All Chapters of Ice & Ivy - A Hockey Romance: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

101 Chapters

What Exactly Is Your Problem

POV: Silver PrestonSkaters don't need microphones to make daggers.The girls' locker room at Ingalls carries sound the way all tile rooms do, amplifying everything, giving every whisper a second life as it bounces off the walls. White subway tile. Industrial benches. The sharp bite of cold air bleeding through from the rink side. The metallic undertone of blade polish clings to every surface, a scent I used to find comforting. Now it just reminds me of everything I've lost.I sit at my assigned cubby near the back, in the newer section where underclassmen and walk-ons get placed. A year ago, I would have been near the front, where the varsity skaters claim their territory. Now I pull my Yale Athletic jacket tighter and work at the frayed knot in my skate bag's drawstring, fingers moving through the motion that used to be automatic. The jacket feels too big on me now. I've lost weight since the injury, the kind of weight that comes from stress rather than training.The bag is older no

Maybe

POV: Silver PrestonHis name lights up my phone like a warning I'm not ready to read.I'm lying on my dorm bed, staring at the hairline cracks in the plaster ceiling - fractures that have probably existed since before my parents were born. Ancient Yale infrastructure doing its quiet thing, indifferent to the small dramas playing out beneath it. The cracks branch like river deltas, like the veins in ice just before it shatters.My figure skates sit in the corner.Blades still damp from this afternoon, the worn canvas bag slumps against the stone wall with the specific defeated quality of equipment that has endured much and now rests, temporarily relieved of duty. I can smell the faint metallic tang of the blades from here, mixed with the leather and sweat that no amount of airing out ever quite eliminates.The Victorian Literature reading lies open beside me. Twenty pages of industrial reform theory. My annotations in blue ink stop halfway down the first page, where my attention abando

Ice Queen

POV: Silver PrestonThe night air tastes like rebellion.I pull my wool coat tighter as I follow Weston down Chapel Street, Yale's Gothic spires rising against the January sky like ancient sentinels. The towers watch our progress with the silent permanence of structures that have witnessed generations of students making questionable decisions in the name of needing to feel like something other than what they currently are. I wonder how many others have walked this path, chasing something they couldn't quite name, running from something they couldn't quite forget.Weston doesn't seem to notice the weight of history pressing down.His stride remains confident and casual, as though the city bends around his presence rather than the other way around. Streetlights catch the edges of his hair, turning it almost silver in the glow. Every few steps he glances back with that practiced smile, the one that suggests he has already calculated the evening's outcome and found it satisfactory. There'

Just one kiss

POV: Silver PrestonThe streets have emptied by the time we step back out into the January cold.Yale's Gothic arches glow against the winter sky, beautiful and slightly unreal in the lamplight, the way they always appear when the campus has gone quiet and the history of the place has room to breathe. There's something almost sacred about New Haven at this hour - the weight of centuries pressing down through stone and shadow, making everything feel both permanent and fragile at once.Weston walks close.His arm brushes mine with each step, near enough that I catch the edge of his cologne mixing with the cold air. Something expensive and woody, the kind of scent that probably costs more than my textbooks. The proximity has that specific quality of something both comforting and slightly threatening, like standing near the edge of something high and genuinely beautiful. My body registers the nearness before my mind catches up - a heightened awareness that makes me conscious of every brea

If You Say So

POV: Americus BentleyI hear the door before it opens.The creak of the main corridor announces her approach, followed by the specific quality of footsteps that try to be quieter than they are - which is always the loudest kind. There's a particular rhythm to guilt, a cadence to secrecy, and I've learned to recognize both.I have been awake for forty minutes, watching the shadows shift across our ceiling, counting the beats of my own anticipation.I am not going to pretend I wasn't waiting.I adjust my position on my bed, legs crossed, the Sour Patch Kids bag settled in my lap like a prop in a one-woman show. I watch the door with the patience of someone who has been in enough stage productions to understand that timing is everything. That the best revelations come not from rushing, but from letting the scene unfold at its own inevitable pace.The hinges give their telltale creak, a sound I've memorized over months of late-night returns and early-morning departures.Silver eases throu

