All Chapters of Ice & Ivy - A Hockey Romance: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

101 Chapters

Stay Out Of My Life

POV: Silver PrestonSleep refuses to come.I lie on my back, staring at Americus's glow-in-the-dark constellations while shadows shift across the stone walls. The radiator performs its two AM tapping ritual. The room holds the specific quiet of two people who have both been pretending to sleep for different reasons - hers probably involving whatever drama she witnessed at the gala, mine involving the slow burn of humiliation that won't let me rest.The rage from the ballroom still burns.Not the hot spike from the water station, not the thing that lifted my chin and held Bianca's gaze for three seconds. That one was clean and directed and had somewhere to go. That one felt righteous, almost empowering in its clarity.This is different.This is the contained, steady kind that doesn't go out. The kind that settles into your bones and makes a home there. The kind that keeps you awake at two in the morning, replaying the same moment until the words lose meaning and become just sounds that

Frozen In Place

POV: Silver PrestonFor two days I barely recognize myself.I go to class.The lectures slide past like static. Professor Hammond's voice moves through Victorian literature and social criticism and the industrial revolution while I sit in the lecture hall, watching snow dust the stone ledges outside the Gothic windows. My hand produces notes without my brain's participation, the pen moving across the page in mechanical strokes that form words I won't remember.In the dining hall I sit with Americus and Riley.Their voices blur into the background of the room - the clatter of trays, the scrape of chairs, the low constant pressure of hundreds of conversations creating a wall of sound that keeps me separate from everything. Riley passes me the salt without my asking, reading some need in my face I can't feel myself. Americus describes something that happened at cheerleading practice involving a pyramid formation and a sequined bow that came loose at a critical moment, her hands gesturing

What She Is Not Saying

POV: Americus BentleyI have a theory about Silver Preston.She's the most competent person I've ever watched fall apart.She does it so cleanly that if you're not paying attention, you miss it entirely. She attends every class. She sits in the dining hall. She nods at appropriate moments and deflects personal questions with the precision of someone who's been trained to manage what they show, to perform normalcy even when everything inside is screaming.But the food on her plate doesn't get eaten.And she hasn't laughed - not once, not even a small breath of amusement - in two days.I notice this.I notice everything. It's both my greatest quality and the reason Riley sometimes looks at me with the expression of someone who's living with a very affectionate surveillance system. But someone has to pay attention, and I've appointed myself to the position.I flop onto Silver's bed on the second evening.The springs protest with a metallic groan.The glitter from afternoon cheerleading p

Goodnight Silver

POV: Silver PrestonThe night air tastes like rebellion.I breathe it in sharp and cold, and for a moment it is the only thing that feels real. Everything else - the dining hall conversation, Eli's face in the lamplight, the weight of unfinished sentences - blurs at the edges while this crystalline cold cuts straight through.I have been walking for twenty minutes without a destination, which has become my signature move this semester. I am somewhere between the residential colleges and the academic quad when Weston falls into step beside me.Not startling. Not announcing himself.Just there, the way he always seems to be when something has already gone wrong. Like he has some sixth sense for vulnerability, some radar that pings when someone's defenses drop below a certain threshold."You look like someone who needs a walk that goes somewhere instead of nowhere," he says.His voice carries that smooth, unhurried quality he uses when he is not performing for an audience. When it is jus

Storm Clouds

POV: Silver PrestonDaylight makes everything look cheaper.The Winter Gala glitter has lost whatever enchantment it carried overnight. Now it exists as stray flecks, catching the weak morning light on Americus's vanity mirror. A few sequins cling to the borrowed shawl draped over my desk chair. What appeared magical under warm chandeliers reveals itself for exactly what it is in the cold morning light of a Yale dorm room: manufactured sparkle, nothing more.Even the memory of Weston's kiss feels different now.Less like a genuine gesture. More like a calculated move. The smooth precision of it haunts me - the way he stepped closer without asking permission, the brief inventory in his eyes before the charm smoothed back into place, erasing any hint of vulnerability.In the dark it felt like comfort, like someone finally seeing me.In the daylight it feels like being catalogued, filed away under "conquest" or "distraction" or whatever category he keeps in that perfectly organized mind

