Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

When I woke up my head was pounding.Not the gentle kind of headache that fades when you sit up. The deep persistent kind that sits behind your eyes and reminds you of every bad decision that led to the moment you are currently in. My leg was worse. A sharp insistent ache that ran from my ankle upward every time I shifted position.I looked around slowly.Liam was already awake. Sitting on his bed looking at me with that careful expression he had worn since last night.“You’re awake,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”I nodded and forced a smile that I did not feel anywhere in my body. I didn’t want him to worry. He had already done more than enough.“Coach Merritt came by earlier,” he said. “Your team is leaving in an hour.” He paused. “We’re staying on with the Eagles.”I looked at him.An hour.I sat up slowly and swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood and immediately understood that my leg had opinions about that decision. Sharp loud opinions. I kept my face neutral and

POV: Ava CarterWhen we walked back into the dressing room something had shifted.I could feel it before anyone said a word. The way eyes moved toward me differently. The way space was made without being asked for. Like the game had rearranged something in the room and everyone was still figuring out where they stood in the new version of it.I sat down and said nothing and let myself enjoy it quietly. I had earned this feeling. Every night alone on the ice. Every morning before anyone else was awake. Every rep and every drill and every moment I had pushed past the point where my body wanted to stop.I had listened to Liam and it had worked and I was so happy I could barely contain it.Coach Merritt came in and the room settled.“Let’s have a quick meeting,” he said.Everyone found a seat.“Okay.” He looked around at all of us slowly. “Thank you boys. The team played really well today. I am proud of every single one of you.” He paused. “Especially Kai. And mostly Noah.” He looked at m

POV: Ava CarterI walked out of that restaurant feeling like something inside me had been rearranged without my permission.My heart was racing. My hands were not entirely steady. I kept walking without a direction because standing still felt worse and the movement gave me something to do with the feeling that was climbing up through my chest and into my throat.Was that the right choice?I had dreamed about Liam Brooks for three years. Three years of watching him from the wrong side of everything. Three years of being Noah’s sister in every room he was in. And when he finally sat across from me and wrote a question in tomato sauce on a dessert plate and looked at me with his whole heart open I looked him in the eye and lied to his face.I found a quiet spot away from the street. A small bench where nobody was passing. I sat down.And I cried.Not loudly. Just the quiet kind that comes when something hurts more than you prepared for. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and

POV: Kai BennettI had made a promise to my brother before he died.Not a dramatic promise. Not the kind that gets made in hospitals with people crying around you. Just a quiet one between two brothers sitting on the edge of a bed. I will carry it forward, I had said. I will make it mean something.My brother had been captain of the Falcons in his time. That jersey. That patch. That position. It was the last real piece of him that still existed somewhere in the world outside of photographs and the specific silence my father carried around the house like a second skin.Becoming captain was the only thing I could think of that would make me feel close to him again. The only thing that might make my father look at me and see something worth looking at.My father had loved my brother more. That was not a feeling or an interpretation. It was simply a fact that lived in our house the way furniture lived there. Obvious and permanent and never discussed.So I needed the captaincy. I needed it

POV: Ava CarterNoah sat on the edge of my bed and watched me fall apart quietly.I didn’t say anything for a long time. I just sat with the weight of it pressing down on me from every direction. Everything was moving faster than I had ever imagined it would move and I had no hands free to slow any of it down.Then Noah broke the silence.“Don’t worry,” he said. “I already have a plan. Don’t get worked up. I will fix this.”I looked at him. “How Noah. How exactly.” I stood up and started moving because standing still felt impossible. “First he brings another woman into this house without a single word to either of us and then he brings a girl who is going to be in my class and my cover is going to be blown before I even get back to the academy and all my work, all of it—” I stopped and pressed my hands against my head. “My efforts. Everything I have done.”“Ava.” His voice was calm and steady the way it got when he had already thought something through. “I will talk to Dad. I will han