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Chapter 11
publish date:
2026-08-13 19:00:30Roselle's POV
By Wednesday of that first week I had memorized more hockey terminology than I had ever wanted to know in my entire life, purely out of spite.I showed up every morning at 8:47, thirteen minutes early, because I had decided somewhere around Monday night that I would rather chew glass than give Jace Whitfield the satisfaction of catching me late even once. I learned the names of every player on the tutoring roster within the first two days, cross referenced their class
Latest chapter
Collision on Ice Chapter 23
Roselle's POV The athletics office was quiet on Wednesday afternoons, most of the team either in class or at conditioning, and I usually used the window between my last class and my shift to catch up on grading practice quizzes in relative peace. Jace was usually gone by then too, off to whatever late class or meeting occupied his Wednesdays, which was why I did a double take finding him still there, seated at the desk in the corner, a book open in front of him that had absolutely nothing to do with hockey.I almost didn’t say anything. I almost just sat down at my usual spot and let the moment pass unremarked. But curiosity got the better of me before I could stop myself.“What are you reading?”He looked up, and his face changed, briefly, almost caught out, before he answered. “Nothing.”“It’s clearly something. You’ve had your nose in it for ten minutes.”He hesitated, and for a second I thought he might just close it and change the subject the way
Collision on Ice Chapter 22
Roselle's POV The second strange thing happened four days after the sandwich, and by then I’d almost convinced myself the first one had been some kind of exhausted hallucination, a fever dream brought on by too little sleep and too much stress, right up until I logged into the coffee shop’s scheduling app to check my hours for the week and found an entire Tuesday shift I distinctly remembered being assigned to already marked as covered.“Did you pick up my Tuesday?” I asked Chloe that night, only half paying attention as I highlighted a chapter for my media studies midterm.“Your Tuesday what?”“My shift at the coffee shop. It’s showing as covered and I definitely didn’t ask anyone to cover it.”“Wasn’t me.” Chloe glanced up from her own laptop, genuinely puzzled rather than covering for anything, which I could tell within about half a second because Chloe was constitutionally incapable of hiding when she’d done something nice for someone. “Maybe it’s a sch
Collision on Ice Chapter 21
Jace's POV I told myself the whole walk back to my car that it didn’t mean anything.She’d looked exhausted. That was all. Any halfway decent person would have done the same thing, seeing someone that clearly running on fumes at one in the morning, and it had nothing to do with the window at the library, nothing to do with whatever I’d sat there feeling watching her work a counter she had no business still standing behind after the day she'd already had. It was food. It was only a sandwich and juice. It didn't mean I was beginning to care about her more than I wanted to. I almost believed myself by the time I got home.The problem, and I recognized it even as I sat there on my couch rethinking it, was that one act like that wasn’t going to satisfy whatever had actually shifted in me watching her through that window. I knew myself well enough to know this wasn't just a one-time act of kindness I'd forget about. I was going to want to do it again. And I could not, unde
Collision on Ice Chapter 20
Roselle's POV By the time my shift ended at half past midnight, my legs had stopped feeling like they belonged to me in any useful sense, and I locked the front door of the coffee shop behind the last customer and stood there for a second just breathing, the way you do when your body finally gets permission to stop pretending it isn’t running on empty.I still had a paper due Monday I hadn’t started. I still had tutoring at 8:47, unmovable, because showing up late even once felt like handing Jace exactly the kind of ammunition he’d been hunting for since day one. I did the math in my head without meaning to, the way I always did lately, four hours of sleep if I skipped the reading, five if I skipped eating breakfast instead, and none of the options felt like it should be a real choice a person should have to make on a Thursday night in September.I made it about two blocks from the coffee shop before my body simply stopped negotiating with me.It wasn't dramati
Collision on Ice Chapter 19
Jace's POV The video was already circulating by the time I got to the locker room, half the team watching some slowed down replay of the fall on a phone somebody was holding up like it was a highlight reel worth studying, and I sat down at my stall and started unlacing my skates without saying a word, because I can’t even talk my way out of this one.“Man, you went down like a folding chair,” Eli said, sitting down next to me, not even bothering to hide the grin. “Full send. Arms out and everything.”“I’m aware.”“I’m just saying, if you’re gonna eat it, at least commit to the bit like that. Very dramatic.”“Are you done?”“Not even close, but I’ll spare you for now.” He nudged my shoulder, easier than the room deserved, and lowered his voice enough that it stayed between us. “You good, though? Actually good, not just embarrassed good.”I thought about it longer than the question probably warranted. My back ached in a low, dull way that had nothin
Collision on Ice Chapter 18
Roselle's POV The first shot came in the form of my coffee order, somehow, impossibly, arriving from the campus café with a note taped to the cup that read tutoring session cancelled, when I had never once cancelled anything and definitely hadn’t asked anyone to relay that information anywhere.I found out it wasn’t true only because Dez texted me confused about where I was, and by the time I got to the study hall fifteen minutes late, three of Jace’s teammates were already lounging around with their feet up, having apparently been told the same thing.“Cute,” I said, dropping my bag onto the desk hard enough to make a point. “Very cute.”Jace was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, doing an extremely poor job of looking innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”“Someone called the front desk and cancelled my sessions in my name.”“Strange. Maybe you should be more careful with your own scheduling.”“Careful. Right.” I sat down at
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