Semua Bab Ice & Ivy - A Hockey Romance: Bab 11 - Bab 20

POV: Silver PrestonSleep is impossible again.Every time I close my eyes my brain pulls me back to Ingalls. The sound of Eli's edges on the ice. The way the arena felt when his gaze lifted from the ice and found me in the stands without any effort at all.I tell myself it means nothing.I tell myself Americus is being dramatic, that there is absolutely no reason to think Eli Hayes has any idea who I am beyond the girl who nearly fell on him in the Branford courtyard and was rude to him on a plane.The doubt does not care what I tell myself.It just sits there.By lunch the next day, Americus has made an executive decision about my trajectory."We are going to the dining hall," she announces, already applying what appears to be her third coat of glitter lip gloss in the narrow mirror. "Hiding in here with protein bars is not a long term strategy, Silver. It is not even a short term one.""I am not hiding.""You are absolutely hiding."Riley looks up from her composition notebook with

POV: Eli Hayes She is going to be late.I knew it the moment I sat down and checked the time and did the math on how far Branford is from Blue State on a bad knee.I ordered my coffee anyway and picked the corner table by the window because it gives a clear sightline to the door, which is habit more than anything else. Eleven years of hockey teaches you to know where the exits are.I have been at Yale for less than two weeks and I already have a system.Early practice. Classes. Film review. Conditioning. Sleep. Repeat.There is no room in that system for complications.Silver Preston is a complication.I knew who she was the moment I saw her on the plane out of San Jose, sitting in 14A with her knee brace and her Yale hoodie and her very deliberate effort to look at nothing except the window. Silver Preston. Junior national medalist. The girl who fell at Nationals in January and took half the figure skating internet down with her on the way.I follow skating the way most hockey playe

POV: Silver PrestonI leave Blue State with my jaw clenched and my notebook containing almost nothing useful.We agreed on a direction. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the continuation after collapse. That part is fine. That part is actually good.Everything else about the last hour is significantly less fine.I cross back onto Old Campus through the wrought iron gates and let the familiar weight of the Gothic buildings settle around me. There is something about the scale of this campus that should feel overwhelming and instead just feels solid. Like the stone has absorbed enough anxiety from enough students over enough years that mine is not particularly remarkable.I find Americus and Riley in a sunny patch of grass near the base of Harkness Tower.Americus is sprawled across her jacket with a tube of holographic lip gloss in one hand, using it like a conductor's baton while she narrates something that involves considerable hand gestures. Riley sits cross-legged beside her with a philosophy

POV: Silver PrestonI do not remember deciding to leave.One moment I am standing against the wall of the hockey house with a cracking red cup in my fist, and the next I am outside on the sidewalk in the October cold, moving fast, or as fast as my knee allows, without any clear memory of the door.The night air hits my face and I keep walking.The music fades behind me by degrees. The bass line that felt like it was living inside my chest drops to a vibration, then a memory, then nothing.My palm stings where the cup's cracked edge has been pressing into my skin.I open my hand.The cup falls apart onto the sidewalk.Footsteps behind me, quick and deliberate."Roomie."Americus falls into step beside me, slightly out of breath, her sequined top throwing small fragments of streetlight in every direction. She looks at my face and then at the crushed cup remains on the pavement behind us and chooses her next words with more care than she usually applies to anything."Okay. That was a lot

POV: Americus Bentley I have exactly one rule about using my dad's professional connections.Do not abuse them.I have been bending this rule since approximately the moment I met Silver Preston.It is not my fault. Silver is the kind of person who makes bending rules feel like the responsible choice. She limps across campus every day pretending she does not limp. She winces on stairs and pretends she is not wincing. She carries this enormous, obvious pain around like it is invisible and seems genuinely confused when people notice it anyway.I notice everything.It is both my greatest strength and the reason my roommate is about to have a very important medical appointment she did not agree to.Dad texted three days ago that he would be in New Haven for a conference at Yale School of Medicine.I texted back immediately.I may have a situation.His response: Does this situation involve you or someone else?Me: Someone else. She needs a consultation. ACL reconstruction, figure skating l