The Hockey Captain Wants His Plus-Size Ex Back Chapter 10
Cole was removed from the team before the week was over.
The official statement said he had violated athletic conduct and substance policies. The unofficial version spread faster: Cole Mercer had been drugged before the game, attacked his own teammate, failed a test, and lost everything in forty-eight hours.
Vanessa disappeared from campus for three days.
When she came back, she looked thinner, angrier, and scared in a way she could not fully hide.
Cole believed she had done it.
So did most people.
No one could prove it at first, but proof has a way of falling out when people panic.
Vanessa had debt. A lot of it. Credit cards, designer clothes, trips she posted as if she could afford them. She had been selling pills around campus to cover what she owed. Stimulants before exams. Painkillers after games. Anything with a price.
The night before the Westbridge game, she slipped something into Cole’s drink.
She claimed she only wanted him “focused.”
Cole claimed she ruined his life.
They were both right enough to hate each other.
I tried not to follow the story.
It followed me anyway.
Cole stopped going to class. He drank. He posted and deleted things late at night. Sometimes I saw him from a distance, standing outside the rink like a ghost that could not get back inside its own life.
Once, Easton and I passed him near the student center.
Cole stared at my ring.
For a moment, I thought he would speak.
Instead, he looked away.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
Then I remembered the storage closet. The dark. My voice breaking as I called his name.
Pity has limits.
One night in November, campus police found Cole outside Vanessa’s apartment with a gun in his hand.
No one was hurt.
That was the only mercy in it.
Vanessa had dropped her bag when she saw him. Pills scattered across the hallway floor. Enough to turn suspicion into evidence.
Cole told the police Vanessa had destroyed him.
Vanessa screamed that Cole was crazy.
By morning, they were both gone from Lakeview.
Cole was expelled after the disciplinary hearing. Vanessa was expelled too. The police charges were worse for her than for him, but neither walked away clean.
People talked about them for weeks.
Then midterms came.
Then playoffs.
Then life moved on, because life always does, even when someone thinks the whole world has ended.
Mine did not end.
It opened.
I stayed captain. Easton stayed MVP. We became one of those couples people pointed out across campus, but I learned not to build my life out of other people’s attention. Some days I wore makeup and a uniform and felt beautiful. Some days I wore Easton’s hoodie and no one recognized me until I laughed.
Easton loved both versions.
He loved me when I trained hard and when I took rest days. He loved me when I ate salads and when I stole his fries. He loved me when nightmares woke me at three in the morning and I called him even though his first class was at eight.
He always answered.
“I’m here,” he would say.
Every time, I believed him more.
In spring, Cole sent me one letter.
I knew his handwriting before I opened it.
Mia,
I remember more now. Not dreams. Memories. I remember the lake. Your dad. The way you sat outside my house after the funeral and told me it wasn’t my fault even though it was.
I remember high school, when I almost quit hockey because I was scared I’d never be good enough. You stayed up all night making me a training schedule. You told me I could be someone people believed in.
I became that person because of you.
Then I punished you for seeing me before everyone else did.
I don’t expect forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.
I just wanted you to know I finally understand what I lost.
Cole
I read it once.
Then I folded it and put it away.
Easton found me sitting by the window.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I handed him the letter.
He read it quietly. His face did not change, but when he finished, he sat beside me and took my hand.
“You don’t have to forgive him,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I leaned my head against his shoulder.
“Yes.”
And I did.
Forgiveness was not a door I owed Cole.
It was not a bridge back to the past.
Sometimes forgiveness was putting the letter away and choosing not to bleed over it anymore.
That summer, Easton took me to his hometown.
It was smaller than I expected, all lakes and pine trees and houses with wide porches. His mother cried when she met me. His father shook my hand, then pulled me into a hug like he had been warned not to scare me and failed immediately.
Later that night, Easton and I sat on the dock behind his parents’ house.
He looked nervous.
Easton Vale, who could face down a charging defenseman without blinking, looked nervous beside a lake.
“What?” I asked.
He reached into his pocket.
My heart stopped, even though I was already wearing his ring.
He took out a tiny pearl earring.
I stared at it.
“I found it years ago,” he said. “In Cole’s dorm room. You dropped it.”
I touched my ear without thinking.
“You kept it?”
His ears turned red.
“I was going to give it back.”
“When?”
He looked at the lake.
“Eventually.”
I laughed so hard I nearly cried.
Then he said, “That wasn’t the first time I saw you.”