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Home / Romance / Ice Between Rivals / Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

All Chapters of Ice Between Rivals : Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

158 Chapters

Chapter 131

“I want to sleep next to you, Noah.”Kai said it with that easy grin of his — the one that made everything sound simple, like the most natural request in the world.No way, I thought immediately, my chest tightening.These were supposed to be my happiest days. And in so many ways they were — Kai, and what was growing between us, and the way he looked at me like I was someone worth looking at. But underneath all of it, quiet and persistent, was the worry. The constant, exhausting worry. Because if he got too close he would want more — more proximity, more openness, more of me — and every lie I had told was becoming heavier by the day.“No,” I said.“Come on, Noah. Please.” He shifted toward me slightly. “I won’t touch you. I just want to be close to you.” He paused. “Why are you always pushing your boyfriend away?”The word landed somewhere in my chest and just sat there.Boyfriend.“I’m your boyfriend,” he said again, softer this time, like he was trying the word on and finding he lik

Chapter 132

The principal’s office smelled like old paper and mild authority.I sat in the chair across from his desk and tried to look like someone in possession of a reasonable amount of composure.“How can I help you, Noah?”“It’s about Kai Bennett, sir.” I held my hands still in my lap. “He’s been missing for a day. His phone is off. I’m worried something has happened to him.”The principal looked at me for a moment with the particular expression of an adult encountering something they find both concerning and endearing.“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said — and there was a small, genuine warmth in it, the kind that arrives when someone is surprised by a person’s decency. “It says something about you, that you’d come here for someone else.” He leaned back slightly. “But you know how boys are. Stubborn. He likely left without asking permission, which means he’s in trouble — because Coach Merritt wouldn’t have authorised a day off for anyone right now.” He reached for his phone. “Let me ca

Chapter 133

The road rose steeply above everything.From up here I could see the whole spread of it — rooftops, roads, the small moving shapes of people below — and my legs were doing something entirely involuntary about the height. I kept my eyes at mid-distance and tried not to think about how far down the ground was.Kai’s hands found mine. Large, warm, closing around them with the specific steadiness of someone who has made a decision about what you need before you’ve made it yourself.“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I noticed how much heights bother you. Just like the dark.” He looked at me. “That night — when the electricity went and I didn’t come in — I was outside the door the whole time. I didn’t know what to do or say. I was so confused about everything. But I was there.”I looked at him. “I heard you,” I said quietly. “The breathing thing — what you told me to do. I used it.”He smiled. “I thought you weren’t listening to me.”“Weird guy,” I said.He let go of my hands.My eyes went wide.

Chapter 134

My father’s hand came down on the desk with enough force to make me flinch.He looked between us — the particular look of a man who has been patient for longer than he intended and has reached the end of it. “When did this start? I trusted both of you. And what do I hear from Coach? That you’ve been skipping practice. Sneaking out. What exactly is going on?”I glanced at Kai.Kai glanced back.The relief that moved through me was so complete I almost laughed. He didn’t know about us. This was about practice.Before I could construct an answer, Kai spoke. “Noah has been unwell. I didn’t want to worry you — I’ve been taking him to the hospital in the evenings.” His voice was measured. Calm. The voice of someone delivering information rather than a story.My father’s expression shifted. The anger softened by a degree. “You should have told me sooner.” He looked at me. “Are you better now?”I nodded quickly. “Yes, sir.”“Good.” He straightened. “And another thing.” His voice returned to i

Chapter 135

“That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?” Kai said, with the easy composure of someone who has decided to own the moment completely. “But we’re just late. Family issues. Nothing more.”Coach looked at him for a long moment. Then — remarkably — let it go.“Practice,” he said. “Separately today.”I looked at Kai. He nodded once, barely perceptible, and we split.I found Ken and Miller and skated over with the casual energy of someone who has nothing particular on their mind.They looked at me.“Anything you want to tell us?” Ken asked.“No,” I said pleasantly.“You’ve been distant.”“I was sick. He’s my roommate — he helped out. Nothing to analyse.” I kept my voice light. “Can we just practice?”They accepted it, with the specific expression of people who don’t fully believe something and have decided to let it go for now.We began the stretches — floor work, leg strengthening, spread out across the ice in rows.I was mid-stretch, focused, minding my own business entirely, when somethin

