chapter 7

The bruises had started to yellow at the edges by the third morning, but the memory under them stayed black.

I woke with the sheets twisted around my legs and the phantom weight of his body still pressed along my back. For a long minute I didn’t move. I just lay there listening to the thin winter light push against the curtains and catalogued every place that still ached. The deep pull between my hips. The faint tenderness where his teeth had marked my shoulder. The way my pulse seemed to live lower now, as if it had relocated to the exact center of what he had taken.

Hate was supposed to be clean. This wasn’t. This sat in my chest like wet ash—heavy, smeared, impossible to scrape out.

I showered longer than necessary, water hot enough to redden the skin, and dressed in layers that hid everything. High neck. Long sleeves. Leggings that sat above the worst of the fingerprints. Armor had become ritual. I left the hostel before the corridors filled and took the longest route to the rink so the cold could do some of the work my mind refused to finish.

The building was already awake. Voices carried from the weight room. The sharp smell of liniment and cold rubber met me at the doors. I changed in silence, laced my skates with hands that only trembled once, and stepped onto the ice while most of the team was still pulling on gear.

Damian was there.

Of course he was.

He moved through a set of tight turns at the far end, stickhandling a puck with the kind of economy that made every other player look wasteful. He didn’t glance over when the door closed behind me. He didn’t need to. I felt the exact second his attention locked onto my back like a hand settling between my shoulder blades.

I started on the opposite side and kept my head down. Simple edges. Long strides. Nothing that required thought. The cold worked its way into my lungs and for a few minutes the only sound in the world was the clean cut of blades. Then he crossed the center line without warning and stopped a stick-length away, snow spraying from his edges in a perfect white arc.

“You’re still protecting the left side.”

My grip tightened on the stick. “I’m skating.”

“You’re compensating. Anyone who knows your game can see it.”

I lifted my eyes. The controlled distance he always wore was firmly in place, but underneath it something restless still moved—smaller than the night against the glass, but present. A tightness at the corner of his mouth. A fraction too much intensity in the way he watched me breathe.

“Maybe you should stop cataloguing me,” I said.

“Maybe you should stop giving me reasons to.”

The words landed low and quiet. They still carried the weight of every order he had ever given on this ice. I held his stare until the rest of the team began filtering through the tunnel, then turned and skated away before the silence could stretch into something more dangerous.

Practice was a study in controlled violence.

Coach ran full-ice forecheck drills until legs shook and breath came in white bursts. I took every hit square. I finished every check with more force than the play required. When the puck came to my stick I treated it like the only honest object left in the building. Daniel stayed on the far wing. Once, during a scramble along the boards, our gloves brushed. I jerked away hard enough that the nearest defenseman shot me a look. Daniel’s face tightened. He didn’t try again.

Damian’s voice cut through the noise only when it needed to—low, precise, absolute. Every time he skated past me the air shifted. Once his glove settled at the small of my back for less than a second, correcting the angle of my body on a breakout. The contact was professional. The heat it left under my jersey was not.

After the final whistle the team cleared in stages. I stayed longer than necessary, collecting pucks that didn’t need collecting, using the simple motion to keep from standing still. The building emptied until only the low mechanical hum of the dehumidifiers remained.

I knew he was still on the ice before I turned.

Damian stood near the center line, helmet off, stick across his knees. Sweat darkened the collar of his practice jersey. He watched me the way he watched opposing forwards in the final minute of a one-goal game—patient, certain, already three moves ahead.

“You’re going to tear the muscle you’re protecting if you keep skating like that,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not. And I’m done pretending I don’t see it.”

I straightened and faced him fully. The ache between my legs had settled into a constant low reminder that flared every time I shifted my weight. I used it to keep my voice steady.

“What exactly do you see, Captain?”

Something moved behind his eyes—too fast to name, too raw to ignore. He pushed off and closed the distance until only a stick-length of cold air remained between us. Up close I could see the faint shadow of sleeplessness under his eyes and the way his pulse moved a little too hard at the base of his throat.

“I see a player who is one hard hit from disappearing,” he said. “And I don’t allow that on my roster.”

