The house is pure Hunter—bass thumping hard enough to rattle the windows, the kitchen packed with half the team shouting over each other, bottles clinking like some chaotic wind chime. It’s a celebration: he finally signed, the old lineup reunited on the ice. Liv’s radiant, Hunter’s grinning like the lucky bastard he is, everyone pretending this is the greatest night of their lives.

I’m propped against the living room wall, nodding along while Hunter rattles off contract numbers, my beer gone warm and untouched. Twenty minutes since I last pretended to drink.

Eight months. Eight months since she looked me straight in the eye and said she needed space—like space was just a kinder word for goodbye. I can still see our kitchen, Mal threading between my legs, her voice calm in a way that gutted me more than crying ever could. She couldn’t be the girl waiting at home anymore. The film mattered more right now. I begged—quiet, raw, saying her name like a prayer that might rewrite everything. She didn’t waver. She just let me go.

I barely ate. Barely slept. Bennet found me on the bathroom floor one night, staring at nothing, and after that the guys rotated shifts like I was fragile glass. I wasn’t suicidal. I just didn’t know how to exist in a world where Callie didn’t want me.

So I channeled it all into the ice, the gym. Skated until my lungs screamed, lifted until my hands split. Anger packs on muscle fast. I buzzed my hair short again, college-style, because long it only reminded me of her fingers sliding through it, tugging softly when she kissed me. Couldn’t bear the memory.

I watched her film. Of course I did. Devoured every article, saved every still. Sat in the dark for that interview where she called the story “a really intense personal experience,” voice gentle, like it belonged to someone else. I wondered if anyone in the audience knew she was talking about us. About me.

Made a burner Instagram just to watch her stories at 2 a.m.—coffee cups, sunsets, Mal. The Mal posts were oxygen. On my weekends with him I’d press my face into his blanket because it still carried her—lavender shampoo, vanilla candle from late-night edits. I’d lie on the couch with him on my chest and pretend she was only away on a trip.

Liv and Hunter never volunteered updates, so I fished carefully: “How’s Mal?” “She looked tired when we dropped him off.” Never the questions that actually mattered: Is she with someone? Is she happy? Does my name ever cross her lips?

Then she’s here.

I feel the shift before I see her—the air changes, the room tilts. My eyes find her across the crowd without permission. Coat still on, like she might leave any second. Hair chin-length now, tucked behind one ear. She swore she’d never go above the shoulders, said she felt naked without it. The cut sharpens her cheekbones, makes her eyes enormous, and it winds me: I don’t know this version of her. I don’t know what else the months have taken or added.

Red sweater clinging to her arms, black skirt with tiny embroidered flowers, brown boots. Thinner. Fragile in a way that hurts to look at. Gorgeous, painfully so. Two guys by the island notice; one smiles like he’s already moving. My jaw locks so tight it throbs.

I’m vibrating—heart slamming, skin too tight, scared in a way I haven’t been since juniors with scouts timing every stride. Don’t know what to do with my hands, my face, the fact she’s twenty feet away and I still have no idea if she hates me, misses me, or feels absolutely nothing.

She looks up. Our eyes meet.

The music, the laughter, Hunter’s voice—all of it sinks underwater. For one second it’s only us, the way it used to be. The way it’s supposed to be. Everything floods back: her laugh against my throat, stealing my hoodies, murmuring my name half-asleep while reaching for me.

I can’t smile. Don’t even know what my face is doing.

She looks away first.

The room slams back—too loud, too bright. I swallow flat, warm beer that tastes like nothing.

She’s here. Real. Perfect. And no longer mine. I still don’t know how to breathe around that truth.