Chapter 5 The Empty House & The Midnight Visitor

~Dominic's POV~

"You're supposed to be resting that shoulder, and not torturing it."

Ava jumped a little at my voice, nearly dropping the ice pack she'd been fumbling with one-handed at the kitchen counter, her other arm curled awkwardly behind her back trying to reach a bruise she couldn't actually see.

"I'm fine," she said, which was a lie, because I could see the wince tightening the corner of her mouth even from the doorway.

I hadn't planned on coming downstairs. I'd told myself I was getting water, nothing more, but the second I saw her standing there in an oversized t-shirt that used to be mine from some old training camp, struggling to press an ice pack against a bruise blooming dark purple on her shoulder, my feet just carried me across the kitchen before my brain caught up with them.

"You're not fine. You're holding that thing wrong, and you're going to also make it worse."

"And since when are you a physical therapist?"

"Since I spent three years icing a knee that never got better no matter how many times I did it." I held my hand out. "Give it here."

She hesitated, and for a second I thought she might actually argue with me, because arguing seemed to be her default setting when it came to me. But then she turned, just slightly, angling that shoulder toward me, and the fight went out of her voice.

"Fine. But if you make it worse, I'm definitely blaming you."

"Deal."

I stepped in behind her, closer than I probably should have, close enough that I could smell the shampoo still damp in her hair from her shower. She'd pulled the collar of the shirt down off her shoulder to get at the bruise, and in the low kitchen light I could see exactly how bad it was, an ugly, spreading purple mark just below her collarbone from where some defenseman's stick had caught her during afternoon practice.

I pressed the ice pack on it gently, and she sucked in a breath through her teeth.

"Too hard?"

"No. Just cold."

My thumb brushed the edge of her collarbone as I adjusted the pack, and I felt her go completely still under my hand, her breathing shifting into something shallow and careful. I told myself I was just making sure the ice sat right. I told myself a lot of things standing in that kitchen at eleven at night with my stepsister's bare shoulder under my palm, and none of them were entirely true.

"Dominic."

"Yeah."

"You can stop looking at it like it's going to fall off. It's a bruise. I get a hundred of these a season."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it."

She turned her head just slightly, enough that I could see the side of her face, and something about the way she looked at me in that moment, tired and stubborn and completely unguarded in a way she never let herself be at the rink, made my chest do something I didn't have a name for.

"You weren't like this in your office," she said quietly. "Earlier today. You were totally somebody else."

"I have to be somebody else in that building."

"And who are you right now?"

I didn't answer that. I didn't trust myself to answer that, standing this close to her with my hand still resting on her shoulder longer than an ice pack required, both of us pretending the silence between us wasn't loaded with something neither of us was allowed to touch.

Just then, the  doorbell rang.

We both jumped like we'd been caught doing something far worse than icing a bruise, and Ava's eyes went wide, panic flooding her face in an instant.

"Who is that? Nobody comes here."

"I don't know." I checked the clock on the stove. Eleven-thirty. Nobody with good news showed up at eleven-thirty at night. "Stay here."

"Dominic, what if it's…"

The bell rang again, twice this time, impatient.

I moved to the front window first, careful to stay in the shadow of the curtain, and my stomach dropped straight when I saw who was standing on my porch under the motion-sensor light.

Liam Reed. 

He was holding a laptop bag under one arm like he'd driven straight here from somewhere without thinking twice about it.

"It's Liam," I said, low, turning back toward the kitchen.

Ava's face went from confused to horrified in about half a second. "Liam? Here? Why would Liam be here?"

"I don't know, but he cannot see you. He cannot see any of this." I grabbed the ice pack off the counter and shoved it into the freezer, my mind already racing through every single thing in that house that might give her away. "Go. Now."

"Go where?"

"Anywhere he's not going to look. The pantry, upstairs, I don't care, just move."

She didn't argue this time. She darted across the kitchen, bare feet silent against the tile, and slipped into the pantry off the side of the kitchen just as the doorbell rang a third time, longer, more insistent.

I dragged in a breath, rolled my shoulders back, and forced my face into something that looked calm as I walked to the front door and pulled it open.

"Liam. It's almost midnight."

"Sorry, Coach. I know it's late." He held up the laptop bag like an explanation, a little breathless like he'd been rehearsing this on the drive over. "I pulled game film from Northern State's last three matchups. Figured we could go over their power play before tomorrow's practice, since you said you wanted extra prep before the exhibition."

"You couldn't email it?"

"I wanted to walk you through it in person. Figured you'd want to see it before you sleep on it."

I stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, painfully aware of the pantry door sitting closed behind me in the kitchen, painfully aware of every single second this conversation dragged on being one more second Liam stood close enough to my front hall to see something he shouldn't.

"Fine," I said, keeping my voice even. "Send me the file, I'll look at it tonight."

"I can just show you real quick, it'll take five minutes…"

Liam's eyes drifted past my shoulder into the entryway as he talked, the way anyone's eyes did when they were standing in a doorway making small talk, casual, unthinking.

And then his eyes stopped moving.

I felt my whole body go cold before I even turned to look, because I already knew, in the sick, plummeting way you know exactly what's about to go wrong before it does, exactly what he was looking at.

Propped against the wall by the shoe rack, right where Ava always left it, was her hockey stick.

Pink grip tape wound around the handle, unmistakable, impossible to explain away as anything that belonged to a twenty-five-year-old男 who lived alone.

Liam's easy, rehearsed smile faded off his face completely, replaced by something sharper, something curious in a way that made my stomach twist into a knot.

"Coach," he said slowly, his eyes still locked on that stick like he couldn't quite make sense of what he was seeing. "Is that... a girl's hockey stick?"