Chapter 26. Glass Hallway

Tessa’s POV

Cole lets go of my wrist so fast it’s like I burned him.

I turn around.

Knox is standing ten feet behind me in the glass hallway, in his practice gear with his skates slung over one shoulder by the laces. He must have come out of the locker room the second I walked in. He must have been standing there for a while.

He heard.

I can see it in his face. Not the hot, loud anger from Wyatt’s hallway two weeks ago. That anger had edges. This doesn’t. His face is completely blank, the way the ice is blank before the Zamboni goes over it, and his eyes have gone gold from edge to edge.

“Knox,” I say. “Don’t.”

He doesn’t look at me. He sets his skates down very carefully on the bench by the trophy case. He straightens up.

“I heard something,” he says to Cole, “about photos.”

Cole’s face does something complicated. Fear first. Then, fast on its heels, the old smirk, the one he wears like armor.

“Private conversation, Evans,