All Chapters of Ice Between Rivals : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

The results board was crowded.Everyone pressing forward, scanning for their name, the collective held breath of people who had worked toward something and were about to find out what it was worth. I pushed through the edges of the crowd and ran my finger down the list — once, twice — and didn’t find us.I stepped back. Looked higher.There. At the very top, in the column reserved for the students the academy wanted everyone to see.Two names.Mine. His.Tied.I stood there for a second with my finger still pointing at nothing, just reading it again to make sure I hadn’t misread it, and then something broke loose in my chest and I ran.He was on his bed when I came through the dorm door — lying on his back, one arm over his eyes, the picture of someone in the middle of nothing in particular.I had bought a Coke on the way back.I shook it.Opened it directly over him.“What—” He sat up, sputtering, blinking Coke out of his eyes, his expression cycling through confusion and indignation

His Hoodie“Noah.” He looked at my hands on his chest with genuine bewilderment. “What are you doing?”“You’re mad at me,” I said. “How else am I supposed to get through to you?”And then I started tickling him.He lasted approximately two seconds.“Noah—” The laugh broke out of him before he could stop it — surprised and completely unguarded, the kind of laugh that has no performance in it whatsoever. “Stop — Noah, stop—”“Talk to me then.”“I can’t — Noah — stop—”He was laughing so hard he could barely get words out. I had never heard him laugh like this — full and helpless, the laugh of someone who has forgotten, temporarily and completely, to be guarded about anything.We ended up on the bed.I was sitting over him, he was still laughing, and I looked down at his face — completely open, eyes bright, all the careful composure he usually wore entirely gone — and felt something move through me that I was not prepared for.Oh.I got up. Quickly. Sat on the edge of the bed and looked

He was on the ground and there was blood and my brain stopped working properly.“Kai.” I dropped beside him. My knees hit the road and I didn’t feel it. “Kai.”He was breathing. Barely conscious — his eyes half-open, unfocused, his body completely still in the way that meant he wasn’t choosing the stillness. Blood. Too much of it, moving from somewhere near his head, dark against the road.“Please.” My voice came out in pieces. “Please stay. Don’t — Kai, don’t — please stay with me—”The car was already gone. Already around the corner and away, as though nothing had happened, as though this was nothing.I pressed my hand to his head and looked at the blood on my palm and made a decision.I got up and ran.The house. The maids. I came through the door at full speed with blood on my shirt and they were already moving toward me before I’d finished the sentence.“Kai was hit — he’s in the road — I need help now—”They ran.I ran to my father’s study. I knew where the spare keys were — I h

“Kai.” I grabbed his hand. “Please. I thought we were close — why are you just going quiet on me like this?”He stood. I looked away.“Ever since you came back from the hospital you’ve been acting differently.” I kept my voice steady even though it wasn’t. “That’s not okay. You don’t have to do that — we can just talk about it. You said we were friends.”He said nothing.The silence pushed something loose in my chest.“That’s the problem with you.” The words came out faster than I’d planned them. “You think silence solves everything. Should I go quiet on you? Would you feel what I feel right now? Is that fair to you?” I looked at him. “Are you even being fair?”He turned.The coldness in his eyes was the kind I hadn’t seen since our earliest weeks — the version of Kai that kept everyone at a distance as a matter of principle, before grapes and hot water bottles and three hours on an ice rink floor looking for a necklace.“Noah,” he said. Quiet. Final. “Let go of my hand.”I let go.My

We sat in the cafeteria and Liam looked at me with the focused, unhurried attention of someone who has decided they are not leaving until they understand what they’re looking at.“Who made you cry?” he said. Simple. Direct.I looked at my hands on the table.After seeing Kai walk past me like a stranger, the words I’d had queued up had rearranged themselves into something I didn’t want to say out loud. How could I tell him? I confessed to my stepbrother and he told me to keep my distance and now I have to share a room with him and pretend to be a boy who doesn’t love him. There was no version of that conversation that stayed manageable.“My dad,” I said instead. “He’s been hard on me and I’ve been carrying it.”Liam looked at me for a moment — the specific look of someone deciding whether to accept what they’ve been given or push further. He accepted it.“I’m sorry,” he said. Then, quieter: “But Noah — you’ve changed. You used to let me in. You used to tell me things.” He held my gaze