“Is that all this is? Roster management?”

The question slipped out before I could stop it. Silence stretched, thick and dangerous. For a moment the careful mask he wore slipped and I saw the same hunger that had lived in him the night he took me apart against the glass. Then it was gone, locked down so completely I almost doubted it had been real.

“Go change, Arabel.”

The order was quiet. It still carried the full weight of his authority. I held his stare for three more heartbeats, long enough to make sure he understood the choice was mine, then turned and skated toward the tunnel without another word.

In the locker room the other girls spoke in low clusters that fell quiet when I passed. I changed quickly, pulled the hoodie tight around my throat, and stepped into the corridor with my bag over one shoulder.

Daniel was waiting near the water fountain again.

He looked worse than the last time—eyes bloodshot, jaw tight, the clean confidence he used to wear completely stripped. When he saw me he pushed off the wall and blocked the path without touching me.

“We need to talk.”

“No.”

“Arabel, please. I can’t keep watching you look through me like I’m already dead.”

I stopped. The hallway was empty except for the two of us and the distant sound of a door closing somewhere deeper in the building. “You stopped existing for me the moment I saw you inside her.”

His face twisted. “It was one night. One mistake. She was lonely and I was—”

“Finish that sentence and I will make sure every person on this team knows exactly what kind of man you are.”

He flinched like I had hit him. The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. When he finally spoke his voice had dropped to something almost broken.

“I still love you.”

The words landed with no force at all. I looked at the boy I had once planned entire winters around and felt nothing but a vast, clean emptiness where the love used to live.

“Then you should have remembered that before you climbed into my mother’s bed.”

I stepped around him. He didn’t try to stop me. The sound of his uneven breathing followed me all the way to the exit doors and then faded into the cold.

Outside the snow had started again, fine and steady. I walked with my head down, bag strap digging into my shoulder, the wind working its way through the thin layers of my clothes. I made it halfway across the courtyard behind the athletic building before the familiar weight of footsteps sounded behind me.

I didn’t turn.

“You’re following me now?”

Damian’s voice came low and even. “I’m making sure you get where you’re going.”

“I don’t need a keeper.”

“No.” A pause. “But you have one anyway.”

I stopped and faced him. Snow melted against the dark fabric of his coat. Up close I could see the tension still living under his skin—smaller than the night on the ice, but present. A restlessness that hadn’t fully left him since the moment he had forced his way inside me and refused to stop.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

He closed the last of the distance until I had to tip my head back to keep his eyes. The wind caught the edge of his coat and brushed it against my leg. I refused to step back.

“I want you to stop looking at me like I’m the only thing that hurt you,” he said. “There are worse things circling you than me.”

“Name one.”

For a second I thought he might actually answer. Instead he reached up and brushed a melting flake from the edge of my hood with the side of his thumb. The touch was almost nothing. It still sent a current straight down my spine that settled low and unwanted between my hips.

“Go inside before you freeze,” he said. “We’ll talk when you’re ready to hear what I actually have to say.”

He stepped past me and walked toward the parking lot without looking back. I stood in the falling snow and watched until the dark shape of him disappeared between the cars.

Inside the hostel I locked the door, dropped my bag, and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands braced on my knees. The bruises throbbed in time with my pulse. The memory of his voice—low, certain, claiming a place in my life I had never offered—sat heavy behind my ribs.

I hated him.

I hated the way my body still remembered the exact shape of him filling me, the ruthless depth of every thrust, the broken sound he made when he came inside me while I cried against the glass.

I hated that some quiet, furious part of me had already started listening for the sound of his blades every time I stepped onto the ice.

I hated that the hate itself no longer felt pure.

Outside the snow kept falling, steady and silent. Inside I stared at the opposite wall and understood something I had been refusing to name for three straight days.

The night against the glass had not ended when he told me to leave.

It had only changed shape.

And whatever was still living under Damian Kane’s skin—whatever had turned the most controlled man I knew into something raw and starving that night—was not finished with me yet.

I pressed my palms against my eyes until colored lights exploded behind the lids and let the truth settle into the same place the bruises lived.

I was still running.

I just no longer knew from what.