The Hockey Captain Wants His Plus-Size Ex Back Chapter 01
The day my hockey captain bf Cole kissed the cheer captain on the Kiss Cam.
Eight thousand people were in the arena. Half of them were cheering. The other half were looking for me.
Everyone was waiting to watch two-hundred-pound Mia Hart storm onto the ice and cry herself into an internet punchline.
But until the ribbons fell all over the rink, I never showed up.
After an entire summer without a single message from me, Cole finally panicked.
What Cole didn’t know was that three months later, on the first night back at school—
while he was cursing my name in the dorm,
I, eighty pounds lighter, was lying in his teammate’s bed, wearing his teammate’s jersey.
My hockey-captain boyfriend, Cole, was kissing cheer captain Vanessa in front of the entire arena.
The Kiss Cam had found them less than two minutes after Lakeview University won the league championship. Their mouths met on the Jumbotron in a bright, merciless close-up, and the arena exploded.
I stood three rows from the ice with Cole’s spare jacket folded over one arm and the protein shake he liked after games sweating in my hand.
“Oh my God,” a girl behind me whispered. “Mia’s here.”
A boy lifted his phone toward me.
“Mia Hart,” someone murmured, too delighted to bother lowering their voice. “She’s going to lose it.”
Of course they thought that.
On campus, I was not just Mia Hart. I was Cole Mercer’s punchline.
The two-hundred-pound girl who waited outside the rink with clean jerseys, packed lunches, and extra tape for his sticks.
Everyone said I was obsessed with him. Everyone laughed and said I should know my place.
No one knew Cole had been my boyfriend for five years.
He said it was because hockey came first. Because scouts were watching. Because public relationships brought drama.
He had promised me that after the championship, everything would change.
Tonight, it did.
The announcer shoved the microphone toward him. Cole accepted it with that effortless grin that made half the campus forgive him for anything before he even apologized.
“Vanessa Blake,” he said, “will you be my girlfriend?”
Vanessa covered her mouth, then threw both arms around his neck.
The cheerleaders screamed. The hockey team howled. The entire arena turned into a celebration of a relationship that had apparently begun in public and erased mine in the same second.
I walked down the steps.
The noise around me changed. People made room because everyone wanted the best angle.
I heard my name again and again, mixed with laughter, mixed with guesses about whether I would cry, scream, slap Vanessa, beg Cole, or collapse.
Cole saw me when I reached the bottom row.
Then he put his arm around Vanessa’s waist and pulled her closer.
“Mia,” he said, voice low enough to sound gentle and loud enough to be heard. “Don’t do this.”
I stopped in front of him.
The cameras kept recording.
“I know we grew up next door to each other,” he said. “And I know you care about me. I care about you too.”
He paused.
“But only as a sister.”
A trace of disgust crossed Cole’s face, cold and unmistakable, before he continued. “You need to meet other people. You can’t keep clinging to me forever. It isn’t healthy.”
Vanessa touched his chest. “Cole…”
“No, it’s okay.” He looked at me with practiced patience. “She needs to hear it.”
My fingers tightened around the jacket.
Five years.
Five years of late-night kisses in his truck. Five years of whispered promises after games. Five years of him telling me I was the only person who really knew him. Five years of waiting for the moment he would choose me without conditions.
Now he stood under the arena lights and called me his sister.
Behind me, someone laughed.
“Brutal.”
“Record this.”
“Do you think she’ll throw the shake at him?”
I looked at Cole for a long moment. He waited for tears. Vanessa waited for a scene. Everyone waited for the joke to finish the way they expected.
I handed Cole the jacket.
“Congratulations,” I said.
The smile dropped from his face.
For the first time that night, the arena went quiet.
Cole stared at the jacket as if he didn’t know what to do with something I had returned instead of carried for him. Vanessa’s fingers curled slightly against his jersey.
I turned and walked past them.
“Mia,” Cole called, sharper now.
I did not stop.
At the mouth of the players’ tunnel, Easton Vale had just taken off his helmet.
Lakeview’s right wing. Cole’s roommate. The permanent MVP on the ice.
Easton was taller than Cole, broader through the shoulders, with wet dark-blond hair falling across his forehead and a fresh cut at the corner of his mouth. His gray eyes watched me without warmth.
He had never been friendly to me. Not once.
When I came to Cole’s dorm, Easton usually left. When I brought food, he ignored it. When I tried to say hello, he gave the smallest nod and looked away.
Tonight, I walked straight to him.
“Easton,” I said. “Can I have your number?”
A stunned pause followed.
Then Cole laughed.
It was not a happy sound. “Mia, stop embarrassing yourself.”
I kept looking at Easton.
Cole’s voice hardened. “Come back here. You’re making this worse.”
Easton said nothing.
His face remained cold, unreadable, almost severe. But beneath the damp strands of hair near his temple, the tips of his ears turned red.
I smiled.
“Mia,” Cole snapped. “Enough. Bring my jersey tomorrow after you wash it.”
The old command landed between us. Familiar. Automatic. As if nothing had changed, as if I still existed to pick up whatever he dropped.
Easton’s eyes moved past me to Cole.
Then he turned and walked into the locker room without giving me an answer.
Laughter broke out behind me at once.
“Oh my God, she got rejected again.”
“By Easton Vale, too. That’s ambitious.”
“Maybe she thought he had a thing for girls twice Vanessa’s size.”
Cole’s mouth curled, as if he was ready to join in.
Then Easton’s voice came from inside the locker room, low and steady.
“Come in.”
The laughter stopped as if someone had cut the sound.