Alle Kapitel von Skating With Hearts : Kapitel 81 – Kapitel 90

The next day felt like one long migraine.I hadn’t seen Skylar since yesterday, hadn’t gotten a single reply to my one thousand and one calls or texts. My phone screen was a graveyard of unanswered messages—Sky, talk to me. Please. Where are you?—all left on read, if at all. Or worse, not even delivered.It was like she’d disappeared, and the silence was driving me insane.Lectures? Forget it. I sat in the lecture hall, pen in hand, pretending to take notes while my eyes burned holes into the screen of my phone. The professor’s voice droned like white noise. I couldn’t follow a single point in microeconomics or whatever the hell he was teaching.Every vibration of my phone jolted my chest like defibrillator paddles, only to find it was some useless group chat notification or Ethan spamming memes. The one person I needed to hear from was nowhere.By the second class, I’d stopped pretending to listen. My knee bounced under the desk, hands running through my hair until I looked like I

Suddenly, I did the first thing that came to me to do.The sound of Ryan’s voice—raw, torn, furious—echoed in my head when my legs finally moved. I didn’t even realize I was running until the cold air of the rink’s hallway slapped me across the face. It was then I realized I was running like a coward. My sneakers squeaked against the rubber flooring, every step a frantic beat of ‘get out, get out, get out’. My lungs burned, but it wasn’t from exertion. It was from the way his eyes had looked at me—betrayed, desperate, like I’d reached in and ripped something vital out of him.And maybe I had.But what was I supposed to do? Pretend that picture Caleb shoved in my face hadn’t shredded the ground beneath me? Pretend my heart hadn’t folded into something ugly the second I saw Ryan’s lips pressed against Jasmine’s?I stumbled into the locker hallway, pressing my back against the wall. My chest heaved like I’d just run a marathon, palms clammy against the painted cinderblocks. I squeeze

30 fucking days. One fucking month without talking to Ryans and it felt like it was one messed up year. I didn’t think a month could feel this heavy. But somehow, each day that passed pressed on me harder than the last. It was like someone had stacked weights on my chest and forgotten to take them off.Not talking to Ryan was… suffocating. God, it was fucking suffocating.I’d walk past the rink on my way to class and hear the scrape of skates, the echo of pucks against boards, and my chest would tighten until I had to look away. Sometimes I thought about texting him and just say something stupid like, “Hey, did you eat today?” but my fingers froze every time I tried. Because how do you talk to someone after you ran away from them for weeks without any reasonable explanation? After you let all your messy trust issues boil over and wreck everything? How do you fucking do that?And exams didn’t care that my heart felt like roadkill. They came anyway. I’d sit in the library with my no

I wasn’t planning on telling Dr. Hall about Ryan again.But the second I sat down on that couch, with Charlie the cat nosing at my shoelaces like he wanted to trip me, the words shoved their way up.“I keep thinking about calling him,” I blurted immediately.Dr. Hall didn’t even blink at this. She just relaxed back in her armchair, her pen resting across the top of her notebook. “Ryans?”“Yeah,” I muttered, sinking lower into the couch. “Not that it matters. I never actually do it.”“What stops you?”Everything. The picture. The way my chest still felt like a cracked rib cage when I thought of him. The silence between us that had stretched too long. The fact that I hadn’t heard his voice in weeks and I hated that it hurt so much.But what came out was, “ Because despite everything you said last time, I am still scared. I don’t want to look stupid. I don’t want to be the girl who forgives too easily and ends up in the same place again. That's why.”Dr. Hall nodded slowly. “So you’re pr

The morning air bit at my skin the second I stepped out of my dorm. I tugged my hoodie tighter around my shoulders, hood halfway up, hair still a mess because I couldn’t be bothered to do more than run my hand through it. Sleep had been a joke these days—broken, restless, or absent altogether. The worst thing was that I didn't even care about it. I just wanted to make it to class without bumping into anyone. Keep my head down, survive the day. That was the plan.That was the only plan. But, of course, plans don’t mean much when Jasmine Campbell is leaning casually against your doorframe like she owns the place.“Morning, Ryans,” she said, her voice soft but edged with that teasing lilt she always carried.She looked… well, she always looked beautiful. Her dark hair fell in waves over her shoulders, catching the pale morning light. Perfect skin, polished nails, lips painted in a muted rose shade that matched her coat. The kind of girl you couldn’t not notice, even when you weren’t