All Chapters of Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

The porch light spilled a thin wash of yellow across the driveway as I hurried outside, my coat still open against the cold. I spotted Dean’s car before I saw him, parked crooked along the curb as though he had pulled over without really deciding where he was going. When I crossed the lawn and opened the passenger door, he didn’t look up immediately. Both hands were still resting on the steering wheel even though the engine was off. Then I saw his face. His eyes were red around the edges, swollen enough that there was no point pretending he hadn’t been crying. His jaw was tight, his expression exhausted, as though he had spent the entire drive trying to hold himself together and had only just run out of strength. “Dean.” “I’m okay,” he said. It was probably the least convincing thing I had ever heard him say. “You’re not.” He let out a shaky breath and finally looked at me. “I will be.” I didn’t argue. Instead, I reached across the console, took his hand from the steering whe

Morning didn't so much arrive as it seeped in, hesitant and unhurried, as though it wasn't entirely sure it was welcome. Pale light slid across the guest room floor in narrow bands, warming the edges of the space before I was fully awake.When I finally came downstairs, Dean was already there. He sat at the kitchen table with my father as if this were some established ritual rather than a situation that had only begun the night before, both of them bent over coffee with an ease that made me pause in the doorway."There she is," my father said without looking up from his phone, as though I were simply late to something routine. "Dean was just telling me about the time he set off a fire alarm trying to make grilled cheese.""That was one time," Dean replied immediately, like he'd been waiting for the accusation his entire life."He's lying," I said, stepping fully into the room and sliding into the chair beside him. "It's happened at least twice. That I know of."Dean turned his head to

Dean didn’t announce anything when he got up. He just stood, like the decision had already been made somewhere I wasn’t invited into, and walked down the hallway. I followed him because I’ve learned that when Dean goes quiet like that, it’s never empty silence. It’s something building pressure behind his ribs. He went straight into the studio. The smell hit first. Paint, turpentine, old coffee that had given up pretending it was still drinkable. The room always felt like Dean’s brain left out in the open, half organized chaos, half accident. He stopped in front of a canvas he’d abandoned weeks ago, that familiar wash of blue and grey I never fully understood but always found myself staring at too long anyway. He picked up a brush. No hesitation. No warm-up. Just paint and movement, like he needed his hands to speak for him because his mouth wasn’t cooperating. I leaned against the stool by the window and watched him work. There wasn’t a pattern I could follow. He dragged color ac

I didn’t pick up his calls that night.I let my phone lie face down on the bed beside me as if refusing to look at it might undo the fact that it kept ringing. The room was too quiet, the kind of quiet that presses in on your ears and makes every thought feel louder than it should. I sat with my knees drawn up, staring at nothing, replaying the rink until it stopped belonging to a single afternoon and started feeling like something I had been circling for years without realizing it.Mason throwing the first punch. Dean answering it.It should have been simple. It wasn’t.“I had her first.”That line kept resurfacing, not because it hurt me in any real, personal way, but because of how familiar it felt. Mason had lost access to me a long time ago. If anything, there was something almost pitiful in how hard he still tried to turn history into ownership, as if saying it differently might make it true again.What stayed with me wasn’t him.It was Dean.The shift in him. That fraction of a

Dean reached for my hand slowly, unhurried, as if he was giving me every possible chance to step away if I needed to. I didn’t. His fingers slid between mine with a quiet certainty that made something in my chest loosen, and I found myself smiling at how simple it felt, how right. He must have felt it too, because he shifted closer until he was behind me, his arm settling around my shoulders in a way that pulled me gently back into him. For a while, neither of us spoke. The ocean kept its distance, the fire behind us crackling softly, and everything between us felt suspended in that rare kind of stillness that doesn’t ask for anything. Then he lowered his head slightly, close enough that I could feel his breath against my hair, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet, stripped of everything except honesty. “I love you,” he said, and there was no hesitation in it, no performance, just something raw and steady. “You drown everything else out, Iris, in the best way. Nobody else has ev