All Chapters of Skating With Hearts : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

For several moments, a dark mood hung over us like the blinking “insert coin” sign over the air-hockey table.Jasmine’s hand was still in mine, small and cold, and for the first time all day she looked nothing like the girl who used to out-shoot me at hoops or crush me at Mario Kart. She looked like somebody who’d been ambushed and didn’t even realise it until now.I forced myself to let go of her fingers before I crushed them. “We need to get out of here,” I muttered.She blinked. “Why?”“Too loud.” I stood and grabbed my jacket. “And because I can’t think with Pac-Man dying in my ear every three seconds.”We stepped out of the arcade into the early-evening Boston air. The chill hit my face like a slap. Traffic hissed by on Tremont, people rushing toward the T, neon from the corner pizza place splashing red on the wet sidewalk. For a heartbeat I just stood there, breathing it in, trying to pull my pulse back down out of my throat.Jasmine wrapped her arms around herself. “Ryan… you’r

Charlie was the first thing I saw when I pushed open the glass door to Dr Hall’s office. His grey tabby tail flicked like a metronome on the edge of Dr. Hall’s desk, eyes half-closed, completely unbothered by the fact that he was a cat in an office meant for stressed-out college student like me.Dr. Hall was bent over a stack of manila files, glasses sliding down her nose. Her hair was pinned back in one of those clips that made her look like she could either grade papers or run a startup. She looked up with a quick flicker of surprise, then amusement.“Well, if it isn’t my favorite client.”I didn't say anything. Rather, my sneakers squeaked as I moved across the office’s polished floor and by the time I got to Dr. Hall’s cushion, I was already tugging my hoodie sleeves down over my fingers.Dr Hall pushed her glasses up as she watched me sit down. “No appointment?” I shook my head. There was no appointment actually. I was that anxious. No mental speech prepared. Just an ache to be

As I trudged out of Professor Dwayne’s statistics class, I was convinced that my brain had been scraped clean and sautéed on a pan.He’d spent the entire hour ranting about regression analysis like it was the cure to heartbreak. My notes looked like an alien’s shopping list—numbers and arrows going nowhere. At some point, I’d doodled a tiny cartoon of myself hanging from an x-axis, screaming for mercy.God, how I hate anything maths related. I found it very ridiculous that I was still offering maths when I was an English and literature student. Very stupid, in fact. I adjusted my backpack and pushed through the crowd of students flooding the hallway. Everyone seemed to have somewhere to be, someone to text, some caffeine to inhale. I just wanted to crawl under my blanket and pretend adulthood was optional. Absolutely.Boston’s wind greeted me like a slap as I walked—sharp, biting, full of attitude. My scarf whipped across my face as if to scold me for wearing it wrong. Three months

The next morning, I woke up with a headache that felt suspiciously emotional. Like my brain had been up all night arguing with my heart, and they’d both lost.Sunlight streamed through the blinds, landing right on my face like it was personally offended that I dared to still be in bed at ten a.m. I groaned, rolled over, and buried my head under the pillow.It didn’t help. Because as soon as I closed my eyes, I saw his.Ethan.His stupid, brown, infuriatingly steady eyes that somehow managed to look smug and sincere at the same time. I could still hear his voice, too — that smooth, teasing tone when he’d said “Maybe it’s just you I want to bend.”I groaned louder, sitting up like the sheer volume might drown out the memory. It didn’t.“Great,” I muttered to myself. “Now he’s haunting me. Perfect.”So fucking perfect.I should have known better than to have dinner with him. I should have known.Now, I could not stop thinking about him. ***A few minutes later, I tried distracting mys

If someone had told me a few months ago that I’d be huddled in Liam’s dorm room surrounded by pizza boxes, energy drinks, and four grown men arguing about romantic gestures, I would’ve laughed them out of the rink.But that was before Skylar stopped answering my texts. Before every day started to feel like skating blindfolded on thin ice.Now, desperate times called for desperate idiots and my teammates fit the bill perfectly. Especially as my roommate had been sick for some time and needed the space and quiet. Meanwhile Liam had no roommate in his dorm room for now which made this place the perfect choice. Right now, Liam was pacing across the room with a marker in hand like he was plotting a heist. Peter was sprawled on the couch half asleep, crust of pizza dangling from his fingers. Mateo and Nolan — the youngest on the team — were playing background music from someone’s speaker, alternating between breakup songs and club anthems just to “set the mood.”“This is insane,” I muttere