Chapter 3 The Scar That Ruined Me

ETHAN'S POV

"Do you really not remember me?"

I stopped walking. He stopped a half-second later, already turned toward me. Already waiting.

Lie. That was the whole playbook. Lie and keep lying.

"No."

I answered Too fast. Too sharp. The kind of no that answers a different question.

His eyes moved over my face the way they'd moved over the ice all night — unhurried, like he wasn't done looking.

Then he smiled. Not the smirk from the ice. Something smaller. Like he'd caught me and was still deciding what to do with the catch.

"Wrong answer."

He walked on toward the locker room and left me standing right where anyone coming around the corner could see exactly what I looked like.

He knew. He'd known before he ever stepped on the ice. And I'd handed him confirmation in one syllable.

I made my legs work. One step. Then the hallway. Then the door.

Most of the guys had cleared out — a few stragglers pulling on jackets, making plans for Gino's. Asher caught my eye across the room, eyebrows up. I shook my head. Not now.

Ares was at his stall with his back to me, lacing his sneakers like the hallway had never happened.

"Alright, listen up!" Coach Harlan filled the doorway. "Those of you who haven't met him yet—this is Ares Cole. Transfer. Winger. You saw what he did out there tonight, so I don't need to sell you on his game."

A couple of whistles. A stick banged the lockers. Asher called out, "Kid's got a cannon, Coach!"

Ares stood and gave the room a lazy two-finger salute. No speech. No happy to be here. Nothing anyone could quote later.

"I expect you all to make him feel welcome," Coach said. "Cole's got a unique skillset. We're lucky to have him."

Unique skillset. Coach had no idea.

The guys swarmed him — shoulders clapped, questions about his last program, about the shot. He answered easy, smooth, none of what he'd aimed at me in the hallway. He worked the room the way he worked the ice. Nothing wasted. Nothing given away.

Asher landed at my side. "You alright? You look like you saw a ghost."

"I'm fine."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

He put his hands up. "Okay, Cap. Whatever you say." He glanced over at Ares, laughing now at something one of the defensemen said. "He's good, though. Like, annoyingly good. We needed a winger with hands like that."

"Yeah," I said. "Lucky us."

I watched him and built the case for being wrong. The scar was a coincidence. I'd been drunk — the porch, the rain, his mouth like an answer to a question I hadn't known I was asking. Faces got swapped. Could have been anyone.

Could have been.

Then Ares looked at me across the locker room. Two seconds, maybe three. Long enough to take the whole case apart. You know exactly who I am, and I'm not going anywhere.

I looked away first. Again.

He went back to Martinez's story, nodding along, and his eyes kept finding their way back to me. Not staring. Checking. Like I was a puck he meant to steal and he was picking his moment.

Donny showed up beside me with his clipboard. Sixty-three, with the program since before I was born — and whatever Donny knew, the building knew by Friday.

"Lucky you, Captain," he said, not looking up from his inventory. "The transfer's your new roommate."

"What?"

"Family housing's full. Your mom already signed off on it—Coach called her this morning." He squinted at me over his glasses. "He'll be staying in your room. You got that look, Drake."

"What look?"

"Like you just ate bad seafood." He clapped my shoulder and shuffled off toward the equipment cage. "Good luck, kid."

My room. The one door in my life that closed all the way.

And Mom had said yes without asking me.

The house on Maple Street looked the way it always looked — white siding, blue shutters, porch light yellow against the October dark. Mom's car in the driveway. Beside it, a beat-up silver Honda I didn't know.

He was already here.

I sat in the truck with the engine idling, hands on the wheel. Through the kitchen curtains: Mom's silhouette, then a taller one. He was laughing. Her hand came up and patted his shoulder the way she did with all my friends.

She liked him already. Of course she did.

I killed the engine and went in.

Lasagna. Mom's welcome without having to say it. She was pulling garlic bread out of the oven, and Ares was leaning against the counter with a glass of water, standing in my kitchen like he'd lived there for years.

"There he is," Mom said, beaming. "I was just getting to know your new teammate. Ares, this is Ethan. Ethan, Ares."

"We've met," I said.

Ares's eyes glinted. "Briefly."

"Housing called this afternoon," Mom went on, catching none of it. "I told them we'd be happy to help. Lord knows we've got the space." She waved at the house around us — three bedrooms, two baths, too big for the two of us since Dad left. "Besides, it'll be nice having another hockey player in the house. Maybe you can keep Ethan from brooding so much."

"I don't brood."

"You absolutely brood," Mom said, and handed me a plate. "Set the table."

Dinner ran on his answers. Hometown, last program, family — his mother a nurse, his father gone when he was twelve, hockey since he could walk. Respectful, charming, the guest who knew exactly what a mother wanted to hear.

