Coach.

My heart ricochets like a puck off the boards. The sentence hangs barbed and heavy. Baylen likes Ronald. Baylen says he was kissed. Madden says “not good” if Ronald finds out about Baylen and coach. The implication is a cold thing that slides under my skin: someone older, someone with power, someone who should be a safe harbor, may have used trust like bait.

I try to breathe. The rink blurs, the lights go warmer, then cooler. My mouth tastes like metal and gasoline.

“Em?” Brody’s voice is low and close and suddenly I’m aware he’s turned. He’s caught me—caught me with his phone, caught me reading the parts of people’s lives they didn’t intend for me. His face doesn’t look angry. It looks raw.

“I—” My explanation dies. There isn’t one that will be clean enough. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He runs a hand over his face, a rough, tired motion. “Because it’s not mine to tell,” he says. “And because some things are being kept quiet for reasons you don’t want to know yet.”

“What reasons?” I force the words out, each one a nail.

He looks away toward the empty goal, where the net hangs like a mouth waiting to be fed. His voice is quieter than before. “Because people will get hurt. Because sometimes the team protects itself. Because someone decided the story is safer if it’s buried.”

“Buried how?” The word comes out a whisper.

Brody’s jaw moves. “It’s not just a crush, Em.” He meets my eyes and the honesty there unspools like a knife. “There are… complications. People in positions that matter. Deals that were made quietly. And not everyone on the team is on the same side.”

My mind fights to assemble the pieces. Baylen. Coach. Madden. Keeping Ron from finding out. Protecting the team. Protecting reputations. Protecting someone with power. My chest tightens with a cold I can’t shake.

“And you?” I ask. “Where do you fit in?”

He takes a breath so long I feel it. “I thought I was just coming here to play hockey,” he says, a crooked, helpless smile flickering. “Then I realized I was stepping into something else. And I didn’t want you dragged in.”

“How long?” I ask.

“Long enough that I started covering for people. Long enough that I saw messages I shouldn’t have. Long enough that I started making decisions I regret.”

The truth is a line that stretches into the dark and glares like the floodlight. Secrets ripple outward like cracks in ice. I feel them under my feet, impossible to ignore.

There’s a noise—a scrape of boots on ice—and we both turn. The locker room door is a silhouette at the far end, and a shadow slips through it—slender, hurried. Baylen. He’s younger in the fluorescent wash, eyes hollow like someone who’s been on the end of something he didn’t choose.

He sees us and freezes. For a moment his face shuts down into practiced indifference and then he forces a smile that’s too quick, too brittle.

“You two here for the usual drama?” he asks, voice pitched high and casual, but the tremor in his hands tells a different story.

Brody folds his arms. “Depends on what you mean by usual.”

Baylen’s gaze flicks to my face, and for a second I catch something—fear, then determination, then relief like a rope thrown to shore. He nods minutely toward Brody’s phone.

“I—shouldn’t have texted that,” he says, voice small. “I panicked. I didn’t want to hurt Ron. I didn’t want it to be something everyone used against him.”

“You didn’t tell him because you were afraid of the fallout,” I say. “From who?”

He swallows. “From Coach,” he says. The word lands like an accusation and a prayer.

Brody’s expression goes tight. “How long?” he asks.

“Since last summer,” Baylen answers.

A silence blooms and then fractures. The rink seems a universe where every orbit is altered by a single confession.

I realize then—cold and certain—that what I thought was one scandal, one messy secret between siblings and rivals, is actually a lattice of things meant to stay buried. Baylen’s crush is a hinge. It opens a door that smells of power, of protection, of things done in the dark to be kept from the light.

“You promised me nothing would happen,” Baylen whispers suddenly, looking at me like I am a compass and he needs direction. “You promised you’d help.”

I look between them—between Brody, who looks like he’s been carrying a weight too heavy for his arms, and Baylen, who looks like he’s been waiting for someone to listen. The truth I came to fetch has multiplied into a hundred mirrors.

“Whatever this is,” I say, shoulders set in a way that surprises me, “we don’t bury it.”

Brody’s mouth curves. It’s not a smile. “You don’t really want to go there,” he says.

“I don’t want to keep lying,” I say. “And I don’t want anyone else to get hurt to protect a reputation.”

Baylen’s eyes shine. “Then help me,” he says. “Please.”

Outside, the scoreboard blinks like the pulse of a sleeping animal. The ice swallows the sound of our shoes. Midnight feels suddenly less like an ending and more like a beginning—one where every secret I step on will crack and the pieces will need picking up. I don’t know if I’m ready for what the light will reveal.

But I know this: secrets kept to protect power are nothing more than rumors with teeth. And I’ve already woken up with one in my mouth.