CHAPTER 001: THE WRONG GIRL

NOAH’S POV

There was a thin line between love and stupidity

I stopped looking for it the day I fell in love with my best friend—Luca Leister.

“Luca! Luca! Luca!”

A couple hundred voices roared behind me in the arena—but mine cut through all of them, raw and cracking by the edges. I never cared how it sounded—not when it came to him.

He skated towards the boards, sweat darkening the collar of his jersey. His broad shoulders flexed as he moved.

Half the front row leaned forward the second he pulled his helmet off—that dirty blond hair stuck damp to his forehead, sweat dripping off his chiseled jaw.

He reached the boards, already smiling at me. Two of his fingers curled toward himself,

“Come here, birdy.”

He mouthed.

I hit the glass breathless, palms pressed flat against it, right where he stood on the other side.

“There she is.” He grinned at the poster board rolled up under my arm. “Tell me you didn’t actually make a new sign.”

“I absolutely made you a sign.”

“Birdy.” He shook his head, his smile never faltered. “You’re thirty years old at heart, I swear.”

“I prefer loyal. And you're winning this.” I pressed myself closer to the boards. Those stupid blue eyes held mine in uncertainty.

“You always say that.”

“Because I’m always right, Leister.”

He reached through the opening in the glass and tugged once at the sleeve of the jersey I was wearing—his old one, faded at the shoulders, His thumb brushed the fabric once before he let go.

LEISTER 17.

“That’s why I’d never let you go, Birdy.” Then, already pushing off, glancing back with that cocky grin.

“Now watch me win this.”

The crowd swallowed him whole the second his blades hit centre ice, screaming a name that belonged to both of us and neither of us at the same time.

That was the thing about Luca. He said things like that, and he meant them, and he never meant what I wanted them to mean.

I’d injected myself so deeply into his life in the last six years that he had a key to my apartment and I had one to his—where “if anything happens, call her first” was written right next to my name in his phone.

I knew what he smelled like fresh out of the shower and what he smelled like at 3 a.m. after a girl he’d never see again had already let herself out.

None of them ever got more than a night. But I got the after, the quiet, boyish charming version of him nobody else even got to see.

I had a job I was good at, a sister who told me every Sunday I was wasting my life, and a phone that only mattered when his name lit up.

I was everything to Luca Leister except what I really wanted to be.

Two seats down, a brunette girl leaned into her curly haired friend’s ear, not bothering to lower her voice enough.

“God.” She fanned herself with her cup, entirely unbothered by anyone around her. “I miss him.”

Two seats down, a brunette leaned toward her curly-haired friend, not bothering to whisper.

"God, I miss him."

"You said that last month."

"I'm serious."

My fingers curled around the edge of my sign.

"You two actually slept together?"

"Twice." The brunette grinned. "He does this thing with his tongue."

"Stop, Jane. I don't need the visuals again."

Neither of them noticed I was standing three feet away in his jersey.

I told myself it didn't matter. That it wasn't new information. That Luca Leister could do no wrong.

"Can you not?" The words slipped out.

The brunette blinked, startled. Her eyes dropped to the jersey, then rose to my face, faintly apologetic.

"Are you, like, a thing? With him?"

I had no answer that wouldn't humiliate me further.

Her friend leaned in, almost gently, which somehow made it worse. "Honey. There's enough Luca Leister to go around, and..."

BWAAAAAAAAAAM!!!!!!!

The sound of the horn blaring cut her off—swallowing the rest of her sentence as the entire stadium rose up out of their seats.

“THE WOLVES HAVE WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP!”

Every angry thought about the girl evaporated on contact. I turned back to the boards.

Luca was already gliding around with his arms thrown wide, his teammates crashing into him from every direction.

He ripped his helmet off one-handed, grinning up at a crowd that had loved him since he was seventeen.

Then he skated to center ice instead, alone, and the rest of the team peeled back like they’d known this was coming.

And then he dropped on one knee, right there on the ice, helmet already off, hair damp and stuck to his forehead looking up at something, at someone — I couldn’t see yet.

The jumbotron lit up before I found her.

WILL YOU MARRY ME, ROSALIND?

The words hung forty feet tall over the whole arena, and for one full second I couldn’t process a single letter out of it.

Then I saw her — a girl coming down from the family box, already crying with a hand pressed to her mouth — and something in my chest went cold and hollow before I even had her face fully in focus.

She was tall, in red crop jacket and jeans with her blonde hair swinging in a ponytail behind her.

And it hit me like a physical blow, a decade of memories collapsed into half a second. Sixteen years old me in a locker room. And a girl’s voice echoing in my head as she shoved me against it.

Every humiliation I’d spent a decade convincing myself I’d outgrown, surfacing at once, ice-cold and immediate.

Rosalind.

My high school bully.

My stomach dropped through the floor of the arena.

She said yes and the crowd lost its mind, Luca slid the ring onto her finger and stood, pulling her into him, kissing her while the whole building screamed like it was the single greatest thing any of us would witness all year.

I stood frozen, placard hanging at my side with glitter drifting off the edges and catching the light on its way down.

And in that half-second, before the crowd could swallow either of us whole again

My legs finally moved, and I ran.

I shoved through the crowd, past shoulders and spilled beer, the placard fell from my hands somewhere behind me, glitter still stuck to my palms and I kept moving until I came out the arena and the night air hit my lungs.

“Noah!”

His voice cut clean through the arena, like it had some kind of permanent, unfair permission to reach me anywhere.

I didn’t turn back.

“Birdy!”

His voice was close now, he was closer. I refused to turn.

And then

His hand closed around my wrist.