All Chapters of Icing The Heart: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The cracker stopped halfway to my mouth.I missed you.I should have had something sharp ready. Some sarcastic defense. Some clean little blade to cut the moment down before it grew too large.Nothing came.He stood on the other side of the island, tall and exhausted, with his hair still messy from the long night and his eyes heavy with everything he had done wrong and everything he wanted to do right. The sight of him should have been easier to resist.It was not.“I was right here,” I said.His mouth twisted. “No, you weren’t.”I looked down. He was right.For weeks, I had sat beside him in public, smiled for cameras, answered reporters, shared an apartment, shared a bed once, shared breath in the dark and still, I had been gone. Somewhere behind my eyes, behind my voice, behind every polite answer I used like a locked door.He had noticed.Jaxon noticed everything except the things fear made him blind to.A knock came at the door before either of us could say anything else.Both of

There was no photograph this time in this message.Only one line:She tied it around the steering wheel after the crash.The air left my lungs.My hand shook so badly the phone slipped.Jaxon caught it before it hit the floor.“What is it?” Agent Bennett asked sharply.I could not answer.Jaxon read the message and his face changed. It became cold and horrified.I shivered from just looking at it. He handed the phone to Agent Bennett over the seat.She read it, then immediately spoke into her earpiece. “We have another message from the unknown sender. Text only. Get tech on it now.”I barely heard her.The steering wheel.After the crash.My mind created the image before I could stop it.Rain. Metal. Glass. My mother’s red scarf wrapped around a broken steering wheel. A message? A marker? A warning? A child in another car seeing everything and carrying it for years in silence.My stomach twisted violently. I leaned forward, pressing a hand over my mouth.Jaxon’s hand came to my back.

The lights inside the rink came on all at once, harsh and unforgiving, spilling out through the cracked glass panels and broken seams of the building like something waking up after a long, patient sleep.It felt wrong.Rinks were supposed to hum into life slowly. First the compressors. Then the low mechanical churn beneath the ice. Then the dull flicker of overhead lights warming into brightness. This was abrupt. Intentional. A stage being lit, not a place being opened.Victor Shaw did nothing by accident.I stepped slightly in front of Rory without thinking.She noticed immediately.Her fingers tightened around mine for half a second before she let go, as if reminding both of us that this was not about instinct alone. It was about choice. I respected that. I also adjusted my position by half an inch anyway. Old habits did not die quietly, especially when the person you loved stood in the open with a target on her back.Across the lot, Amelia lowered the red scarf slowly.Her eyes mov

“You are guessing,” Victor said after a moment.“No,” I replied quietly.“I remember.”It wasn’t a full memory.nIt wasn’t clear.But it was enough.Fragments aligning.My mother’s voice. Her hands guiding mine. Her insistence. Control. Balance. Precision. Always precision.“She didn’t just hide it in the ice,” I said.My voice steadied. It became clearer now.Stronger.“She hid it in the process.”Victor didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t interrupt.The entire rink seemed to lean toward the words.“The resurfacing,” I continued. “The flooding. The freezing. The layering. Ice isn’t just a surface. It’s built. Layer by layer.”Jaxon understood. I felt it.“She embedded it,” he said quietly.“Yes.”Victor took one step forward and then stopped.“You are assuming a great deal.”“No,” I said again.I moved closer to the ice before anyone could stop me.Jaxon followed instantly.The air shifted again and it became tighter. Sharper.I crouched and pressed my hand flat against the surface.It

The lid opened slowly. Too slowly.Every second stretched as the metal hinges resisted, as if time itself had settled into the seams and needed to be forced free before the past could fully breathe again. The sound was dull. Heavy. A scraping protest that seemed louder than it should have been in the quiet that had fallen over the rink.No one spoke.Even the agents had stilled, their earlier urgency contained, redirected into watchfulness. Weapons remained raised, but no one moved closer. Not yet.The container revealed its contents inch by inch.At first, nothing made sense.Dark shapes. Layered materials.Then finally, clarity came. I could see that they were documents. They were carefully sealed in thick plastic, stacked with precision that spoke of intention, not hurry. Beneath them sat smaller compartments, separated, organized, preserved in a way that made it clear this had never been a desperate hiding place.This had been planned. Meticulously. Deliberately.My chest tighten