All Chapters of Accidentally Dating Hockey’s Ice King : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

29 Chapters

Chapter 11 — Vultures at the Door

POV: BEATRIXThe strategy worked faster than I expected.Day one was quiet. Day two was quieter. I almost let myself relax. By the third day, two of the platforms that had run "unstable" in a headline had quietly published follow-ups instead, softer ones, the kind that used words like "blindsided" and "graceful".The gala timestamps did exactly what I'd promised they would. They let people do the math themselves, and once anyone actually looked at it, the math was not kind to Julian. One paper ran a follow-up asking why a man so quick to call his ex unstable had never once addressed his own conduct at the gala where their relationship had ended so publicly.

Last Updated : 2026-08-19

Chapter 12 — Setting the Table

POV: BEATRIXThree days felt a lot shorter once I had to survive them.Friday arrived quickly, as deadlines often do. Before the caterers finished setting up, I had already changed my outfit twice. I've reorganized my nerves over a dozen times already. The dress I finally picked wasn't even my first choice. I switched at the last minute to something with sleeves. Something that covered more. Old instinct. Don't give my mother anything new to comment on.Around noon, Ivy took charge of the decorations. She rearranged a vase of white roses as if she were staging a hostage negotiation. I let her. Watching her work gave my hands something to do other than shake. The caterers moved around us as if we weren't there, setting silverware in perfect lines, and I envied how simple their job was tonight compared to mine.Nikolai found me in the kitchen an hour before the first course was due. I had a legal pad covered in my own handwriting laid out across the counter. He raised an eyebrow.

Last Updated : 2026-08-20

Chapter 13 — The Family Dinner

POV: BEATRIXThe doorbell had barely stopped ringing when Nikolai opened the door himself. He waved off the staff member who started toward it, quietly insisting that he be the one standing there when my family arrived. I barely had time to notice before my mother swept in, already talking, her eyes moving over the entryway with the same hungry, appraising look I'd known my whole life.“Oh, this floor.” She crouched right down and ran her hand along the marble like she was checking out a prize horse. “Italian, I’d bet. You never see veining like this unless someone spent real money.” "Mother!" I said.

Last Updated : 2026-08-21

Chapter 14 — The First Real Conversation

POV: BEATRIXOnce the last car pulled away, the whole house sank into a heavy silence. We just stood there, not ready to call it a night.Nikolai poured two glasses of wine, didn't even ask if I wanted one, just handed me one, and instead of saying goodnight, I followed him out to the terrace.I probably should've gone to bed, but there I was.I kept telling myself I was staying up because my hands still hadn’t quite stopped shaking from dinner. That was true, yeah, but it didn’t explain everything.If I were honest, part of me just didn’t want the night to end. I tried not to think about why.We had the whole city stretched out beneath us—lights, traffic, people. None of it reached this high. It was colder than I liked, but I didn’t go in for a jacket, and he didn’t make a move either.We just sat there, a polite foot of space between us. For a while, neither of us said a word.“You survived,” he finally said.“Barely.” I kept fiddling with my glass, too distracted to take a sip. “Yo

Last Updated : 2026-08-23

Chapter 15 — Ivy's Little Scheme

POV: BEATRIXA few days passed after the terrace. Quiet ones, mostly. Good ones.Nobody brought up the terrace directly. We didn't need to. It was there anyway, in the small things.The way he handed me the coffee before I asked for it now. The way I stopped flinching when he stood close. Nikolai had started leaving for work a little later some mornings. He probably didn't even notice he was doing it. I noticed.Ivy had stopped knocking before climbing into whatever room we were in, as if she'd finally decided we counted as hers too. Even the staff seemed a little more relaxed, less careful with their footsteps around the two of us, as though the house itself had exhaled.I was halfway through my coffee on Tuesday morning when Ivy came into the kitchen already dressed for school, holding her tablet out in front of her like a shield, and announced, without any warning, that we were competing in a cooking show."It's called the Parent-Daughter Cook-Off," she said. "It's on Channel 4. L

