All Chapters of Falling For The Hockey Captain: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

CHASE'S POVCLOSURE, NOT REVENGE"You don't have to do this," I say, watching Ava stare at Jill's text for the third time in a row, thumb hovering over the reply button like it might burn her."I know." She sets the phone down on the kitchen counter, exhaling slowly. "I want to, though. Not for her. For me."We're back at her apartment, the chaos of the last two days finally settling into something quieter, more manageable, though the bruises of it are still everywhere  Emma's absence from the space where her things used to sit, the empty spot at the table where four roommates used to eat breakfast together before everything fell apart."What do you think she wants to say?" I ask."I don't know." Ava chews her lip, thinking. "Maybe nothing that actually changes anything. But I keep thinking about what Emma's father said last night. About how holding onto anger doesn't give you back what you lost. I don't want to carry this into graduati

CHASE'S POVOUR TERMS"Absolutely not," is the first thing out of my mouth when Ava reads me the text."Chase""I'm serious. We've spent two weeks getting dragged through every version of this story except the true one. Now they want us to stand up and perform it for them? No."Ava's quiet for a moment, thumb hovering over her phone screen. "What if it's not a performance," she says slowly. "What if it's actually us, finally getting to say what we want, instead of everyone else deciding what the story is?"I don't answer right away, because she's not wrong, and I hate that she's not wrong."They've controlled this narrative since the night I kissed you out of spite," she continues. "Coach controlled it when he told us to make it look real. My father controlled it by hiding the scholarship fund. Emma controlled it by leaking everything three hours early. Jill controlled it by threatening to blow it up during the championship." She look

CHASE'S POVTHE MEETINGThe Boston scout's name is Dale Harmon, and he has the kind of handshake that immediately tells you he's evaluated a thousand nervous twenty-two-year-olds walking into rooms exactly like this one."Relax, Rivers," he says, gesturing for me to sit across from him in the small conference room the organization rented out downtown, film equipment set up on one side, a stack of paperwork on the other. "This isn't an interrogation. We just want to talk.""Feels like an interrogation," I admit, and it earns a short laugh from him."Fair enough." He slides a folder across the table. "Let's start with tape. We've been watching you since your sophomore season, but I want to walk through some specific plays with you directly. See how you talk about your own game."We spend the next two hours going through footage my positioning, my decision-making under pressure, a particularly ugly turnover from January that I'd honestly hoped nobody outside the coaching staff had bothe

AVA'S POVTHE THING HE DIDN'T SAYI notice it before he says anything. I always do, lately the slight distraction behind his eyes, the way his thumb taps against his phone case instead of actually opening it, the careful, deliberate way he steers our conversation away from anything resembling the future."You've been weird since Sunday," I say, watching him from across my kitchen table, textbooks spread between us in the pretense of studying that neither of us has actually touched in twenty minutes."I'm not weird." Chase doesn't look up from his notebook, which is somehow even more suspicious than if he'd denied it directly to my face."Chase.""Ava.""You've read the same paragraph of that econ chapter four times. I've been counting."He finally looks up, something caught and hesitant in his expression, and my stomach does a slow, uneasy drop, muscle memory from weeks of watching bad news arrive exactly like this."It's not bad," he says quickly, clearly reading my face. "I promise

CHASE'S POVTHE SHOWCASEI've watched Ava skate a hundred times over the years, back when we were just two people orbiting the same friend group, pretending not to notice each other across crowded rooms. I've never watched her skate as her boyfriend before, sitting in the front row of the university's ice arena with her entire family, actually allowed to be nervous for her the way I've wanted to be for years."You look more anxious than she probably is," Alfred says, elbowing me from the seat beside me."She's been training for this for months," I say. "It's a big deal. New choreography, first time performing the program that's supposed to help her decide about the national qualifying circuit.""I'm aware," Alfred says, amused. "I am her brother."Mr. and Mrs. Kingston sit on my other side, Mrs. Kingston clutching a small bouquet of flowers she's clearly been holding onto nervously since we arrived, Mr. Kingston scanning the program with the focused intensity of a man determined to un