chapter 2

The hostel room smelled like someone else’s life.

Cheap detergent. Old carpet. The faint chemical sweetness of the air freshener the RA sprayed every Monday. I sat on the edge of the thin mattress with my phone face-down beside me and counted the missed calls until the numbers blurred. Twenty-three from Daniel. Fourteen from my mother. Three from an unknown number that I already knew belonged to her.

I didn’t open a single message.

My body still ached from the extra hours on the ice. Good. Pain was honest. Pain didn’t lie with its hands and its mouth and its soft little sounds in the dark. I pulled my knees up to my chest and stared at the crack in the plaster above the desk until my eyes burned.

Somewhere down the hall a door slammed. Laughter floated past my door and faded. Normal girls living normal nights. I wondered if any of them had ever walked in on the two people who were supposed to love them most and felt the floor disappear.

I stood up too fast. Blood rushed to my head and the room tilted. I caught myself on the desk, breathing hard, and forced my feet to move. Shower. Clothes. Routine. If I kept moving maybe the images would stay behind me instead of climbing into bed with me again.

The water was lukewarm at best. I scrubbed until my skin felt raw, until the scent of the rink and the memory of perfume were both gone. When I stepped out the mirror was fogged. I wiped a clear circle with my palm and stared at the girl who looked back. Same dark eyes. Same mouth Daniel used to kiss like he meant it. Same body my mother used to call beautiful when she brushed my hair after practice.

I turned away before I could hate her too.

My phone lit up again while I was pulling on clean sweatpants. Daniel’s name. I watched it ring until it stopped. Ten seconds later a text appeared.

Please just talk to me.

I typed three words and deleted them. Then I typed nothing at all and put the phone in the bottom of my bag under my skates.

Sleep came in pieces. Every time I drifted I heard the same sounds—the wet slide of skin, the soft broken moan, the creak of the headboard. I woke with my heart slamming against my ribs and the taste of metal in my mouth. The second time I woke I was crying without sound, tears sliding into my hair, and I pressed my face into the thin pillow until the fabric was soaked.

Morning arrived gray and mean. I dressed for practice like armor. Black leggings. Team hoodie. Hair scraped back so tight it pulled at my temples. I left the hostel before most of the girls were awake and walked the long way to the rink so I wouldn’t have to pass the parking lot where Daniel usually left his truck.

He was already there.

Leaning against the entrance doors with his hands in his pockets and his eyes red. The moment he saw me he pushed off the wall and started toward me.

“Arabel—”

I kept walking.

He stepped in front of me. Close enough that I could smell the cologne I used to bury my face in. Close enough that the betrayal felt brand new again.

“Please,” he said. His voice cracked. “It wasn’t what you think.”

I looked at him then. Really looked. The boy who taught me how to take a slap shot when we were fifteen. The boy who held me the night my father left and told me I would never be alone. The boy who had been inside my mother twelve hours earlier.

“Move,” I said.

“I love you.”

The words landed like a slap. I laughed once, sharp and ugly, and the sound surprised even me.

“You love me so much you fucked my mother in my childhood bed.”

His face went white. “It was a mistake. She— I don’t know how it happened. It just—”

“Don’t.” My voice stayed flat. “If you say another word I will scream until every person in this building hears exactly what you did.”

He stepped back like I had hit him. I walked past him into the cold of the rink and didn’t look over my shoulder.

Practice was brutal. Coach ran us until two girls threw up in the snow outside the loading doors. Damian’s voice never rose above a low command, but every player on the ice moved like their lives depended on it. Including me. I took every hit. I chased every puck. I slammed my body into the boards harder than necessary because the physical pain was the only thing loud enough to drown out the rest.

Damian watched me the entire time.

I felt his eyes the way you feel a storm coming—pressure in the air, a shift you can’t ignore. When we lined up for the final drill he skated past me close enough that his shoulder brushed mine. The contact lasted less than a second. It left a burn that lasted the rest of the day.

After practice I stayed on the ice alone again. The Zamboni hummed at the far end. I skated slow circles, letting the cold work its way into my bones. Footsteps sounded behind me. I didn’t turn.

“You’re going to tear something if you keep skating like that.”

Damian’s voice. Quiet. Controlled.

I stopped at the boards and rested my forearms on the top rail. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

I turned then. He stood three feet away in his practice gear, helmet tucked under one arm, dark hair damp with sweat. Up close his eyes were darker than I remembered. Something restless moved behind them.

“Mind your own business, Captain.”

One corner of his mouth almost lifted. Almost. “You are my business. You’re on my line. You look like you’re one hard check away from breaking.”

“Maybe I already did.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them. Silence stretched between us, thick and dangerous. He studied my face the way he studied game film—searching for weakness, for the exact place to strike.

“Who hurt you?”

I laughed again. Softer this time. “Does it matter?”

“It matters if it affects the team.”

Of course. The team. The only thing that ever mattered to Damian Kane.

I pushed off the boards and skated past him toward the exit. He didn’t follow. But I felt his eyes on my back until the door closed between us.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of classes I didn’t hear and food I didn’t taste. By evening the hostel felt smaller than it had the night before. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and stared at the dark screen of my phone. At some point I opened the gallery without meaning to.

There we were. Daniel and me after the championship last spring. His arm around my shoulders. My head tipped against his chest. Both of us smiling like the future was something solid we could hold.

I deleted the photo. Then the next one. Then every picture that still had his face in it. When the gallery was empty I dropped the phone and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until colored lights exploded behind my lids.

A knock sounded at the door.

Three soft taps.

I didn’t move.

Another knock. Then a voice I knew better than my own.

“Baby. Please open the door.”

My mother.

The sound of her voice cracked something open inside me that I had been holding shut with pure will. I stood on unsteady legs and walked to the door. My hand hovered over the lock. I could open it. I could let her explain. I could listen to whatever pretty lies she had prepared on the drive over.

Instead I leaned my forehead against the wood and spoke so quietly I wasn’t sure she would hear.

“Go away.”

Silence. Then her voice again, thick with tears. “I never meant for you to find out like that. I never meant for any of this—”

“You never meant for me to find out at all.”

Another silence. Longer. When she spoke again her voice had dropped to a whisper.

“He was lonely. You were always at practice. Always with the team. I was lonely too. It just… happened.”

I closed my eyes. The hallway outside was so quiet I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door.

“Leave,” I said. “If you come back I will tell Dad everything. Every detail. And then I will tell the entire team what kind of woman raised me.”

Her soft sob was the last sound I heard before her footsteps retreated down the hall.

I stayed pressed against the door until my legs gave out. Then I slid to the floor and finally let the tears come. They arrived without sound, without drama, just a steady hot stream that soaked the front of my hoodie and left my throat raw.

Sometime after midnight I stood up, wiped my face, and changed into the clothes I would wear tomorrow. Practice gear. Team colors. Armor.

I had nowhere left to run except the ice.

And the ice belonged to Damian Kane.