The Bitter Gold

Jaxson

The ice beneath my blades didn't feel like ice anymore.

It felt like concrete.

The roar of ten thousand people inside the Eastern Arena was a deafening, vibrating wall of sound that rattled the plexiglass and made the floorboards shudder, but it didn't reach me.

I was trapped in a vacuum of pure, freezing silence. Every breath I took tasted like copper, stale sweat, and old blood.

My chest felt hollowed out, as if someone had reached inside my ribcage during the morning skate, wrapped their fingers around my heart, and ripped out everything that made me human.

A business transaction.

Nothing more.

The words repeated in my head with every stride, every crossover, every sharp turn during the final warmup skate.

I could see the flashing smartphones in the stands, students holding up signs, the HypeTV steadicams tracking my every move along the boards.

They wanted the tragic hero.

They wanted the betrayed captain.

The network producers were probably salivating behind their monitors, watching the exact moment the realization of my ruin hardened into malice.

I skated toward the home bench, my knuckles white where they gripped my stick.

I didn't look at the press box. I knew exactly where she sat—third row, center aisle, laptop open, pencils sharpened.

The girl who had looked at my defensive tape with faux awe.

The girl who had let me hold her hand in a dark diner booth while I poured my soul out about Layla, about the clinic, about the terrifying weight of carrying my family's survival on my shoulders.

It had all been a performance.

Every soft look, every breathy laugh, every single touch in that production trailer had been a calculated beat designed to keep the asset compliant until her tuition check cleared.

She hadn't been saving me from Derek Vance; she had been drafting her front-page headline.

"Reed! First line, you're up!" the coach barked, slamming his clipboard against the boards.

The plastic crack snapped me out of the void, but the ice didn't get any warmer.

“Keep your head on a swivel. State is going to target your left pivot early. They know you're carrying a bruise. Don't give them the lane."

I didn't answer.

I didn't even nod.

I just skated into the center faceoff circle, the heavy fabric of my Bulldogs jersey scraping against my pads.

I locked my eyes onto the State forward across from me. He looked at my jersey, a nasty, mocking smirk spreading across his face as he recognized the number.

"Hey, Reed," the State player sneered, tapping his stick against the ice, trying to get under my skin before the linesman dropped the puck.

“Saw the preview package this morning. Tough break, man. How much did she cost per game? Or did the network give you a package deal on the journalism major?"

The fury that exploded in my veins wasn't hot. It was blinding, absolute zero.

It froze the air in my lungs and turned my vision into a narrow, sharp corridor.

The referee blew the whistle, dropping the black rubber disc between us.

I didn't even look at it.

Before the State forward could even drop his hips to play the puck, I threw my entire weight forward, my shoulder driving directly into his chest with a force that sounded like an iron gate slamming shut.

He went airborne, his helmet flying off as he slammed flat against the ice, the breath leaving his lungs in a violent, wet gasp.

The stadium erupted into a frenzy of screams, boos, and blowing whistles, but I was already skating away, my eyes dark, searching the ice for the next target.

I didn't care about the penalty box.

I didn't care about the scoreboard.

If my world was going to burn, I was going to make sure everyone else on the ice felt the heat.

By the time the third period winding down to its final two minutes, the arena was in a state of absolute, chaotic hysteria.

The scoreboard read 4-1.

We were winning.

We were minutes away from a National Championship, a historic victory that should have been the greatest night of my life.

But I felt absolutely nothing.

My left shoulder was throbbing from a brutal collision in the second period, my knees were aching, and my jersey was soaked through with sweat and melted ice.

Every time I went to the bench, Chad or the coach tried to hand me a water bottle, tried to slam their hands against my pads in celebration, but they stopped when they saw my face.

Nobody wanted to touch me. I was a live wire, radiating a dark, volatile energy that made even my own teammates give me space.

"Keep the puck in their zone! Thirty seconds!" the coach screamed from the bench.

State pulled their goalie, throwing six attackers onto the ice in a desperate, futile attempt to close the gap.

The puck squirted loose into our defensive corner.

A State winger chased it down, looking over his shoulder, expecting me to play the puck.

I didn't play the puck.

I played him.

I pinned him against the plexiglass with a hit so violent the entire barrier flexed outward.

The crowd behind the glass scrambled back, eyes wide with fear.

The puck drifted away, cleared by Chad toward the empty net at the far end of the rink.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

The horn sounded.

The game was over.

The Eastern Bulldogs were the National Champions.

Instantly, the ice was flooded with blue and gold.

Helmets, gloves, and sticks were thrown into the air as the bench emptied, my teammates screaming, crying, throwing their arms around each other in a massive, tangled pile at center ice.

Silver and gold confetti began to rain down from the rafters, sticking to the damp ice and the sweat on my face.

I stood completely still on the blue line, my stick still held firmly in my hand, my chest heaving.

Chad ran up to me, grabbing my jersey, pulling me into a suffocating hug.

“We did it, man! We fucking did it! You're going to the NHL, Reed!"

"Yeah," I muttered, my voice sounding raspy, detached, as if it belonged to someone else. "We did it."

I gently disengaged from his grip, my eyes instinctively moving away from the celebration, away from the trophy table being wheeled onto the ice by the athletic directors, and looked up.

High up into the elevated press box, behind the glass where the student journalists and network media were packing up their gear.

The crowd was a blur of movement, but she was standing perfectly still.

Summer.

She was wearing a dark hood, her hands gripped tightly over the railing, looking down at the ice.

Looking down at me.

Even through the falling confetti and the distance of the arena, our eyes locked with a terrifying, magnetic precision.

The memory of her mouth against mine, the way she had looked at me in the dim light of my truck, the soft, fragile vulnerability I thought we shared—it all curdled inside me, turning into a bitter, rancid poison.

She looked pale.

She looked like she was waiting for something.

An explanation? An apology? A sign that I was still the stupid, trusting idiot she had manipulated all semester?

I let my gaze harden until it was a sheet of black ice.

I didn't smile.

I didn't blink.

I didn't give her a single shred of the boy she had broken.

With slow, deliberate malice, I looked right through her.

I shifted my gaze a fraction of an inch to the left, focusing on a random advertisement on the stadium wall, completely erasing her presence from my vision.

I treated her exactly like what she was—a ghost.

A shadow.

A liability that had been cut from the roster.

I turned my back on the press box, skating toward the center of the ice to lift a gold trophy that felt as heavy, and as hollow, as a block of lead.