His Eyes

POV: Silver PrestonThe classroom is one of Yale's older seminar spaces.Tall windows pull weak winter light across rows of ancient desks, their surfaces scarred by generations of students who carved initials and doodles into the wood. Built-in bookshelves stretch from floor to ceiling, their shelves sagging under the weight of leather-bound volumes. The smell of chalk dust and old paper hangs in the air - the one constant that has nothing to do with last night or this morning or the gossip that followed me across Old Campus like a shadow I couldn't shake.I choose a seat near the windows, seeking distance from the other students already claiming their usual spots.Outside, snow has started again. Fat, slow flakes drift past the glass, catching the light before disappearing against the stone of the courtyard below. The world beyond these walls looks clean, untouched. I wish I could say the same about myself.I open my notebook, the spine cracking slightly.I write the date at the top

Slippery

POV: Americus BentleyI can smell secrets like perfume.Always could.My grandmother called it a gift. My mother called it a liability. My theater director at my performing arts middle school called it the reason I could read a scene before anyone else in the room had finished the first line. She'd said it with equal parts admiration and exasperation, the way you might compliment someone on being exhaustingly perceptive.Silver Preston has been carrying something since she came back to the room last night, and she's been carrying it badly. This strikes me as unusual because Silver is generally very good at carrying things - secrets, expectations, the weight of being perpetually perfect. She's had significant practice.I let it sit through morning, watching her move through her routine with mechanical precision. The way she folds her blanket. The way she organizes her desk. Everything just slightly too controlled.I am not always the person who lets things sit, but I am learning. Patie

Jessica Chen

POV: Americus BentleyI stop pushing.This is not natural for me. I want to be clear about that. Stopping is not my default setting, not the way I'm wired. My default is forward, louder, more, again from the top. Push until something gives, then push harder.But Silver's face has gone somewhere quiet and internal, and the quality of it is not the performed composure I have learned to recognize and work around over these months of friendship.This is something real that she has not finished understanding yet. Something raw beneath the surface.So I let it sit for a moment.I look at my hands, studying the chipped polish on my thumbnail. The silence between us feels weighted but not uncomfortable. Outside, someone laughs in the hallway, their voice fading as they pass our door.I think about what I know about Weston Carroway, which is more than I have shared because I was not sure it was relevant until now. But watching Silver's face, seeing that flicker of something vulnerable she's tr

She's Beneath Me

POV: Silver PrestonPartner work means no escape.I grasp this truth the moment Professor Hammond distributes the assignment sheets around our Victorian Literature seminar. Her sensible heels click against the worn wooden floor as she weaves between the ancient desks. Long rectangles of pale afternoon light fall across the pages from the Gothic windows, dust motes suspended in the golden beams.The assignment is substantial - more substantial than anything we've tackled this semester.Comparative analysis of industrial themes in Dickens and Gaskell. Research, multiple drafts, significant collaboration required. The kind of project that demands genuine partnership, not just parallel work submitted under shared names.I skim down the paired list, my pulse already quickening with dread.Preston. Hayes.My chest hollows out.Two names side by side on the page like something that was always going to happen, like fate had been waiting for exactly this moment to force our paths together agai

The Door

POV: Eli HayesThe words crack through the library silence, and I feel them land.Every syllable.She's beneath me.Spoken back to me in her voice, with all the weight she has carried since she heard them through a corridor wall, and I watch the impact register on her face even as she maintains the composure that defines Silver Preston more than anything else.I flinch.Not much. Just a tightening around my eyes that I cannot stop in time.She sees it. Of course she does.She has been reading people since before she could skate, I know this, and she reads me with the same precision she applies to everything - every opponent on the ice, every tactical advantage, every weakness in someone's armor.I lean forward.My voice drops to the register that is not the public one, the one I reserve for conversations that matter."You weren't supposed to hear that.""Oh, I heard it," she says, her voice rising past library-appropriate volume, and she does not stop it. "And apparently half the camp

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