chapter 5

Morning light came in thin and gray through the hostel curtains. I woke already knowing my body had changed.

Every shift of my legs sent a deep, low ache through the center of me. The bruises on my hips had darkened overnight into perfect fingerprints. When I sat up the pull of muscle across my shoulders reminded me of the exact angle at which he had held me against the glass. I stayed still for a long time, staring at the opposite wall, and let the hate settle into something solid and useful.

I showered in water so hot it bordered on pain. Soap did nothing to erase the memory of his mouth or the way he had forced pleasure out of me like it belonged to him. I dressed carefully—high-waisted leggings that hid the worst of the marks, a long-sleeved team shirt, hoodie zipped to the throat. Armor again. Different kind.

The walk to the rink felt longer than usual. Snow from the night before had frozen into a thin crust that cracked under my boots. I kept my head down and my pace steady. Inside the athletic building the air smelled of rubber mats and cold metal. I changed in the farthest corner of the girls’ locker room and stayed silent while the others talked around me. No one asked why I looked like I hadn’t slept. No one needed to. The whole team had felt the shift in me for days.

On the ice the first breath of cold was almost a relief.

Then Damian stepped through the tunnel.

He looked exactly as he always did—controlled, precise, untouchable. No trace of the fever that had burned through him the night before. His eyes found me the moment he cleared the boards. The contact lasted less than a second. It still felt like a hand closing around my throat.

Practice began.

I played like the ice owed me something. Every stride was sharper. Every hit was harder. When the puck came to my stick I treated it like the only honest thing left in the world. Coach barked approval twice. I didn’t hear him. I only heard the sound of Damian’s blades whenever he passed too close, the low command of his voice when he corrected someone else’s positioning, the absolute absence of any acknowledgment that twelve hours earlier he had been buried inside me against the glass.

Daniel watched me from the opposite wing. I felt his attention the way you feel a bruise being pressed. During a scramble in front of the net he reached for the same puck I did. Our sticks tangled. For a fraction of a second our eyes met. Whatever he saw in mine made him look away first.

After the final whistle I stayed on the ice longer than anyone else, collecting pucks that didn’t need collecting. The building emptied in stages. First the younger players. Then the girls. Then Daniel, lingering near the tunnel until Damian’s voice cut across the rink in a single quiet order that sent him moving.

I was alone with the captain again.

He skated toward me without hurry. The same controlled power as always. Nothing of the shaking, sweating, desperate man from the night before remained on the surface. He stopped a full stick-length away and rested his forearms on the top of his stick.

“You’re favoring your left side,” he said.

My hands tightened on my own stick. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not skating like someone who’s fine.”

I lifted my eyes to his. The hate I had carried all morning rose clean and bright. “Maybe I’m skating like someone who was used and then told to leave.”

Something moved in his face—too fast to name. Then it was gone. He held my gaze without flinching.

“You were never supposed to be there.”

“And yet.”

Silence stretched. The Zamboni idled at the far end of the rink, waiting for us to clear. Damian’s jaw flexed once.

“What happened last night stays between us,” he said. The words were quiet, absolute. “It does not touch the team. It does not touch the season.”

I laughed once, short and sharp. The sound echoed off the empty seats. “You think I want anyone to know?”

“I think you’re angry enough to burn everything down. Including yourself.”

I stepped closer. Close enough to see the faint shadow of sleeplessness under his eyes. Close enough to remember the exact weight of his body driving into mine.

“You don’t get to decide what I do with my anger, Captain.”

For a moment the careful mask slipped. Heat flared behind his eyes—recognition, possession, something darker. Then he locked it down again and nodded once, as if we had reached an agreement I never offered.

“Get off the ice, Arabel. Before you tear the muscle you’re already protecting.”

He turned and skated away without waiting for an answer. I watched his back until the tunnel swallowed him. Only then did I realize my hands were shaking.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of lectures I didn’t hear and food I forced down without tasting. Every time I shifted in my seat the deep ache reminded me of him. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the yellow emergency lights and the fog of my own breath against the glass. Hate was supposed to be clean. This wasn’t. This lived too close to the memory of how hard I had come around him while tears froze on my cheeks.

Evening brought more snow. I walked the long way back to the hostel, past the library and the empty practice fields, letting the cold work its way into my lungs. My phone stayed silent in my pocket. Daniel had stopped calling. My mother had stopped too. The quiet should have felt like relief. It felt like standing in the center of a room after everyone else has left.

I was halfway across the small courtyard behind the athletic building when footsteps sounded behind me.

I knew the weight of them before I turned.

Damian stood ten feet away, hands in the pockets of a black coat, snow gathering on his shoulders. The outdoor lights caught the sharp lines of his face and made him look carved from something colder than the weather.

“You’re walking like it still hurts,” he said.

I didn’t bother denying it. “What do you want?”

He came closer. Slow. Controlled. The same man the entire university feared on the ice and wanted off it. Up close I could smell the clean cold of the night on his skin and underneath it the faintest trace of the rink.

“I want to know if you’re going to make this a problem.”

“For the team?”

“For yourself.”

I held his stare. The bruises under my clothes throbbed in time with my pulse. “You already made it a problem. You don’t get to stand here and ask me to clean it up.”

Something dangerous moved through his expression. He closed the last of the distance until I had to tip my head back to keep his eyes. Snow melted against the heat of his body. I could feel it.

“You think last night was simple for me,” he said, voice low enough that it stayed between us alone. “You think I walked into that rink planning to take you apart against the glass.”

“I think you did it anyway.”

His hand lifted. For a second I thought he would touch the place on my neck where his teeth had left a mark still hidden under my collar. He stopped short, fingers curling into a fist at his side instead.

“Go inside, Arabel.”

The order landed softer than the ones he gave on the ice. It still carried the same weight.

I stepped around him. Our shoulders nearly brushed. The near-contact sent a current straight down my spine that I refused to name. I walked the rest of the way to the hostel without looking back, even though every nerve in my body knew he watched until the door closed between us.

Inside my room I locked the door, stripped the hoodie and shirt, and stood in front of the small mirror above the desk. The bruises were darker now. Perfect ovals of purple and blue across my hips. The scrape of his teeth on the curve of my shoulder had bloomed into a deep red mark that would take days to fade. I touched it once with the tip of one finger and felt the echo of his mouth.

Hate should have been the only thing left.

Instead I felt the ghost of how completely he had filled me, how ruthlessly he had chased his own end inside my body, how my own traitor nerves had shattered around him while I cried.

I pulled a clean shirt over the evidence and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands locked together in my lap.

Tomorrow I would step onto the ice again.

He would be there—captain, legend, the man who had claimed me in the dark and then ordered me to pretend it never happened.

I would look him in the eye and give him nothing.

But the memory of his hands, his mouth, the brutal depth of him, had already taken up permanent residence under my skin.

And some part of me—quiet, furious, and unwilling—already knew that pretending would be the hardest thing I had ever done.