Unloved: Chapter 13

The dressing room is dead silent for only a minute before it explodes.

With Holden and me leading the charge.

“This is utter bullshit,” Holden shouts. I stand beside him, crossing my arms as we stare off with the entire line of coaches in the middle of our locker room.

“You can’t possibly expect us to play with him.”

“I do,” Coach says, calm, not even a flinch at our raised voices and the endless support rallying behind us. “I expect you to play with him ”

I toss my head over my shoulder to look at Bennett, but he’s gone pale. His jaw clenches as he wipes the cleansing pad up and back down his leg pad again. Clearly he doesn’t agree, but he won’t be the one to rock the boat—not publicly at least. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn he’d already spoken with Coach about it.

“No.” I shake my head. “No way in hell. Kane’s a fucking psychopath. Why the hell would he even to come here? Think about it.”

Coach Harris blows a breath and readjusts his cap.

I hate this. Mostly because I admire Coach; he’s one of the only male figures in hockey I’ve known this well and managed to trust. I respect him enough to do nearly anything he says, follow any order—but not this. This doesn’t make sense.

Toren Kane is a menace. And an incredible defenseman when he isn’t in the penalty box or blasted across sports news outlets for one scandal or another. He be in the NHL already, but he screwed up enough that this seems to be the only route for him into professional hockey.

Last year, during the Frozen Four tournament, Toren Kane made a nasty hit against our captain, Rhys. Knocked him unconscious, left him sprawled on the ice, and left all of us with a sick feeling in our stomachs. We lost the game after he was taken off, none of us able to focus without Rhys—especially Bennett in goal. But it didn’t matter anymore; the win would’ve meant nothing without him.

I Coach Harris admires Rhys, has trusted him as our captain since sophomore year, because he’s always been the most mature, serious, and put-together player on our team. Rhys was our captain he was our captain, a leader down to his bones. So why would Coach bring the guy responsible for sidelining Rhys—nearly him—onto the team?

“Kane’s on the team. Koteskiy knows, and he’s accepted it. Either get on board or get out of my fucking rink.”

Not a single word is said with malice, his tone never rising. He’s calm and collected, and it somehow settles everyone into a peaceable quiet.

“You’re a team. No matter what happens, remember that. Now, let’s go,” he says, exiting the room as our assistant coaches start barking out orders and demanding we get our asses on the ice. The tension never dissipates, but everyone falls in line.

I’m barely inside the house when I decide to text her.

She sends an eye roll emoji and a quick follow-up text to assure me she’s kidding. Still, the taunt makes my stomach swoop with the anticipation of bantering with her—mostly because I think it means she’s actually comfortable enough to joke with me.

It’s a risky text; the taunt without my voice might come across horrid. Bubbles show she’s typing—then stopping, then typing again before finally a text comes through with a string of puking emojis. My smile only grows as I spin in a circle, like a preteen girl getting a text from her crush.

And then, separately:

There’s another long moment where I watch the bubbles appear and disappear repeatedly. I’m nearly ready to send some funny GIF to make her smile from this far away, hating the memory of her reddened eyes and distraught face in the corner booth last time I saw her.

Leaning back against the door, I tap my fingers along the side of my phone, desperate to cling to this conversation and keep it from ending.

I don’t know it, but I immediately search for it on my phone, trying to figure out where I can stream it, debating asking her to come watch it with me, my constant want for relief of loneliness beckoning yet again.

This time, the wait is too long between messages and I impulsively call her, a little shocked when she answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“I figured this is easier for me to ask all my questions and get all my answers in real time. I hate texting.”

“Hi, Freddy,” Ro says. Swearing I can feel her smile through the phone, I flick through the apps on my hand-me-down Xbox and select the one that I know has her favorite movie on it.

“If this movie sucks, I’m going to be very disappointed, Rosalie.”

“Wait—which movie?”

“

, your favorite one,” I say with inflection, like her question is ridiculous.

