Todos los capítulos de Hate On The Ice, Mine In The Dark: Capítulo 61 - Capítulo 70

_Nathan’s POV_ By the third day of the rumor, people had stopped pretending they weren’t watching for reactions. It wasn’t dramatic, not in the way movies made gossip look. Nobody stood on tables. Nobody confronted me in the middle of the quad with a speech. It was smaller than that and harder to catch. A conversation that died when I got close enough to hear it. A second look in the cafeteria line. A first-line forward on the Growlers side who had always been neutral with me suddenly finding somewhere else to be when Miles and I crossed the same hallway after morning sessions. Theo noticed all of it. Of course he did. “You’re doing the face,” he said as we left lecture, falling into step beside me with his hands in his jacket pockets. “What face?” “The one where you calculate whether walking faster makes it better or worse.” He glanced sideways at me. “For what it’s worth, most of our room has moved on to whether Coach is going to change power-play looks before the weeken

_Nathan’s POV_ Miles slept like someone who had lost the ability to fully go under. I woke twice in the night to the sound of him breathing too carefully beside me, staring at the ceiling of my dorm as if the house he’d walked out of was still projected there. When morning came, he got up first, pulled on a shirt, and stood at the window with a mug he didn’t drink from. “You don’t have to pretend you’re fine,” I said. “I’m not pretending I’m fine. I’m pretending I can get through campus without putting my fist through a wall.” That was more honest than comfort. We left later than usual. On the path near the athletic complex, Kane was already waiting, which meant Miles had texted him at some point in the dark hours. Kane took one look at him and muttered, “He went for the throat, didn’t he?” Miles didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Practice was not a refuge. Miles wasn’t even on our ice, but I felt the shape of him all morning anyway — the knowledge that he had gone home a son a

_Nathan’s POV_ The notification arrived before I had even finished putting my shoes on. **Ashwood Campus Coordination:** Overnight absence recorded. Off-dorm location not pre-notified. Pattern flag opened under current stability protocol. Direct follow-up required. Miles read it over my shoulder and went still behind me. “That was fast,” he said. “He doesn’t delay when he thinks a boundary has been tested.” I locked the screen and sat on the edge of the bed for a second longer than necessary. The room still smelled like sleep and his shampoo. Outside, campus was already moving through an ordinary morning. Inside, the log had turned last night from a choice into evidence. Miles crouched in front of me, hands on my knees. “Are you regretting staying?” “No.” “Then don’t do that face.” “What face?” “The one where you start calculating how to make the next punishment smaller by becoming smaller yourself.” I looked at him. There was no accusation in it, only recognition. He had

_Nathan’s POV_ I woke up still angry at a form. That was the part that convinced me the current strategy was failing. Not Damian’s disgust, not Elias’s cold procedure, not even the denial itself — the fact that I had spent half the night replaying a request window and a one-line refusal like it deserved that much space in my head. Miles had been right. Polite survival was beginning to train me. I texted him before class. **Nathan:** Meeting after practice. Your place. Theo and Kane too. Not a vent session. A plan. He answered within a minute. **Miles:** Good. The day tried to remain ordinary around the decision. Lecture. Weights. A short film meeting where Coach talked about gap control like it was the only war that mattered. I let the structure of campus carry me forward until practice ended and the four of us could close a door on it. Miles’s apartment looked the same, but the atmosphere did not. Kane arrived first, dropped a bag of food on the counter, and said, “If t

_Nathan’s POV_ By late afternoon the options had been talked into the same shape from every direction. Comply for fourteen days and let Elias prove he could remove Miles by rule. Pretend to comply and break it in secret until we got caught. Refuse outright and force the larger consequence now. Kane preferred delay if delay bought leverage. Theo preferred open refusal if the alternative was two weeks of slow self-erasure. Miles barely trusted himself to speak in complete sentences without telling me to burn the whole framework down. In the end it was quieter than all of that. I sat on the edge of Miles’s bed with my phone in my hand and the house summons still sitting in my body like cold iron. “If I take the fourteen days, he learns the ban works. If I take them and sneak around them, I go back to living by his tripwires. I’m not doing either.” Miles stopped pacing. “Say it plainly.” “I’m refusing the terms. All of them. Especially the part where he decides you are optional