All Chapters of Thin Ice Between Us: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Pro Development Hockey Camp, Ten Years AgoETHANI clock him the minute that he steps onto the ice, because it’s pretty much impossible not to.Some bodies announce themselves without trying, simply by existing at a scale the rest of the room has to adjust to. He’s one of those: chest and shoulders and thighs heavy and rippling with muscle, presence so dense it bends the drills around him. He doesn’t skate so much as arrive, each push into the ice deliberate and punishing, like he expects the surface to withstand him or be broken by the attempt.He moves like a blunt instrument learning speed, all force and fury. There’s violence coiled in him, not just in the way that he hits, but in how he stands, how he breathes, how he occupies space without apology. I’ve played hockey for enough years to have seen this kind of asshole before, so this one should be easy enough to dismiss. For some reason, I can’t do that with him.When we line up for drills, I feel him beside me before I see him.

Stanley Cup Final. Ten Years Later.ETHANI’ve been tracking Cal Mercer’s career for a decade.You don’t have to like a man to know his numbers, his habits, the arc of his reputation. In this league, some players become unavoidable, not because they’re particularly talented or brilliant, but because they're loud and demand attention. Cal has always been loud in all the ways that sell this sport: hits that rattle glass, penalties that make highlight reels that get a million likes, a body built to look dangerous even when he’s standing still.Violence photographs well, after all.I’ve known exactly what he would become since I first laid eyes on him back at training camp. The league loves a monster that it can point at, coaches love a weapon that they can unleash, fans love rage that they don’t have to carry themselves and can simply observe from their own living room, or from the arena seats. Cal delivers all of it reliably, every single time he hits the ice.Across from me tonight, st

ETHANUp close and half-naked, Cal Mercer is utterly overwhelming.Not in the way the press means when they talk about his size, not as spectacle or intimidation, but in the way his body seems to exceed the logic of the space meant to hold it, like the hallway itself has underestimated what it would mean to contain that much heat, that much muscle, that much barely restrained force stripped of pads and context and armor.He’s shirtless, skin still flushed from exertion, heat rolling off him in a way that I can feel without even touching. His chest is broad to the point of near-impossibility, peppered with black hair, muscles layered thick and dense, rising and falling with breaths that haven’t settled yet. Veins stand out along his arms and neck, dark and pronounced, like the map of something dangerous and alive just under the surface.Ink crawls over him, black and dark-blue tattoos, lines disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans, spiraling over shoulders that look built to abs

ETHANMaya doesn’t stay long, and that's always been the thing I like best about her. The clean edges of it, the unspoken agreement that whatever exists between us begins at my door and ends long before sunrise. It’s uncomplicated and temporary and blessedly free of the kind of emotional excavation that other people seem to crave from intimacy.She arrives sometime after two a.m., slipping into my penthouse with her heels dangling from two fingers, lipstick slightly smudged, perfume carrying the stale sweetness of crowded bars and expensive gin. When she kisses me, it feels practiced in the best possible way, familiar enough that neither of us wastes energy pretending that this is romance instead of ritual.We've never asked each other difficult questions. She doesn't ask where my head is when I'm staring out the window after a game, and I don't ask why she always comes to me after a night out instead of before it. We exist in the comfortable space between curiosity and commitment, wh

CAL (CONTINUED)I turn, letting the water hit my chest, and the movement pulls at the scratches again.I picture her hands on me because I should, because that was real. Because that’s what men like me do after losing: drink too much, find someone willing, take what’s offered, wake up emptier and call it normal.But the image won’t hold.Her nails become his hands. Her voice becomes his silence. The back room of the bar becomes that hallway, narrow and cold and charged with something I still can’t name.And suddenly I’m not imagining being grabbed or shoved or fought, all the things I understand, all the things that I know how to meet with teeth and muscle and anger.I’m imagining Ethan standing in front of me with that unreadable expression, not touching me at all. He’s simply looking at me until I lower my eyes because he told me to without words.My breath leaves me in a rough, broken rush.Jesus Christ.The thought should disgust me. It should make me angry enough to punch the tile