All Chapters of Ice & Ivy - A Hockey Romance: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

POV: Silver PrestonThe snowball fight leaves me feeling like someone temporarily rewired my emotional circuitry, replacing my usual defensive skepticism with something dangerously close to genuine happiness.I return to my dorm that Thursday afternoon flushed and breathless, my cheap drugstore gloves completely soaked through, bits of snow still clinging to my hair despite my attempts to brush them away. My cheeks burn from the cold and from something else I don't want to name - something that feels suspiciously like joy.The sound of my own laughter keeps echoing in my head like music I can't quite shake. Unguarded, messy, real in a way that feels both terrifying and addictive. I haven't laughed like that in years, maybe ever. The realization sits heavy in my chest, a mixture of wonder and grief for all the moments I've missed while chasing perfection on ice.And then there's the memory of Eli's grin.Not his usual careful almost-smile or the controlled expression he wears during ou

POV: Silver PrestonI make it to Old Campus before my legs decide they're done with the project of walking normally.I find a stone bench along the perimeter of the quad and lower myself onto it carefully, feeling the tremor in my right knee that signals I've pushed too far.My bag drops beside me with a thud that echoes louder than it should.The cold of the stone penetrates my coat immediately, seeping through wool and cotton to press against my spine, but I don't shift my position. I just sit with it, let the discomfort anchor me to something physical and real.Other students cross the quad around me. Boots crunching in snow. Fragments of conversations about problem sets and weekend plans. The ordinary Thursday afternoon of a campus that doesn't know anything significant just happened in a coffee shop on Chapel Street, that doesn't know Leona Preston just dismantled her daughter with surgical precision over lukewarm coffee.I try the breathing technique my physical therapist taught

POV: Silver PrestonI do not remember the specific mechanics of leaving Ingalls.Whether I walk or simply drift through the side exit on autopilot while my body handles the logistics and my brain stays somewhere back at the tunnel entrance, still frozen, still staring at ice I could not make myself step onto. The memory fragments into disconnected sensations: the weight of my bag against my hip, the echo of my footsteps, the way my hands had gone numb despite the warmth inside.The skating exhibition applause follows me out into the November night, muffled by stone walls and then gone, replaced by the quiet of campus after dark. The contrast feels violent somehow - all that celebration for a performance I couldn't give, all that light and music for a moment I couldn't claim.I find the women's bathroom near the side exit and stay there until the sounds of the event dispersing reach me through the door. Audience voices. Formal shoes on the corridor floor. The particular acoustic of a c

POV: Silver PrestonEli's expression outside that café has lodged itself somewhere under my skin, a splinter I cannot reach no matter how I twist.It was just a look.His jaw tight, muscles working beneath the surface. His eyes doing something specific - something that looked almost like hurt before he caught himself - before he turned and walked away into the shadows between the Gothic buildings. The way he moved reminded me of someone retreating from a battlefield they hadn't realized they were fighting on.It should not matter.I tell myself this repeatedly on the walk back to Branford, Weston's easy chatter filling the space beside me while I nod at intervals and process approximately none of what he says. The words wash over me like white noise, pleasant but meaningless, while my mind keeps circling back to that moment outside the café window.I tell myself again when I lie in bed, staring at Americus's glow-in-the-dark constellations while she sleeps and the radiator does its tw

POV: Silver PrestonI swore I wasn't going.After the hockey house - after the words that came out too sharp and too true, after the silence that answered the one question I should never have asked - the last thing I want is another crowded room. I can't bear the thought of lights and noise and the very specific possibility of encountering Eli Hayes in a space I cannot leave without making it obvious that I'm fleeing.*You're impossible.*My own voice, still ricocheting inside my chest three days later. Each time I remember saying it, I wince. The accusation had flown out of my mouth before I could stop it, fueled by frustration and something deeper I refuse to name.The memory produces equal parts regret and defensiveness, an uncomfortable combination to carry through a week of American Literature seminars and committee debrief meetings. We've been professionally civil to each other in that specific way two people adopt when they're both carefully not discussing the thing occupying a