Last Updated : 2026-08-23

Chapter 16 — Burnt Batter

POV: BEATRIXPractice started that same evening in the kitchen, and it went badly within about ninety seconds.I had raided a cookbook shop that afternoon and come back with three different beginner recipes, each supposedly labeled "easy" on the cover, though Nikolai eyed them as if they might be lying.Nikolai stood at the stove in a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, staring down at a pan like it had personally wronged him. He'd changed out of his suit for the occasion, which felt like its own kind of commitment. I'd never seen him in anything other than something tailored before tonight.Ivy sat on the counter with a clipboard she'd found somewhere, appointed head judge for the evening, and I stood a safe distance away, trying not to laugh already.

Last Updated : 2026-08-24

Chapter 17 — The Ice King Smiles

POV: BEATRIXWe arrived an hour early, per Chef Marco's instructions, and spent most of that hour standing behind a curtain while a production assistant clipped microphones to our collars and told us where to stand for the cameras. Ivy had insisted on choosing Nikolai's apron herself. It had cartoon chickens on it. He wore it without complaint, which told me more about how much he wanted this to go well for her than anything he'd said out loud all week.The studio lights were brighter than I expected and hot enough that I felt my makeup start to slide within the first ten minutes. Six other families stood at their stations around us, aprons on, with name cards propped up in front of each counter. Ours read Team Ashcombe in bold letters, right beside a small logo for the c

Last Updated : 2026-08-25

Chapter 18 — Going Viral

POV: BEATRIX I woke up to forty-three texts and a phone that would not stop buzzing. I almost didn't check it right away. Old habit. Waking up to a flood of messages used to mean something had gone wrong: some new headline, some fresh disaster to manage before breakfast. It took me a full minute, lying there and letting the phone buzz itself quiet, before I finally picked it up. The clip had gone up sometime overnight: a clean thirty-second cut of the flour, the laugh, the smile. By the time I opened my eyes, it already had numbers attached to it that didn't feel real. Millions, not thousands. Millions, climbing higher every time I refreshed the page, comments piling up faster than I could read them. Someone had already given it a name: “The Flour Incident.” It was trending, whatever that actually meant, high enough on some list that three different morning shows had already asked to air it during their broadcasts. I went out that afternoon just to get milk, nothing dramatic, a

Last Updated : 2026-08-26

Chapter 19 — Center Ice

POV: BEATRIXThe flour clip kept climbing for most of that week, with millions turning into tens of millions, and strangers still stopping me on the street even as the numbers began to level off.Somewhere in the middle of all that noise, over coffee one morning, Nikolai mentioned that the team had a home game that Saturday and that he wanted me there properly this time. Not slipped in quietly through a side door, the way his office usually handled things that needed managing. In the owner's box, next to him, where anyone with a camera could see exactly where I stood in his life now.The owner's box was nothing like I'd expected. I'd imagined something quiet and removed, with glass separating us from the noise. Instead, there were easily thirty people packed into a space meant for maybe twenty, staff refilling trays of food nobody had time to eat, and a television commentator's voice drifting low from somewhere overhead. It was loud, crowded with staff and sponsors, and a wall of sc

Last Updated : 2026-08-27

Chapter 20 — Cornered

POV: BEATRIXI felt Nikolai's hand tense against my back a second before I heard the voice behind us.The party had thinned out; laughter and clinking glasses bounced around the lounge, echoing off the high ceiling. Conversations carried farther than they were supposed to."Mr. Ashcombe, so sorry to interrupt." One of the sponsors, an older man I vaguely recognized from the box earlier, appeared at Nikolai's elbow with the urgency of someone who thinks his own business is the only business happening tonight. "Do you have a moment? It's about the naming rights renewal. Won't take long."This was Nikolai’s comfort zone. Business. Rules. The type of interruption he usually welcomed. But I saw his jaw tighten, his eyes flickering over to Julian and Evelyn across the room. They were still just standing there, waiting.For a second, I thought he might refuse and tell the man it could wait, but a night like this ran on exactly this kind of obligation, and we both knew it."I'll be right bac

Last Updated : 2026-08-27

1 2 3

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP