Page 11 of Top Shelf

Nostrils flaring, I don’t even pretend to listen to Coach as he continues on with his speech. I stare unblinkingly at the door through which she disappeared, demanding that she come back.

Ronan shifts on the bench beside me, and in my peripheral vision, Silas leans forward. I don’t need to look at either of them to know they saw what I did. That they are feeling it too.

We don’t talk about that night. After she escaped our hotel room and we couldn’t find a trace of her anywhere before we had to board the bus back to Valehurst, we never spoke of it again.

But now she’shere. Inourterritory. Onourice.

And I’m not letting her slip away this time.

The second Coach dismisses us, I’m on my feet and stalking toward the tunnel. Footsteps right behind me have me glancing over my shoulder. I’m met with Silas’s cold blue eyes.

“Did you see her?”

He nods.

“What the hell is she doing here?”

This time, he shrugs, but his closeness to my back gives away that he’s as eager to know the answer to that question as I am.

When I first set eyes on her, exposed and vulnerable in a way no human should ever be, I couldn’t name the feeling I got.It wasn’t pity. Wasn’t desire. It was something more volatile, but instead of red-hot flames of anger, I felt ice-cold.

Seeing her like that woke something dark and vicious inside me, a recognition I couldn’t ignore. I didn’t just feel for her. I knew exactly what had been taken from her.

Images of that night assault me while I take a cold shower, barely toweling myself off before throwing clothes on and meeting Ronan and Silas at the door.

There’s the same need in their eyes that resides in my chest. That need for answers. For closure.

We lost her after that night.

Lost her again at The Stanley.

But we won’t be losing her for a third time. She’s in Kings’ territory now, and if she tries to run, I’ll hunt her down myself.

The door slams into the wall as I march into the house, fury nipping at my heels. “How can one tiny little woman evade us so effectively?” I grouse, footsteps echoing off the worn wooden floor as I make a beeline for the kitchen.

The three of us live in a terraced brownstone not far from campus that Ronan’s US senator mother purchased for her darling boy when he started at Valehurst his freshman year. The three of us have lived together ever since, and known each other for even longer. Since Peewee hockey, when the darkness inside us that we didn’t fully comprehend back then called to each of us.

Over the past three years, we’ve made it a home. Ronan’s laptop sits open on the kitchen table when I walk in, and pens and scraps of paper belonging to Silas are stashed all over the house. Even the tall ceilings, mismatched chandeliers, paneled walls in deep forest green and burgundy, and the fact that thefloors creak in the winter and sweat in the summer seem to fit our personalities.

The kitchen is cavernous, with black granite counters and dark oak cabinets that should feel heavy but perfectly match my ravaged soul. There is an old fireplace that hasn’t worked since the ‘70s in the corner of the room, where Ronan keeps a bottle of scotch like it’s his own private vault.

I yank open the fridge, sensing the guys behind me as they follow me into the kitchen. Cold air spills out, but it’s not enough to cool the fire crawling under my skin. I grab a bottle of water and drink half of it in one go, then slam the door harder than necessary. The sound echoes like a gunshot.

Behind me, Ronan drops into the kitchen chair in front of his laptop, bringing the screen to life before his fingers start whizzing over the keys like a man on a mission. The light from the laptop illuminates the sharp angles of his face. His jaw ticks as he types, eyes scanning like a machine, calculating every variable.

Silas leans against the wall, his white hair and pale skin making him look more like a ghost haunting this place. Hauntingus. His arms are folded across his chest, but as I watch, he slips a hand into his pocket, pulling out an antique coin and turning it over between his fingers while he’s lost in thought.

The only sound in the room is the tapping of Ronan’s keyboard.

When I can’t take the silence any longer, I blurt out, “She’s a Winslow.” It sounds incredulous, even now. “A fuckingWinslow.”

Silas’s mouth tightens before he nods once, the motion sharp. He’s as pissed about it as I am. This girl has been haunting all of us for years. The need to know what happened to her, who hurt her that night. It plays on my mind like a virusthat just won’t let up. Any time I thought I could leave it—leaveher—behind and move forward with my life, she’d appear like a mirage in the forefront of my mind, reminding me that there can be no moving on without answers.

Every time we’d play against the Steelhawks, I’d scour the crowd for her, hoping to see her face. Any time we were at BSU for a game, I’d wander the campus looking for her, searching the faces of strangers in the hopes that one of them would be her. But it never was. It was as though she disappeared after that night.

Until today.

I rub the heel of my palm against my eye and toss the empty bottle in the sink. “Do you think her parents know?”