My public rebellion came with consequences.

Jace spent the next practice watching me from the bench like I was a live grenade he had personally forgotten to secure. He had been cleared for limited contact while managing soreness in his reconstructed right knee, but instead of focusing on rehab, he tracked every conversation I had with the roster.

I ignored him.

At the end of practice, I was collecting resistance bands when Mason Reed stopped hard at the boards in front of me.

He flipped a black puck over the glass.

I caught it against my chest.

"First puck of the scrimmage," Mason said. "Welcome gift."

"I'm staff. Not a fan."

"Student staff," he corrected, enjoying himself. "Which means you're still allowed to appreciate priceless memorabilia."

I turned the scuffed puck over in my hand. "This has a skate cut through the logo."

"Exactly. Character."

"Trash."

"You wound me, Doc."

He leaned his forearms on the boards.

"Saved you the back row on the bus Friday."

Jace straightened from the treatment table behind me.

"She sits with staff."

Mason looked past me. "She can sit wherever she wants."

"She is not hanging around the roster."

"I'm standing right here," I said.

Before Jace could answer, a woman walked through the tunnel carrying two coffees and a stack of laminated travel sheets.

She wore no visitor badge because the security guard greeted her by name.

"Left skate first, Cole."

Cole sat on the bench with his right boot half laced.

He stopped, sighed, and switched feet.

The woman smiled.

"You always mess up the tension when you rush."

"Good morning to you too, Avery."

Avery Sinclair had been Westlake's student team-operations manager since freshman year. I knew the name from travel emails. I did not know she could walk into the hockey corridor like she had a key to everyone's brain.

She spotted Mason.

"Still collecting penalty minutes, Crash?"

Mason laughed. "Only the useful ones."

Then Avery reached over the bench, grabbed Luca's abandoned practice jersey, and pulled it over her own sweater.

"He left this out again?"

Luca skated over and groaned.

"You steal more gear than equipment staff."

"Then stop leaving it where I can reach it."

She knew Cole's skate ritual, Mason's old nickname, and Luca's habits.

I stood beside the tunnel holding a battered puck and suddenly felt like the newest person in a conversation that had started years before me.

Cole rose.

"You coming to the away game?"

"Wouldn't miss it. I wrote half the travel schedule."

Avery handed him one coffee.

I turned toward the equipment room.

Jace followed.

"Don't."

I stopped. "Don't what?"

"Get that look over Avery."

"What look?"

"Cole and Avery dated freshman year. It ended last spring, but she's still part of the team."

I stared at him.

"Why are you giving me Cole's dating history?"

"Because I know how guys like him operate."

"No. You know how you operate when you think I'm interested in someone."

"Are you?"

"Go ice your knee."

Two hours later, practice ended.

The parking lot was dark and bitterly cold. I walked toward my car with my duffel over one shoulder, keys already in my hand.

A man stepped between two SUVs.

He wore an old Westlake jersey and smelled like beer.

"Hey. You're Mercer's sister, right?"

I shifted around him.

"Excuse me."

He blocked me again.

"Just want to know if he's starting Friday. I got money on the opener."

"You'll have to wait for the official roster."

I tried to pass.

His hand closed around my left wrist.

Hard.

"Take your hand off me."

"Hey, back up."

Mason's duffel hit the asphalt behind him.

He came around the bus cargo door with his hands open at his sides.

The fan looked him over.

"Mind your business, Reed."

"You're holding her," Mason said. "Let go. Walk to your car. That's your last easy option."

The man's fingers tightened until pain shot up my forearm.

"Or what? You gonna get suspended again?"

Mason's jaw flexed.

He did not move.

"I'm telling you to let her go."

The fan released my wrist just long enough to shove Mason in the chest.

Mason took one step back.

Still no punch.

The man reached for me again.

His fingers caught the front of my jacket.

Mason moved.

One punch.

The man's head snapped sideways. He stumbled into the SUV and dropped to the pavement.

Mason immediately stepped back.

"Security!" he shouted.

I rubbed my wrist, pulse hammering.

Two arena guards ran from the service entrance. Cole and Jace came around the bus at the same time.

Jace saw the man on the ground and Mason's split knuckle.

"Are you insane?"

He shoved Mason once in the chest.

"He grabbed me," I said.

Jace barely looked at me.

"Mason is already on conduct probation. One more incident and Coach can suspend him."

"He grabbed me," I repeated.

"And why were you walking out here alone? I told you to wait in the lobby."

For one second, I thought I had misheard him.

"Do not blame me for this."

"I'm trying to protect you."

"By blaming me because a drunk fan put his hands on me?"

The guard nearest us crouched beside the man. The second pulled out his radio.

Cole stepped between Jace and Mason.

"Enough. Security cameras cover this row. Let them review it."

Jace pointed at Mason. "He still threw the punch."

"After the guy grabbed her twice," Cole said.

My brother's face went red.

"Stay out of family business."

"This stopped being family business when you blamed her in a parking lot full of witnesses."

The words landed.

Jace turned toward me.

I held up my bruising wrist.

"The only person who crossed my boundary tonight was the guy on the ground. If you want to protect me, start by believing me."

Campus police arrived. They separated everyone, took statements, and pulled the security video before Mason was allowed to leave.

The athletic department suspended him from one game pending conduct review because of his prior record. It was procedural, Dr. Harper explained, not a finding that he had attacked anyone without cause.

Jace still called it proof that I had brought chaos into the team.

I stopped listening.

When the police finally released us, Mason stood beside the bus with ice wrapped around his right hand.

The arrogant smile was gone.

"You saw me," he said.