"I transferred a couple times," he said, pushing lasagna around his plate. "Last program wasn't a great fit. But I've got a good feeling about Ridgewood."

Mom smiled. "Well, we're happy to have you. Aren't we, Ethan?"

"Thrilled," I said.

His mouth twitched.

After dinner I led him upstairs. The hallway was narrow — family photos down one wall, my old academic awards down the other, everything Mom never took down. He stopped at a picture of me at fourteen, championship trophy, one front tooth missing.

"Cute," he said.

"Keep walking."

My room sat at the end of the hall. I'd stripped it down over the years — a bed, a desk, a dresser, a closet full of gear. The second bed was already made up against the opposite wall. Fresh sheets. Extra pillow. Mom's work.

Ares dropped his duffel on the mattress and took the room in slow — the Ridgewood banner, the framed jersey from my first season as captain, the window onto the backyard.

"Nice room," he said. "Very minimalist. Very 'I don't spend much time here because I'm too busy being perfect.'"

I dropped my bag by the door. "I wasn't expecting company."

"Clearly." He gestured at the bare walls. "No posters? No photos? You live like a spy, Drake."

"I live like someone who's never here."

He looked up at that. Held it a beat longer than the line deserved. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I bet you don't."

I found things to do with my bag. Unzip. Re-zip. The room had never felt small until it held someone who watched like that — his breathing, the radiator kicking on, every sound with a witness now.

He unpacked quick and efficient, no wasted motion, somebody used to unfamiliar rooms. Shirts into the dresser. Charger by the bed. A paperback with a cracked spine, read soft at the edges — James Baldwin. He set it on the nightstand face-up, the way you leave out the things you've stopped apologizing for.

"I'll take the floor if you want," he said without looking up. "The bed's fine, but I don't want to crowd you."

"The bed's fine."

"Good." He straightened and turned. "Because I wasn't actually going to sleep on the floor. Just wanted to see if you'd make me."

"You're already in my house. Why would the floor be where I draw the line?"

That got a real smile out of him — quick, surprising, like I'd passed a test I hadn't seen coming. "Fair point, Captain."

He pulled off his hoodie and I looked at my desk. The tattoos moved at the edge of my vision, dark lines over muscle, the scar catching the lamplight, and my calculus textbook held nothing at all.

"You can look," he said. "I don't bite."

"That's not what I remember."

The words were out before I could stop them.

Silence.

I turned. He'd gone still, t-shirt halfway over his head. He pulled it down and met my eyes.

"So you do remember."

"That's not what I meant."

"That's exactly what you meant."

I had nothing.

He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, looking up at me. The cocky act was gone. What was left was quieter. Patient. Somebody willing to wait me out, however long it took.

"I'm not going to out you, Ethan. That's not why I'm here."

"Then why are you here?"

He held my eyes a long moment. Then he looked away first — the first time all night.

"Maybe I'll tell you someday," he said. "When you're ready to hear it."

He switched off his lamp. The room went dark except for the backyard floodlight, orange through the blinds. Sheets rustled. His breathing evened out.

"Night, Captain."

I didn't answer. I lay on top of my covers, fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling.

He was ten feet away. Two years building a life with no cracks in it and no witnesses. Nothing anyone could use. It took him one day.

Sleep came slow, and it brought the dream.

Rain. Music thumping through walls. Cheap vodka burning my throat. A porch — no, a basement — no, somewhere dark with a low ceiling and bodies pressed too close. Laughter in the next room. Sweat and spilled beer and something sweet. Mint, maybe.

And a mouth on mine.

I can't see his face. I never can. Just the line of his shoulders, his hands hot on my hips, the way he kisses me like I'm something worth wanting. Not Ethan Drake, captain, golden boy, scholarship kid. Just me. Whoever that is.

His lip splits under my teeth. Copper. He doesn't pull away. He pulls me closer.

"Maybe next summer," he whispers against my mouth.

Then black.

I woke up gasping.

3:47 on the desk clock. Sheets twisted around my legs, skin slick despite the cold air from the vent. Down the hall the old furnace kicked on — the sound I'd fallen asleep to my whole life.

For a second, I forgot he was there.

Then, from across the room: breathing. Slow. Steady. Awake.

I turned my head on the pillow.

Ares lay on his back, hands folded behind his head, face half-lit orange through the blinds.

Already awake. Watching me.

"You talk in your sleep," he said.

Everything I'd said in the dark, and no way to know how much of it had a witness. "What did I say?"

He didn't answer right away. Just kept looking at me through the dark, eyes catching the light, the scar silver on his lip.

"Nothing I didn't already know."