All Chapters of My Hockey Alpha Deadly Secret : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

110 Chapters

Before I Understood What She Was

Ember's POVI looked at Claire. "Plan B for what?""She did not say what," Claire said. "Just that if the first plan didn't get them what they wanted, Plan B was ready.""Who was she talking to?""I don't know. A group of girls near the vending machines on the second floor. I didn't recognize them. I just caught the tail end of the conversation before she saw me and stopped."I turned the words over. Plan A and Plan B meant a sequence. It meant whoever this was had thought it through in advance, prepared for the possibility that the first move might not land, had a second one ready and waiting. That was not someone reacting to a situation. That was someone who had constructed a situation and was managing the results."What was Plan A?" I said, not quite to anyone in particular."The rumor has to be it," Rebecca said. "Someone leaks the fake relationship story with that specific angle — Ember threw herself at Knox, Knox felt sorry for her — and the story goes everywhere. That was delib

Packing

Knox's POVThe corridor went quiet for about three seconds after Ember said it.Then I said, "Charlotte Mercer is your stepsister.""Yes.""Your father remarried.""Several years ago. Charlotte and her mother came with the deal."I looked at Ember. She was watching me with the specific stillness of someone who had just dropped something significant and was waiting to see how it landed. The corridor felt smaller than it had five minutes ago."Knox," Rebecca said from beside Ember, in the careful voice she used when she wanted to say something without making it worse. "How bad is this?"I thought about Charlotte. About the way she operated — patient, calculated, never the person standing nearest to the thing she had arranged. About the fact that she had been Ember's stepsister this whole time and had never once mentioned it to me, even during the months when we were together. Which meant she had known I would eventually cross paths with Ember, or had planned for exactly that, and had de

Why Do You Even Care

Ember's POVRebecca was sitting on the edge of my bed when I woke up.Not her bed. Mine. She had come in at some point while I was sleeping and was sitting there with her knees pulled up and her phone face down beside her and the expression of someone who had been awake for a while deciding how to start a conversation."Rebecca." I sat up. "What time is it?""Seven fifteen. Sorry. I didn't want you to hear this from someone else."I looked at her. "Hear what.""Knox and Ethan," she said. "In the corridor last night. One of Ethan's neighbors saw it and called emergency services."I was fully awake now. "What happened?""From what I could gather — and this is secondhand, the person who told me was three doors down and not exactly a reliable narrator — Ethan followed Knox. After Knox walked away. Followed him to his door and started again." Rebecca paused. "Knox knocked him out."I stared at her."Completely out," she said. "Cold. The neighbor who called emergency services thought Ethan

Something Is Wrong

Knox's POVShe had come.That was the thing I kept coming back to through the long, quiet hours of the night in that holding room. Ember had come. Nobody had asked her to, nobody had sent her, and she had spent the whole day not coming — I knew that instinctively the same way I knew most things about her by now, the same way I could tell when she was processing versus when she had decided — and then she had come anyway.We had not said much. Ten minutes was what the security officer had told her, and we had used maybe three of them on actual words. She had sat down across from me and looked at me the way she looked at things she had decided she was not going to look away from, and at some point I had asked why she came and she had said she didn't know and that had felt more honest than any prepared answer would have. When the ten minutes were up she had left, and I had sat back down at the table and felt something I did not immediately have a name for.Whatever it was, it had been eas

Not Telling Me

Ember's POVHe came in and sat down on the chair by my desk, which meant he had decided this was a real conversation and not a quick check-in at the door. I sat on the edge of my bed across from him and waited."When did it start?" he said."A few days ago. Maybe four. It came on gradually at first — I thought I was just tired. But then it kept building.""Tell me what it feels like."I looked at him. Nobody had asked me that. Rebecca had asked if I was okay, which was a different question. Knox was asking for the actual content of the experience, which meant he wanted specifics, which meant he had a reason for wanting specifics."There is a buzzing," I said. "Under my skin. Like something is running just below the surface that doesn't have anywhere to go yet. It's not painful, it's just — constant. I can't ignore it.""What else?""Sounds," I said. "Everything is too loud. The corridor outside this room sounds like it's right next to my ear. I can hear conversations from two floors d