I looked at him.

"You saw me try not to hit him, right?"

He was not asking for a defense to give the conduct board. The cameras had already captured the sequence.

He wanted to know whether I had seen the restraint before the violence.

"I saw," I said.

His shoulders dropped half an inch.

That tiny reaction told me more about Mason Reed than every rumor on campus.

Four days into Mason's suspension, the training room felt like a loaded spring.

Players slammed sticks harder against the boards. Tempers snapped over missed passes. Mason was allowed in the facility for meetings and conditioning, but not on the ice while the conduct office reviewed the parking-lot footage.

I was organizing tape when Luca Bennett sat on the edge of my treatment table and held out his left wrist.

"Old fracture," he said. "It aches when the weather drops. Dr. Harper said you could prep it before she checks the tape job."

"Rotate toward the ceiling."

I pressed lightly along the joint.

Luca pushed his gray sleeve farther up his forearm.

A frayed red-and-black braided thread circled his wrist.

My hand stopped.

"Where did you get that?"

He looked down at the faded string, then back at me.

"Harborview youth sports clinic. Five years ago."

My stomach tightened.

I had volunteered there during high school because I needed service hours for a college program. Most of my job had been carrying ice, wiping tables, and sitting with scared teenagers while licensed staff handled the actual medicine.

"Why would you keep a piece of string for five years?"

Luca's mouth shifted into something almost like a smile.

"Because I was sixteen and convinced my life was over. I had a fractured collarbone and a surgeon telling me contact sports might be off the table for a long time. A volunteer sat beside me while I waited for my parents. She took the bracelet off her own wrist and tied it on mine."

The memory arrived all at once.

A skinny boy in a torn tournament jersey. White face. Wet eyes he refused to wipe because there were other athletes around. Me talking too much because silence made him shake harder.

"I told you bones heal stronger where they remodel," I whispered.

"You also told me one doctor saying 'maybe' wasn't the same as the universe saying 'never.'"

I stared at him.

"That was you."

"I recognized you the first day."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you didn't remember me. I didn't want to walk in here acting like one afternoon made me important to you."

The honesty knocked something loose in my chest.

Then the second memory caught up.

Two years ago, Jace had been injured in the playoff game against North Ridge.

Luca had delivered the legal check.

Jace's knee had twisted under him on the fall. MCL. Meniscus. Ten months of rehab. A lost national semifinal. A grudge that had survived every replay proving the hit was clean.

The boy I had talked out of quitting hockey was the player my brother blamed for the worst year of his career.

"You transferred here knowing Jace was on the roster."

"I transferred because Westlake had the best development program available after North Ridge cut my scholarship."

"And me?"

Luca held my gaze.

"I knew you were here after I signed. I won't pretend it didn't matter."

"Touching reunion."

Cole stood in the aisle with a resistance band in one hand.

His tone could have frozen boiling water.

Luca's expression closed.

"Need the table, Captain?"

"Dr. Harper said active recovery only until lunch. Your wrist can wait."

"Dr. Harper told me to be here."

"Then I guess I'm wrong."

Cole's jaw said he hated every word of that sentence.

I folded my arms.

"Are you two going to make me referee whatever this is?"

"No," Luca said.

"No," Cole echoed.

Neither sounded convincing.

Avery appeared in the doorway carrying two coffees and a clipboard.

"Cole, our sponsor lunch is in twenty minutes."

Cole looked at me instead of her.

"Push it."

Avery's eyebrows rose.

"The restaurant won't hold the reservation."

"Then cancel it. I need to finish rehab."

She glanced between Cole, Luca, and me.

Something knowing passed over her face.

"Fine. You owe me tacos."

She handed the second coffee to Jace on her way out.

No drama. No territorial glare. Just a woman who clearly had a life inside this team long before I arrived.

That should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

Friday morning, snow battered the windshield of the team bus.

Mason, still suspended from the weekend game but required to travel for team meetings, kicked his boots off the aisle seat.

"Saved you a spot, Doc."

Before I answered, Luca tossed me a black fleece hoodie.

"Heater in the back is broken."

Jace snatched it from my hands.

"She has a coat."

"Give it back," I said.

"Sit up front with staff."

Cole stepped onto the bus behind us.

"She can sit where she wants."

Jace turned. "Stay out of this."

"You're blocking the aisle and holding her sweatshirt hostage. It became team business."

I took the hoodie from Jace, walked past Mason's empty seat, passed Luca, and kept going to the last row.

I sat by the window alone.

Three heads turned toward me.

I smiled sweetly.

"Problem?"

All three looked away.

Four hours later, the bus hit black ice.

The rear end slid sideways before the driver corrected it. Every conversation died.

State police closed the mountain pass ahead and directed traffic toward the nearest exit.

The only hotel in town had already taken two stranded college buses.

Thirty Westlake players and staff crowded the lobby while Coach Miller argued with the desk clerk.

"I need fifteen rooms."

"Then you need another town," the clerk said. "I've got two suites left. That's it."

Coach Miller looked at the roster sheet.

One suite had two bedrooms and a pullout sofa. The other had one private bedroom and a large living area.

"Staff and injured players split by capacity," he said. "Nobody wanders. Nobody leaves until state police reopen the road."

He started reading assignments.

Jace went to Suite 210 with the injured-reserve group and two assistant coaches.

Then Coach Miller looked at the second keycard.

"Suite 114. Sloane gets the locking bedroom. Cole, Mason, Luca take the common room."

Jace's head snapped up.

Cole looked directly at me.

Outside, the highway closure sign flashed red through the snow.

There was nowhere else to go.