Page 32 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
The smart play is to keep walking. Let Cole swan-dive into whatever abyss he’s been excavating.
But I don’t do that. Because the defenseman in me sees a teammate skating toward open ice with nobody between him and the boards. Because that’s how I’m wired—even if said teammate stabbed me in the back.
“Cole.” I catch him at the junction near the old offices, voice corridor-low. “Hold on.”
He spins. For the split second before he recognizes me, his face tells me everything I need to know. He’s expecting someone else, and whoever they are, they’ve got him scared out of his skin. “Not now, Benson,” he hisses.
“I know you saw me earlier. In the office. Tell me what’s going on.”
His gaze skitters over the crowd. “Nothing’s going on. And you should mind your own business.”
He keeps walking. I step into his path. “If you’re in some sort of trouble?—”
“Stop!” The word ricochets off cinderblock like a gunshot. His eyes are searchlights—bright, wild, sweeping for exits. “You don’t know anything about what’s happening to me, and you need to turn around and walk out of this building right now.”
“Let me help?—”
“You can’t help me.” His voice cracks—not breaks, cracks, the sound of structural failure in a load-bearing wall. “Nobody can. And if you don’t leave right now, you’ll make it worse for both of us.” He’s backing up, one hand trailing the wall behind him. “I’m dead serious, Beckett. For once in your life, you can give up the whole teammate-who-cares act.”
“Cole, just let me?—”
His hand finds what it’s been hunting for. A door handle. He wrenches it open.
I see a flash of interior—industrial shelving, a yellow mop bucket, the chemical right hook of Pine-Sol.
Then his palms slam into my chest.
The shove is desperate—not violent, not calculated, the raw physics of a man who’s burned through his vocabulary. I stumble backward through the doorway. My bag snags the frame. My heel finds the mop bucket. And it sets off a string of chaos—the bucket kamikazes into the shelf. The shelf retaliates with a cascade of paper towels and cleaning bottles. And by the time my back hits the far wall of what is now unmistakably a janitor’s closet the size of a phone booth?—
The door bangs shut.
The lock clicks like a gavel, and Cole’s footsteps retreat, leaving me vacuum-sealed in a Pine-Sol sarcophagus with a mop handle spearing my spine.
What the?—
“Cole!” I throw my shoulder into the door. Once, twice, hard enough to rattle every bottle on the shelf. What is this thing, industrial steel?
“COLE!” My voice detonates off cinderblock and hits me from four directions. “COLE, OPEN THE DOOR!”
No response. Figures.
I don’t know why I even tried to help that guy.
I slip my phone from my pocket. No Service.
Fantastic.
The lights stutter. Flicker. And then, with the quiet finality of a last breath, the power dies.
Even better.
I slide to the floor, prop my arms on my knees, and hang my head.
This is what I get for trying to be the nice guy. I don’t know why I went after Cole. I don’t know why I tried to talk to Everly.
The dark swirls ahead of me, the cold floor seeping through my pants. Reminds me of the night of the gala. And of course, the girl in the elevator is in my head. Everyone deserves a second chance. A real one. Not the kind where people say they forgive you but hold it over your head forever.
I tilt my head back. I can’t see the ceiling tiles, but I know they’re there—flimsy, removable, the gap above them wide enough for a man willing to crawl through dust and darkness.
