Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

Trixie's POVChampionship prep started the way every intense stretch of training did, with Coach pushing us harder than seemed reasonable and pretending it was for our own good.I threw myself into it anyway. Extra reps after practice, extra laps before school, anything that kept my body too tired to let my brain circle back to a vending machine and a question I still didn't have a good answer for. It worked, mostly. Right up until it didn't.By the third day, my legs had started shaking during cooldown, and I still hadn't managed to stop hearing Hugo's voice every time the rink went quiet enough to think."You're overextending on your crossovers," Harlan said, skating up beside me during a break, sweat dripping down his temple. "You've been doing it for three days straight now.""I'm fine.""You keep saying that. I keep not believing you."I didn't have the energy to argue, not really, so I just skated another lap instead of answering, hoping he'd let it go the way he usually did whe

Harlan's POVTrixie told me about dinner the next morning, quiet and careful, like she expected me to explode the moment the words left her mouth.I did not disappoint her expectations.She told me in the car, glancing sideways every few seconds like she was gauging exactly how much damage the news was doing before she'd even finished explaining it. By the time she got through the whole story, I'd already stopped hearing anything else on the road around us."He was in your house," I said, gripping the steering wheel tighter than necessary as I drove us toward school, jaw tight enough to ache. "At your family's table. Charming your parents while I was sitting at home having absolutely no idea.""I'm telling you now.""I know. I'm not angry at you." I forced my hands to loosen slightly. "I'm angry at him. This is exactly what he does. He finds the door nobody's watching and walks straight through it before anyone realizes it was even open.""Yasmine invited him.""Of course she did." Th

Harlan's POVTrixie found me after practice, sitting alone in the stands long after everyone else had cleared out, staring at empty ice like it might rearrange itself into an answer if I looked hard enough.The rink lights had dimmed to half power, the way they always did once the janitorial staff started their rounds, and the quiet felt heavier than usual, weighted down by everything that had happened over the last few days."Yasmine picked him," she said, dropping into the seat beside me without preamble. "Over you, over me, over our own family. She actually said it out loud.""I'm sorry," I said quietly."Don't be sorry. Just tell me what's actually going on between you two. The real version. Not the birthright speech you gave me in the equipment room." She turned to face me fully, exhausted in a way that went deeper than practice ever left her, shadows sitting under her eyes that hadn't been there a week ago. "Because whatever this is, it's already cost me my sister's trust, and I

Trixie's POVThe game started clean enough, which should have made me suspicious from the first whistle.Vale's team skated fast and disciplined, nothing overtly dangerous at first, just the kind of relentless pressure that wore teams down slowly instead of all at once. I stayed close to Harlan the way I'd promised, matching his line changes, keeping my back covered even during drills that didn't strictly require it, refusing to let my guard drop for even a single shift.The crowd noise stayed muted throughout, none of the usual chants or banging sticks against boards, just a watchful quiet that felt more unsettling than any hostile arena I'd ever played in, like the whole building was holding its breath waiting for something to break. It held together through the first period. Then the second period started, and everything changed.I saw the hit coming half a second too late to fully brace for it. Number seventeen on Vale's roster, a broad shouldered defenseman with cold eyes that ma

Trixie's POVThe week after the exhibition game settled into something that almost passed for normal, if normal meant checking over your shoulder every time you walked to the parking lot.Championship qualifiers had done something to the whole team, tightened everyone into a version of themselves that took the game more seriously than any of us had before. Extra practices got added without complaint. Miller stopped cracking jokes during drills, which worried me more than anything Vale had said at his own rink. Even Yasmine, distant and cold as she'd become, showed up early every single day, running extra reps alone before the rest of us arrived.I watched her sometimes, from across the rink, trying to find some crack in the careful mask she'd built since choosing Hugo over the rest of us. I never found one. Whatever she was feeling underneath it, she'd gotten frighteningly good at hiding it."You're staring again," Harlan said, skating up beside me during a water break."I'm worried a