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Chapter 68 — Home
publish date:
2026-09-03 00:13:28
Latest chapter
Behind the Ice Wall Chapter 87 — Why She Was Afraid of Sky
SKY’S POV “I need to tell you something else,” Amira said, a few nights after the conversation about her old case, the two of us sitting together on my balcony again, the city quiet below us in a way that felt, briefly, unconnected to everything threatening us. “About why I was so afraid of this. Of us. From the very beginning.” “I thought we’d covered that. The old case, the risk to your career.” “That’s part of it. There’s a piece underneath it I haven’t said out loud yet, not even to myself in quite these words.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, small and unguarded in the posture. “I was afraid of becoming attached to you specifically, Sky. Not because I didn’t care. Because I cared too much, too fast, in a way that terrified me more than any professional risk ever could.” • “What do you mean?” “You reminded me of Daniel,” she said. “Not in obvious ways. In the specific shape of how you carried your pain, how carefully you’d learned to hide it, how much effort went int
Behind the Ice Wall Chapter 86 — The Betrayal
SKY’S POV Amira brought it up again the next evening, unprompted, something clearly still sitting unfinished in her from the previous night’s conversation. “I don’t think I told you everything,” she said, settling onto my couch, a folder in her hands I hadn’t seen before. “About how they actually built the case against me. I gave you the outline. I don’t think I gave you the mechanics.” “You don’t owe me every detail.” “I know. I want you to have them anyway. I think it matters, given everything we’re currently facing.” She opened the folder, revealing printed pages, some clearly old, yellowed slightly at the edges. “I kept copies. Everything I submitted, everything they used against me. I’ve never shown anyone outside June.” • She walked me through it carefully, page by page, the actual mechanics of what had happened laid out with the same precision she brought to everything else. “Here,” she said, pointing to a memo dated months before the athlete’s public breakdown. “My ini
Behind the Ice Wall Chapter 85 — The Athlete Before Sky
SKY’S POV “There’s one more thing,” Amira said, almost a week later, the two of us back on my balcony, something different in her posture that told me before she spoke that this conversation would cost her more than the previous ones combined. “The case. The one I’ve mentioned before, in passing, without ever actually telling you what happened.” “You don’t have to tell me if it’s still too raw.” “I want to. Especially now, given everything else we’ve already shared.” She wrapped her hands around her mug, steadying herself. “You deserve to understand exactly what shaped my caution, before either of us started this. Why I fought so hard against what was developing between us, even after I knew I’d already lost that particular fight.” • “Several years ago,” she began, “before I joined your organization, I worked with a different athlete. Extremely talented. Football, not hockey, but the pressures translate similarly across most elite sports. He was young, early in a promising caree
Behind the Ice Wall Chapter 84 — Why She Became a Psychologist
SKY’S POV “I want to tell you how I actually became a psychologist,” Amira said, a few nights later, the two of us in her apartment this time, dinner finished, the dishes still sitting unwashed in the sink because neither of us wanted to interrupt whatever this conversation was becoming. “I thought Daniel was the answer to that.” “He’s the beginning of the answer. There’s more underneath it, though. The specific shape my career actually took, once I understood what I wanted to spend my life doing.” • She told me about university, about choosing psychology almost by instinct, without a fully formed plan yet for what specialty she might eventually pursue. “I took a sports psychology elective almost by accident,” she said. “Figured it might help me understand what had happened to Daniel, even years later. I didn’t expect it to become the entire direction of my career.” “What changed?” “I started reading case studies. Athletes who’d been praised for exactly the kind of composure
Behind the Ice Wall Chapter 83 — The Dream He Lost
SKY’S POV She continued the story two nights later, unprompted, the two of us sitting on my balcony with the city lights spread out below us, the open air making the conversation feel less confined than it might have inside. “I keep thinking about what you asked me,” she said. “About Daniel’s career, and how it actually ended. I don’t think I gave you the full picture. Just the outline.” “You don’t have to fill in every detail if it’s too much.” “I want to, actually. I think I’ve spent so long summarizing that story to myself that I’ve forgotten how much it actually cost, watching it happen in real time.” • She told me about the year after the tournament that broke him, the slow unraveling that followed rather than any single dramatic ending. “Coaches kept pushing,” she said. “Told him he needed to toughen up, told him other athletes managed pressure without falling apart the way he had. My father agreed with all of it. Reinforced it, actually, every time Daniel came home from
Behind the Ice Wall Chapter 82 — The Brother She Couldn’t Save
SKY’S POV Amira was quiet the next morning, quieter than I’d seen her since the earliest days after her resignation, and I noticed it immediately over coffee, the particular stillness of someone holding something carefully behind a closed door. “You okay?” I asked, though I already suspected the answer, given everything the previous night had unearthed for both of us. “I’m fine,” she said, too quickly, the same automatic deflection I recognized instantly because I’d spent years perfecting an identical version of my own. I set my mug down and looked at her directly. “That’s the same thing I used to say to you. Right before you’d tell me it wasn’t actually an answer.” A look crossed her face — recognition, maybe, or the particular discomfort of having your own technique turned back on you. “Fair,” she admitted. “I’m not fine. I’m just not sure I’m ready to talk about why yet.” “You don’t have to be ready. I’d just like you to trust me enough to try, the way I trusted you last ni
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