Chapter 5 Don't Flinch Captain

ARES'S POV

I slammed the equipment room door behind me and kept walking, fists clenched the whole time. Couldn’t get Ethan’s words out of my head no matter what.

“It was a mistake,” he’d said. Then he spent the rest of the day acting like he never opened his mouth.

Outside, Midwest air hit me hard. A few fans were still hanging around the players’ exit. I waved, kept moving, didn’t stop for the ones who wanted a piece of the guy who scored tonight.

My Jeep was parked at the far end of the lot. Box of gear in the back, one framed photo I’d never bothered bringing inside. I’d walked out of that house this morning with a bag and a single word he threw at me like it cost him nothing.

I should’ve driven straight back. Instead I pulled into the corner, killed the lights, and sat there under a security lamp with my phone getting warm in my hand.

Ridgewood_July14.mp4. I’d stared at that file name so many times the letters stopped meaning anything.

Shaky camera, cheap string lights, somebody’s basement, a song I still can’t name. The shot swings around—couch edge, red cup on the floor, someone’s legs crossing the frame—and there it is, half-hidden behind the couch: the bag. Navy blue. White wolf. Number 19.

I hit play. Not because I didn’t know what was on it—I know every second—but because Ethan Drake looked me dead in the eye this morning and said no. Some dumb part of me needed proof I hadn’t spent a year chasing a ghost I made up.

It starts mid-kiss. My back to the camera, his face turned just enough to hide. But I knew that mouth. That Ridgewood hoodie. Those hands gripping my shirt like I’d disappear the second he let go. Somebody bumped the guy filming and the phone jerked left. For one frame, maybe two, you can see it clear.

He kissed me first. Get that straight. I was just standing there watching the rain through the window well, and he came down the stairs drunk and restless. His eyes locked on me and stayed there like he’d forgotten how to look away. Then his mouth was on mine, hard, like he’d been starving and only just realized it.

I let the video keep going. His teeth caught my lip—that’s where the scar started, though neither of us knew it yet. I leaned in instead of pulling back. His hands moved up my chest, my neck, into my hair. Then the video cuts to black.

Ten seconds. A hockey bag. A blurry 19.

I built a whole year on ten seconds.

I’ve watched it on buses after teams turned on me, in empty rinks after midnight, in a parking lot the day I signed the transfer papers. Every time looking for something I missed—a reason he vanished and never once looked back.

Tonight I was looking for proof I hadn’t been wrong to come. Found it. His hands on my shirt, that half-second before the cut, opening and closing like he couldn’t decide whether to pull me closer or push me away.

That was the same guy who called me a mistake nine hours ago.

I played it again. Right before the cut he said something against my mouth. You can’t hear it on the tape. I don’t need the tape.

Don’t let go.

I hadn’t. Not for a year. Not tonight either.

There’s a girl named Sara now, and he keeps letting the whole campus watch him not touch her. Building his alibi out in the open while I sit outside it, running out of doors to knock on.

My thumb hovered over the screen. Delete. Two taps and the last proof he ever wanted me is gone—proof I could walk away from a ten-second kiss and a guy who’d rather hand some stranger to campus than let anybody see the mark on his own mouth.

I hit delete.

Are you sure you want to delete this file?

My finger hung over yes.

I closed the popup instead. Locked the phone. Dropped it in the cupholder.

No.

I started the engine and pulled out.

The Drake house was dark except the porch light and one window on the second floor. Ethan’s. I sat there a minute watching his shadow cross the blinds—pacing back and forth like an animal looking for a way out.

Good. Let him pace. Let him lie there wondering what he actually saw in that locker room. A fraction of what I’ve carried for a year, and it still wouldn’t touch it.

I grabbed my bag and went in.

April was curled up on the couch with her phone, some reality show muttering in the background. She looked up. “Ares? You okay? You look—”

“Long game. Everyone’s wiped.”

Her cheeks went pink. “You were incredible out there. That goal, and setting up Kane—Ethan never lets rookies near the puck first shift.”

“Captain reads the ice well.” I hiked the bag higher on my shoulder. “Sets everything up.”

I took the stairs two at a time, past a wall of framed Ethans—every age, every trophy, the same smile put on for somebody standing just outside the shot. I know that smile. I’ve watched it crack twice now.

His door was open a crack. I pushed it the rest of the way.

He was sitting on the edge of the bottom bunk in gray sweats, hair still damp, bare feet. His head snapped up—one second of wide eyes and locked shoulders before he forced his face back to neutral. There and gone. The locker-room crack, live again.

I dropped my bag on the floor. “Still here.”

He swallowed. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“Noticed.”

I crossed the room and stopped just short of arm’s reach. “Say it again.”

“Say what.”

“What you called it this morning.”

Nothing.

“Couldn’t get it out twice.”

“I’ve got an early skate.” His eyes came up, almost steady. “You should sleep.”

The captain’s voice, three years practiced, like a schedule could shut this down.

“So I crossed two states for the wrong guy.”

His head came up.

“You heard me. Transferred mid-season. Walked off a roster spot to ride your bench. You think Coach found me by accident? You think family housing opened up by accident?” I held his eyes. “I came here for you, Ethan. A whole year of it. So no—wrong guy isn’t the problem. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

Two seconds. That was all the steady he had left.

His hands stayed flat on his knees. Then he was up off that bunk like it burned him, close now, close enough I could see the thin scar on his lip, the match to mine if you know where to look.

“I already told you it was a mistake, so you don’t get to do this.” His voice cracked on the word. “I have a scholarship. A team. People who’d—” He stopped himself. “If this gets out—”

“I’m not here to blow up your life.” I let that sit so he’d believe it. “I’m here because the guy in that video was real for three minutes. He held onto me like I was the only thing keeping him afloat. I want him back. And I’m not leaving till I find him.”

He didn’t move.

I stepped past him and dropped onto the bottom bunk, hands behind my head, ink catching the lamp light. His eyes tracked me the whole way down.

“Get some sleep, Captain. Nine a.m.”

The furnace hummed under the floor. His family slept down the hall with no idea what just moved into their son’s room.

Then, barely, under the sound of the house: “Night, Ares.”

I didn’t answer him.

I closed my eyes. A year to get here. One more night wouldn’t kill me.

Later, when the house had gone quiet and his breathing leveled out into something that almost sounded like sleep, I pulled the phone back out. The video was still there—of course it was.

I’d lied to myself in that parking lot with my thumb over yes, pretending I was the kind of guy who could let go. Cloud backup, a hidden folder, an email draft I’ll never send. Three places. I learned the hard way what happens when you trust just one.

I let it run one more time. His mouth on mine. His hands in my hair. No hesitation left in him anywhere.

Ten seconds. That’s all I’ve got. Tonight, it was enough.

I locked the screen and lay there in the dark, and I could still see him—not the captain with the shut-down face and the careful lies, but the guy in that basement who stopped checking the door for three whole minutes.

Then his phone lit up the ceiling. Buzzed once, twice, went dark. He reached for it without a word, and his breathing went careful, measured, like he was rationing it. If he thought I was asleep, he didn’t act like it.

He didn’t answer. He turned it face-down against the mattress and lay there, not moving, not sleeping, one floor below his whole family and one bunk above the guy who’d just told him the truth.

A year finding him. And I’d made it back just in time to watch him go looking for a door with somebody else’s name on it.