocked her. I’d seen her around campus, but I’d never had the chance to really study her. And when I did, I hated the way it stole the breath from my lungs.
