Todos los capítulos de Hate On The Ice, Mine In The Dark: Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

_Nathan’s POV_ The message was still face-down on the nightstand when morning came, but that didn’t stop it from being the first thing I thought about. Miles was awake before me for once, scrolling through his phone on his back, one arm behind his head. When he noticed my eyes open, he turned the screen off. “You saw it last night,” he said. “Yes.” “And you didn’t wake me.” “There was nothing to do with it at one in the morning.” Miles rolled onto his side to face me. “There’s something to do with it now.” I stared at the ceiling for a second. Campus noise was already starting under the window — doors, voices, a bike bell too early in the day. Ordinary sounds. They felt thinner than they had all week. “It says continuity resumes soon,” I said. “Not immediately. Not a time. Just soon.” “That’s how he works. He puts the future in the room early enough to own the mood.” I sat up and dragged a hand through my hair. “I don’t want the whole day to become about him.” Miles watche

_Nathan’s POV_ The details arrived on Tuesday morning, precise enough to kill any remaining hope that “soon” might mean later. **Ashwood Private Office / External Coordination:** Continuity contact confirmed. Thursday, 3:40 p.m. Central Administration, Conference Room 2. Staffed format. Third-party presence permitted. Thursday. Two days. I stared at the message at the edge of the quad until the words stopped looking like a screen and started looking like a countdown. Students moved around me with coffee and backpacks. A flyer for some weekend screening scraped against the path under someone’s shoe. Ordinary campus life, continuing whether I had a staffed room waiting or not. Miles saw my face the second he reached me. “It’s set,” he said. “Thursday afternoon.” He nodded once, as if he’d already braced for it. “Staffed?” “Yes. Conference Room 2.” “Then we treat it like what it is. Not a relapse into whatever he thinks the soft week made possible.” I pocketed the phone. “I

_Nathan’s POV_ Miles didn’t take me back to campus center after the call with Elias. He took me to his apartment, shut the door, and stood there for a second like he needed the lock to finish a sentence he couldn’t say in public. “I’m not becoming the liability in your father’s vocabulary,” he said. “I didn’t call you that.” “He did. Through you. Through the report. Through that whole polished performance where Rowan hands him language and he repeats it back as concern.” Miles dragged a hand through his hair. “Balance. Attachments. Protection theater. I’m getting real tired of being framed as the thing that makes you look unstable.” I set my bag down by the counter. The staffed room was still in my body in that strange way formal places lingered — clean air, careful sentences, the sense of being assessed through glass. “If I create distance now, it confirms him. If I don’t, he keeps calling it a pattern.” Miles looked at me. “And what do you want?” The question cut through all

_Miles’s POV_ I should have told Nathan about Alan before Alan could do it for me. That was the first thought that stayed after the lot emptied, after Kane muttered another curse and left us with the kind of silence that only shows up when something personal has been dragged into public by the wrong person. Nathan hadn’t made a scene. He hadn’t even raised his voice. He’d just looked at me like a piece of my past had walked out of an alley and put its hands on the present. In the car, he waited until I started the engine. “How brief?” he asked. I didn’t pretend not to understand. “A few weeks. Maybe less. Before this season. Before you.” “And he thinks it was more.” “Alan thinks everything he touches should remain available.” My hands tightened on the wheel. “He likes unfinished people. He likes being the reason they stay unfinished.” Nathan stared out the windshield. “He looked at me like I took something.” “You didn’t.” “I know. He still looked at me like that.” There was

_Nathan’s POV_ The first version I heard was soft enough to pretend it was nothing. Two guys from the club hockey side were talking near the vending machines outside the gym, voices low, laughing in that mean, lazy way people laughed when the story wasn’t about them. I only caught the end of it. “—Silvermane and Ashwood? No chance. Miles used to go through people like seasons.” Then they saw me and shut up too fast. That would have been enough to sour the morning on its own. By noon, it wasn’t the only version. Theo found me after lecture with his mouth set hard. “You’re going to hear it, so I’m saying it first.” “Hear what?” He hesitated, which was rare for him. “Alan’s been talking. Not full announcement-level. Just enough. That Miles had a thing with him, that it was messy, that you’re the polished rebound who thinks it’s permanent.” The words landed with clean ugliness. “He’s saying that on campus?” “He’s saying enough that other people are repeating it like they came u