Chapter 2 —Unintended Consequences

• Landon's POV
• I heard it before I saw it.
• The sharp crack of a slap cutting through corridor noise was not something you missed, and the way the crowd immediately shifted, pulling back and pressing forward at the same time, told me exactly where it came from.
• I turned.
• Kai was standing in the middle of the hallway with his hand pressed to his cheek, jaw tight, eyes locked on the girl in front of him.
• She was standing her ground, chest rising and falling fast, not stepping back even an inch. Her friend had a hand stretched toward her like she was trying to decide whether to pull her away or step in beside her.
• I recognized the girl.
• The one from last night. The drink. The jersey.
• Kai's arm swung back.
• I was already moving.
• "Kai." I stepped directly between them, one hand flat against Kai's chest, stopping him cold. "Back off."
• "She slapped me, Landon."
• "I saw what happened. Back off."
• Kai's eyes were still on her, jaw working like he had more to say and no interest in swallowing it. "She started it."
• "She's a girl." My voice dropped, the kind of drop that meant the conversation was over. "You don't put your hands on her. We done?"
• He held the stare for another second, then shoved past my shoulder hard enough to make his point and walked off, his boys trailing behind him. I watched him go, then turned around.
• The girl was looking straight at me.
• I opened my mouth to talk to her.
• "Don't." Her voice came out sharp, the kind of sharp that had been sitting on her tongue for a while waiting for its moment. "Don't you dare stand there like you just did something good."
• I closed my mouth.
• "You started this." She took a step forward, and the friend reached for her arm but she shrugged it off. "One word. You said one word and now every single person in this school thinks it's okay to throw it at me whenever they feel like it. That was you. You did that."
• "I know," I said.
• "So don't stand here looking for a thank you because you stepped in and cleaned up your own mess." Her eyes were steady, no tears, just fire. "Stay away from me."
• She turned and walked, her friend shooting me one look before following her.
• I stood there and let them go.
• ***
• The hallway thinned out around me. Ace appeared at my shoulder from somewhere behind, falling into step without being asked, which was the thing about Ace. He always showed up exactly when things got uncomfortable.
• "That was bad," he said.
• "I know."
• "Kai shouldn't have swung at her."
• "I know that too."
• He was quiet for a few seconds. "She had a point though."
• I didn't answer. I didn't need to, because she did have a point and I had known it from the moment she started talking.
• I called her a freak in a packed corridor after a post-game night when every student at Avalon High was wired and looking for something to talk about.
• That word didn't stay with me. It never was going to. It left my mouth and became everyone else's to use, and now Kai had swung at a girl in the middle of a hallway because of it.
• "You going after her?" Ace asked.
• "Not today."
• He nodded slowly. "Smart. She looked like she needed a minute."
• "More than a minute." I picked my bag up from where I had dropped it near the lockers. "I'll find her tomorrow."
• Ace looked at me sideways. "Find her for what exactly?"
• "To fix it."
• "Since when do you fix things?"
• I gave him a look and he raised both hands, almost smiling, and left it alone.
• The rest of the afternoon moved the way afternoons did when something was sitting at the back of your mind refusing to settle.
• Practice helped, the way practice always helped. The moment my skates hit the ice everything else dropped away and it was just the puck, the movement, the sharp clean sound of blades cutting across the rink.
• Coach ran us through drills until my lungs burned and my legs felt it, and for a while there was nothing else.
• But the minute I was off the ice it came back.
• She hadn't done anything. That was the part that kept landing. She bumped into me, spilled a drink on a jersey I could replace without thinking about it, and I hit her with the one word that schools like this one turned into ammunition.
• I knew how Avalon High worked. I had been here long enough to know exactly what happened when something like that got out, and I said it anyway because I was irritated and proud and not thinking past the moment.
• And Kai, who barely made third-line minutes and wouldn't have the nerve to say half of what he said if he wasn't hiding behind a group, had taken what I started and turned it into something physical.
• That sat in my chest the whole drive home and it was still sitting there when I got into bed that night.
• I kept replaying the look on her face when she turned on me. Not crying, not falling apart. Just steady and furious and completely done, like she had been holding it together through worse things than this and I was simply the latest in a long line of people who hadn't thought before they spoke.
• That bothered me more than anything else about the whole situation.
• I was not someone who apologized easily. That was just the truth. My pride had a way of talking me out of things before I got there, convincing me that whatever happened was either not entirely my fault or not entirely my problem. It had worked well enough for eighteen years.
• It wasn't working tonight.
• I stared at the ceiling and made myself a deal. Let her cool down. Don't show up the same day and make it about me and my guilt.
• Give her the night and find her first thing tomorrow, before the hallways filled up, before she had to walk through another day of it without at least knowing that I knew I was wrong.
• I could do that much.
• I owed her that much.