All Chapters of Collision on Ice: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Roselle's POV By Wednesday of that first week I had memorized more hockey terminology than I had ever wanted to know in my entire life, purely out of spite.I showed up every morning at 8:47, thirteen minutes early, because I had decided somewhere around Monday night that I would rather chew glass than give Jace Whitfield the satisfaction of catching me late even once. I learned the names of every player on the tutoring roster within the first two days, cross referenced their class schedules against their practice times without being asked, and rebuilt the entire study hall sign in sheet because the one I’d inherited was a disaster of crossed out names and coffee stains that told me nobody who’d held this job before me had actually cared whether it worked.“You look like you’re building a case for the Supreme Court,” Chloe said Wednesday night, watching me color code a spreadsheet on my laptop from her bed, legs crossed, eating cereal out of the box like a college st

Roselle's POV Chloe found the post before I did, which in hindsight should have warned me exactly how bad it was going to be.“Okay, don’t panic,” she said, which is a sentence that has never once in the history of language successfully stopped anyone from panicking, and slid her phone across the common room table toward me Saturday evening while I was still elbow deep in a bag of pretzels I’d been treating as dinner.I looked at it. Wished I hadn’t.Some account with a cartoon graphic of our two faces, badly cropped, side by side over a running vote tally. Round One: Whitfield vs. Adair. Who wins the next round. Comments already stacked three deep underneath it, people I had never met in my life apparently very invested in whether I was, quote, actually that clueless or just camera hungry.“This is insane,” I said. “We’re not a rivalry. This was an accident that happened one time.”“I mean, technically you did also embarrass him in front of a room fu

Jace's POV I didn’t think about it again until I did.That’s the annoying part. I walked away from that hallway encounter fully intending to forget it, some guy walking Adair to work, so what, not my business, not my problem, and then somehow by Thursday afternoon I was standing at the equipment window half listening to Eli talk about a road game next week while running the whole thing back in my head anyway, replaying it like there was something in it I hadn't caught the first time.“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying,” Eli said, not even looking up from the skate he was tightening.“I’m listening.”“You’re doing the thing where your face is pointed at me but your brain’s somewhere else entirely. What’s up?”“Nothing’s up.”“Sure.” He set the skate down, giving me a look he’d perfected over four years of knowing me well enough to call things out before I’d admit to them myself. “This have anything to do with the tutor girl and whoever tha

Jace's POV Brooke’s apartment always smelled like the same candle, something like vanilla, and I’d learned a long time ago not to think too much about fact that I could recognize it blind.The room settled into silence, broken only by the sound of our breathing as the last traces of heat slowly faded. Neither of us said anything when it was over. We never did. Words had never been part of whatever this was.Afterward, she stayed curled against my side for exactly as long as either of us ever stayed like that, which was never very long, both of us having long since settled into an arrangement that didn’t require lingering to feel complete. She reached for her phone on the nightstand, scrolling through something with one hand while her other stayed loosely draped over my chest, and I lay there staring at the ceiling fan doing its slow, useless circles, the specific quiet after that never quite felt like peace, just absence of noise.“You’re doing the thing,” she

Jace's POV The video was already circulating by the time I got to the locker room, half the team watching some slowed down replay of the fall on a phone somebody was holding up like it was a highlight reel worth studying, and I sat down at my stall and started unlacing my skates without saying a word, because I can’t even talk my way out of this one.“Man, you went down like a folding chair,” Eli said, sitting down next to me, not even bothering to hide the grin. “Full send. Arms out and everything.”“I’m aware.”“I’m just saying, if you’re gonna eat it, at least commit to the bit like that. Very dramatic.”“Are you done?”“Not even close, but I’ll spare you for now.” He nudged my shoulder, easier than the room deserved, and lowered his voice enough that it stayed between us. “You good, though? Actually good, not just embarrassed good.”I thought about it longer than the question probably warranted. My back ached in a low, dull way that had nothin