“You’re watching it? Right now?”

“Just queuing it up—but I want to talk to you first.” I try to keep my timbre calm and quiet, matching her sleepy tone. “Unless I woke you up.”

She waits a long moment and my heart starts to sink before her hesitant voice whispers, “No, I’m good. We can continue your twenty questions.”

“I’ve got way more than twenty, princess, but we can start there.” She laughs and makes my stomach swoop like a free fall. “Favorite color?”

“I don’t have a favorite. There’s too many,” she says, repeating my words from earlier back to me. “You?”

“Green—like, any shade, I like them all.” I clear my throat and relax against my headboard, feeling any earlier tension leak out of me as we talk. We toss questions back and forth, Ro choosing some after warming up to me a bit more.

She asks me for someone I look up to. I tell her Archer, one of my dad’s coaches, and Rhys. I ask her for her favorite thing to do, and she tells me about her fashion projects and affinity for sewing.

“Will you make me something?”

“Maybe, if you pass biology.”

The mention of the class sours the good feeling for a second before I smother any threatening memories.

“Most embarrassing moment?” she asks, a light crinkle of bedsheets in the background. The thought that she’s lying in bed, letting my voice lull her, makes everything feel softer, more intimate, even through the phone’s speaker.

Lighthearted contentment fills me as I tell her about my first junior hockey game. My mom was sitting at the ice with Archer, holding up a giant sign and ridiculous foam fingers in our team’s colors. I went a little too quick onto the ice, falling flat on my face and causing a massive dog pile after tripping my teammates coming in behind me. I tell Ro my hurriedness was from nerves or embarrassment, but it wasn’t—I remember seeing my mom and Archer, having this bursting feeling inside me, a desperate need to get closer to them.

She chuckles as I recount the story, especially when I admit I was never allowed to be first out of the tunnel again. I’m so desperate to keep her happy, to pull more laughs from her, I can’t stop myself from continuing.

“And then there’s the time I got caught having sex,” I say, pausing as I hear her choke on something at my confession—maybe water. “Well, actually, I’ve gotten caught , but this time was worse.”

Recounting the story of Archer and my mom catching me with the literal girl next door isn’t as painful to tell, especially when I leave out the fact that we were both fifteen. I do tell her it was my first time, because that alone is embarrassing.

“What was really painful,” I tell her, “was the splinters of wood from the treehouse in my ass and the humiliation of having Archer remove them with tweezers.”

We both cackle at my expense, my smile so big my cheeks ache.

“What about you?” I ask once her giggles have subsided. “Most embarrassing moment?”

“Too many to count.” Ro pauses, and I let her think, humming the theme under my breath as she gathers her thoughts.

“Okay, um, I had to go to this retreat with my team last year in New York for the weekend. It was my first time going on a trip with my boyfriend and I decided to, um… buy these kinda things to wear.”

My grin is uncontainable. “You can say lingerie, Rosalie.”

She clears her throat, and I know if I could see her face, it would be that same beautiful rose gold hue. “Right. But, um, Tyler and I had the same bag—because he let me borrow his—and they got mixed up in the Uber. So when he opened it, there was all this frilly girly …” She struggles to say the word, almost whispering it. “And it was so humiliating. I’m the only girl on our cohort, and the guys would not let me live it down.”

“C’mon,” I say. “It would’ve been better to razz Tyler than you. I can think of at least five perfect jokes right now.”

The words seem to cheer her up as she nervously giggles into the phone. “Yeah, maybe. It was kind of all for nothing, too.”

My eyebrows dip. “What do you mean?”

“Tyler didn’t like it.” She yawns. I try not to say anything, biting my tongue with the insults I want to sling Donaldson’s way. Instead, I’m quiet, letting her fill the space. “He was so embarrassed he told everyone we were on a break—that it wasn’t for him. He wanted me to throw it all away, said it made me look like a slut. Which is terrible, and I’m not. I swear.”