See You Soon

Ember's POVBy Thursday morning, everybody knew Ethan was leaving.I heard it from Jessica before I had finished breakfast. She came in from the corridor with her phone in her hand and that particular expression she wore when she had news she was not sure how to frame — excited by it because it was interesting and not entirely sure if excitement was the appropriate response given that it was about me."Ethan's packing," she said. "Like, actually packing. A driver came this morning. He's going today.""Okay," I said."Okay?" She looked at me. "That's it?""What else should I say?""I don't know. Relief? Something?" She sat down across from me. "Ember, he has been making your life miserable for weeks.""I know," I said. "I'm glad he's going. I am. I just don't feel the need to celebrate it at eight in the morning."Jessica seemed to accept that, although I could tell she was slightly disappointed by my composure. She went off to class. I finished breakfast and did the same.The day move

Tired of Being a Problem

Knox's POVTraining had been running well all week.Coach had pushed us hard all evening — back-to-back drills, no water breaks except the ones he called, the kind of session that cleared everything out of your head and left nothing behind except the ice and the play and the next decision to make. I had been back on the team for two days after my suspension ended and I was grateful for it in a way I would not have said out loud to anyone who asked. The ice was uncomplicated in a way that nothing else in my life was at that particular moment. The ice did not have feelings about anything. The ice just needed you to skate.We were in the last twenty minutes of practice when my phone buzzed on the boards.I ignored it. Mid-drill.It buzzed again.Rebecca.I called a water break, skated over, and picked it up. The notification was a forwarded message chain — Rebecca had sent it with no comment of her own, just the chain itself, and the name at the top was Ember's.I stood at the boards wit

Too Specific

Ember's POVKnox texted me the next morning while I was getting ready for class.It started normally. He asked about the chemistry reading, which was due next week, and whether I had started it. I said no. He said he had not either. We talked about it for a few minutes the way we talked about most things now — easy, back and forth, the conversation finding its own pace without either of us trying to direct it.Then he asked: how are you doing today.I typed back: fine. you?He said: good. anything happen yesterday?I paused.Anything happen yesterday. That is a specific question.I typed: not really. quiet day.A minute passed. Then: Ethan's officially gone right? Like fully off campus?Another pause.That is a very specific question.I typed: yeah. driver came yesterday. why.He said: just want to make sure you're okay.I put my phone down and looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then I picked it back up.There was a pattern here.Anything happen yesterday. Is Ethan fully off campus.

Before He Could Stop Himself

Knox's POVShe said she already knew what I was going to say.I thought about that for a second. Then I said, "Then I won't say it."A short pause. "That's new.""I'm trying something different."Another pause, and this one had a different quality to it — not wary, more like she was recalibrating something. "Does this different approach still involve telling me the threat is empty and I shouldn't lose sleep over it?""It was going to," I said. "But since you've clearly already worked that part out, we can start further along."She made a sound that was not quite a laugh. It was close, though. Closer than I had expected it to be, given the last twenty-four hours.I let the line settle before I said anything, because the way to make Ember trust what you were telling her was not to rush at it."The threat is empty," I said. "Ethan is not coming back to this campus. The expulsion is in its final stages — not a review, not a hearing, final. There is nothing he can file, nothing his family

Charlotte

Ember's POVI sat with the pause for a while.Knox had asked the question and then gone quiet, and there was something in that quiet — the deliberate, patient quality of it — that told me he was not going to add to it or soften it or give me a way out. He had said what he meant and he was leaving it there and the next word was mine.I thought about every argument I had been making to myself for the past several weeks. The fake relationship, the strategy, the arrangement with the clean two-week ending. I had been very organized about all of it.I thought about the fact that I had spent an entire day not going to the holding cell and then gone anyway and not regretted it for one second.I thought about the dinner from a few days ago, the walk back, the moment on the way home when I had checked my phone and then put it away because I did not want to be looking at my phone, I wanted to be here, in this conversation, and I had realized that was what I was already doing.I thought about how

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