The Whale Roars

POV: Silver PrestonIngalls roars like a cathedral.The sound presses into my chest before I have even found my seat, a bone-deep vibration that rattles through my ribcage until I cannot distinguish my own heartbeat from the thunder of three thousand voices unified in a single purpose.I had forgotten how a rink could feel alive.When every seat is filled. When the ancient concrete and steel of the building pulse with collective energy. When the echo of blade edges cutting ice blends with the percussion of the pep band stationed in the upper section, their drums beating a rhythm that matches the adrenaline coursing through the crowd.The Whale is earning its reputation tonight.Its distinctive swooping architecture, Saarinen's parabolic concrete spine, amplifies every cheer and channels it back down onto the ice in waves that visiting teams have been trying to skate through since 1958. The curved walls trap sound and multiply it until the building feels like it is breathing, inhaling

Sulking In Corners

POV: Silver PrestonBeer and sweat slam into me the moment I cross the threshold.The hockey house has undergone a transformation into something that barely resembles a place where people actually live. Bass-heavy music pounds from speakers someone dragged downstairs, the vibrations traveling through the floor and into my bones. Red solo cups have colonized every flat surface - windowsills, bookshelves, the mantle over a fireplace that probably hasn't worked in decades. Bodies move through the tight spaces in a continuous tide of navy and white, students still wearing game-day gear mixing with people who changed into clothes that will be ruined before midnight.Someone has pushed all the furniture against the walls, creating a makeshift dance floor.The hardwood is already sticky beneath my sneakers, each step requiring a small effort to lift my feet.Americus tugs me deeper into the chaos, her sequined skirt throwing small lights across the walls with every movement. She navigates th

Ice Too Thin

POV: Silver PrestonThe streets gleam with half-melted snow.Amber streetlight catches the slush along the sidewalk like scattered coins, and my breath makes small white clouds in the January air as Weston falls into step beside me. The music from the hockey house fades with each block we put between ourselves and the celebration, replaced by the quiet hum of a city settling into its late hours.The night is sharp and wet.New Haven winters do this - warm enough during the day to soften everything into grey slush, cold enough after dark to make every puddle a hazard. The kind of cold that works its way into your coat and stays there, settling into your bones with patient persistence.Steam rises from manholes in slow spirals.Yale's Gothic spires cut through the low clouds, the medieval architecture and modern streetlights existing in the same frame in that way this city does, like several centuries agreed to share the same block. I've always loved this about New Haven, this collision

What Leona Wants

POV: Silver PrestonMy room feels too loud with just me in it.I close the heavy wooden door and lean back against its weight, as though I can keep the whole night from following me inside.The Gothic dorm room breathes around me, alive with its familiar sounds.The radiator in the corner hisses and clanks through its irregular battle against the January cold seeping through stone walls that have waged this same war for over a century. A steady drip comes from the tall mullioned window where half-melted snow slides off the sill in fat droplets, each one catching the amber glow from the courtyard security lights below. The sound creates a rhythm - drip, pause, drip - that marks time in a way that feels both soothing and relentless.Americus's string lights blink their slow gold pattern across the vaulted ceiling.The silence presses against my eardrums with the weight of everything I have not yet processed.I drop my coat over the desk chair.The fabric still carries winter air and the

Batter My Heart

POV: Silver PrestonWords mean nothing until he speaks them.I sit in the back row of Professor Dawes's lecture hall with my pen poised above a notebook that has remained completely blank for the last forty minutes.The tiered classroom runs at the low hum of students operating at variable capacity. Some genuinely engaged with the material. Others running on caffeine and determination. Laptops glow throughout the Gothic space, sending quiet light up toward carved wooden panels and stained glass that make even mundane academic discussion feel weighted with institutional gravity.My head is still ringing with Leona's voice from last night.Come home. Rehab harder. No distractions.Each word has lodged itself in my skull with the persistence of something that has decided to stay. Professor Dawes has been analyzing John Donne's religious sonnets for the last twenty minutes and every line about metaphysical devotion and spiritual surrender keeps tangling with my mother's demands in ways th

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