Chapter 136

“Noah,” Kai said, holding up his phone. “You’re trending.” “I know.” I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at my own screen. “I genuinely don’t know how to feel about it.” “People love you.” He said it with a specific quality in his voice that had nothing to do with pride. “Boys and girls both.” He paused. “All of them.” I looked up. “Are you jealous?” I asked. “No,” he said immediately. I stood up. “Are you jealous?” “I just don’t know how to feel about all these people—” He stopped. “What if you pick one of them?” I looked at him for a moment — this person who had carried me through rain and found a necklace on an empty ice rink and paid strangers to walk up a hill with love confessions — and felt something so warm and so specific move through my chest that I couldn’t contain the smile. I stood on my toes. Both hands on his cheeks. “Nobody,” I said clearly, looking directly at him, “is taking me away from my baby.” Something in his face shifted completely.

Chapter 137

On the way back to the academy the cab was quiet. Not the comfortable quiet we had found between us over the past weeks — the easy, settled kind that didn’t need filling. This was different. Kai sat beside me and looked out the window and said nothing, and the nothing had a quality to it that I recognised. I looked at him. “Do you like her?” He turned. “Does it matter, Noah?” “Of course it matters.” “No,” he said. Flat. Final. “It doesn’t.” He looked back out the window and the set of his jaw told me the conversation was finished whether I agreed or not. I let it be. I wanted to tell him what I had found on my phone — the photo, my cousin, the pieces fitting together — but I needed to be certain first. A photo was not proof. A tagged post was not a confession. I needed something solid. I said nothing. The journey finished in the same quiet it had started in. At the academy gates I stopped. “Go ahead. I’ll find you there.” He looked at me for half a second — somethin

Chapter 138

Kai’s POVThe moment Noah walked out I felt it.Not relief. Not vindication. The opposite of both — a quiet, immediate hollowness that arrived before I had even finished watching the door close.Hanna’s hand was still on mine.I looked at it.She had been saying it for days — quietly, persistently, with the patient consistency of someone who knows repetition does the work that argument can’t. Your brother has feelings for me, Kai. He keeps finding excuses to be near me. I think he wants to hurt you — get back at you for the Bella situation. She had said it in different arrangements, at different moments, always with the same soft, regretful delivery of someone who hates to be the one saying it.And I had listened.Because Noah had come after Bella. Because the timing made a kind of sense if I squinted at it. Because it was easier, in some ways, to believe the version of events that kept my walls exactly where I had built them.But Noah’s eyes in that restaurant — the specific quality

Chapter 139

I walked back to his house with the number plate in my hand and the anger sitting high and hot in my chest.He was still on the sofa when I pushed the door open. Still wrapped in the blanket, still pale, still looking like someone who needed rest. I held the plate up where he could see it clearly.“What is this?” My voice was controlled but only just. “Explain it to me.”He looked at it.Then he looked at me.And the expression on his face — the specific, deflating quality of it — told me everything before he opened his mouth. He sat up slowly, the blanket falling away, and put both feet on the floor.“Noah. It’s not what—”“Don’t.” I stepped closer. “Don’t start with it’s not what you think. Because I’ve been looking at this number for weeks. I know exactly what it means.” My voice rose despite my effort to keep it level. “You knocked him down, Davis. You deliberately drove at him. Because of a girl? Because of Hanna? You tried to take someone’s life over that?”He stood up. “I was a

Chapter 140

I had made my peace with it.That was the thing I kept coming back to, sitting in the quiet of the room waiting for him to return. I had looked at every angle of what loving Noah meant — what it cost, what it complicated, what it said about me and about us — and I had arrived, slowly and without fanfare, at acceptance. Not because it was simple. Because he was worth the complexity.I knew the consequences could be severe. I could see clearly that our future had no obvious shape, no road that other people had walked before us that we could follow. But I loved him. That was the fact that sat at the centre of everything else and refused to move.So when he said he was going to Davis, my heart had moved in a way I couldn’t entirely explain. Not jealousy this time — something more like dread. A quiet, persistent sense that something was wrong that I didn’t have the information to name yet.I waited.He didn’t come.I checked the time. Checked again. Moved around the room. Sat back down. Th

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