Again, the words are said on a laugh, and I’m ready to punch this kid because he’s somehow warped her into thinking this story about her being treated horribly by her is somehow embarrassing for her.

So I’m honest. “The only person who should be embarrassed is Tyler.”

We’re both silent for a little too long before she concedes. “Maybe you’re right. That wasn’t a good story. I’ll think of a better one.”

I don’t want to let her go, but she’s yawning between every other word.

“All right, why don’t you tell me next tutoring session?”

“Mm-hmm,” she whispers.

Ro’s asleep, I realize, and I don’t want to hang up. So I leave my phone on the pillow, muting it as I head downstairs for a water. Rhys’s bedroom door is shut tight, and there’s an almost overwhelming pull to knock and check on him on my way back, but I grit my teeth and turn to my own room.

He doesn’t need my brand of help. Reiner is better for him anyway.

After a quick shower, I tuck into bed with my phone next to me, the quiet sound of Ro’s breathing lulling me to sleep.

When I come downstairs the next morning, Rhys is dancing in the kitchen.

It’s weird enough that I stop, watching him from the doorway for a moment. He’s got headphones in, blaring loud enough that he doesn’t hear me in the room, and he bobs around as he makes his coffee.

“The music thing is new,” Bennett says, making me jump four feet into the air.

“You know,” I say with a sneer, “for such a big guy, you’re silent. It would be nice to let people know you’re walking around. Get a heavier footstep.”

The goalie only chuckles once, then moves past me into the kitchen to start his usual morning breakfast rituals. Rhys sees him, clocking me in the corner, and blushes, pulling out his headphones.

“Hey,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“For dancing in your own kitchen?” I press a hand to my chest. “Apology accepted.”

Rhys hovers awkwardly as the machine finishes his coffee—my mouth is watering. It’s a nice, fancy machine that either Bennett or Rhys contributed to the house, nothing I could afford myself. Too anxious to ask them how to use it, I usually wait until someone’s making coffee and request a cup.

Surprisingly, that system has worked for years now.

“Well,” Rhys sighs. “I need to…”

He points upstairs and trots off, not bothering with anything else. Which isn’t like him—Rhys thrives in our group, happy around everyone and always the brightest star of us all. Holden and I might bring the laughs and good times, but Rhys is the friend. Kind, smiling, always happy. Golden.

Now his face looks a little pale, light dimmed as he heads upstairs to close himself back up in his room—the new normal, it seems.

I wait until I hear his door click shut before asking Bennett, “Have you talked to him?”

“Yes.”

I roll my eyes. “I mean, about how he’s doing? Something seems… off.”

Bennett clenches his fist, almost breaking the egg in his hand prematurely. He pulls his shoulders back and shifts his neck toward his shoulder, like a quick twitch of muscle. A sign he’s uncomfortable or upset. Clearing his throat, the hulking goalie continues to make breakfast.

“He won’t talk to me,” he huffs.

“But you’re his best friend.”

I don’t mean it as a reprimand, nor a call out. It’s my own helplessness, of feeling disconnected from Rhys, that’s bleeding into my tone.

Our entire group feels like it’s half fractured. Bennett seems more distant than usual. Rhys is floundering, something clearly wrong that he won’t admit to or ask for help with.

Giving up on talking to either of them, I run back upstairs to shower and change before my dreaded class schedule for Fridays.

Mostly, the one taught by the woman who hurt me most.

Being there every other day, listening to her lecture, is a certain kind of hell for me. Seeing Carmen alone is enough of a trigger, but I’m also torn between wanting to tune her out completely and needing to listen to what she says so I can pass the course this time.

Still, as much as I hate biology, I can’t help the slight excitement I feel going to the class because it means I get to see Ro outside of tutoring.

I already like her, want to be a friend to her. I’ve never really felt comfortable around a girl enough to want to be her friend, but this feels warm and safe. I want to see her around, more than tutoring. And… I think it could be good for her, too.