Page 125 of Shots & Echoes

I had built her up in my mind as this golden girl—untouchable, unstoppable. A player with raw talent and an unshakable drive, backed by a family who pushed her toward greatness. But now? Now, I saw the cracks.

And it wrecked me.

Every single piece of her suddenly made sense.

The way she played like she had something to prove, like failure wasn’t just a loss but a death sentence. The way she clenched her jaw every time someone underestimated her, how she skated with a reckless kind of fury that told me she wasn’t just chasing victory—she was running from something.

This wasn’t about the jersey. It never had been.

She fought for control—on the ice, in the locker room, with me—because control was the only thing that had ever kept her from falling apart. And now I understood why.

The thought of losing everything she had built for herself terrified her.

And the thought of losing me?

Maybe that terrified her too.

When I pushed her in practice, when I took control, when I pressed her up against the lockers and made her fight back—it wasn’t just about dominance. It was about something deeper. Something neither of us had put words to yet.

She let me push her because, deep down, she trusted me not to leave her afterward.

That realization hit like a punch to the ribs, stealing my breath.

It was more than lust, more than the reckless way we kept colliding into each other. It was trust and fear, tangled together in something dark and unbreakable. And I knew now—she didn’t just want to win. She wanted to know she wasn’t alone in the fight.

I swallowed hard, my pulse hammering in my ears.

What the hell would happen if I walked away? If I turned my back on her now?

Would she shut down? Let those walls slam back into place, convincing herself that she had always been alone?

The thought clawed at my insides, something cold and unfamiliar sinking deep into my bones.

Because for the first time in years, I knew what real stakes felt like.

And losing her?

That would be the one loss I wouldn’t survive.

"We should go," Dad said, folding his paper. "We have practice in a couple of hours."

I pushed back from the table; the chair scraping against the floor, and walked out without another word. The door swung shut behind me, but it felt like I was stepping into a void—like the second I left that coffee shop, I stopped existing altogether.

The air outside was thick, heavy, pressing down on me as I climbed into my car. The engine growled to life, but I didn’t give a shit about where I was going. I just drove—windows down, wind cutting sharp against my skin, the world blurring past in streaks of asphalt and fading daylight.

One hand clenched the wheel, knuckles aching from the force of my grip. My mind was a fucking battlefield, and at the center of it all was her.

Her body under mine, breathless and wrecked. The way she had let go for me, let me take her apart, piece by piece. The memory clung to me like a brand, hot and permanent, sinking into my bones. But it wasn’t just that—it wasn’t just about how she felt, how she tasted. It was the way she looked at me afterward, like I was something more than the wreckage I’d been trying to outrun.

And that terrified me.

Because I knew who I was. The guy who ruined everything he touched. The guy who let a cheap hit and his own reckless pride cost him everything he had worked for. The guy who burned out too young and had nowhere left to go.

And Iris? She deserved better than a man like that.

I gritted my teeth, pressing harder on the gas, the speedometer creeping higher as if outrunning the thought could erase it.

Then I saw it again—her eyes when Chris kissed her.

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