Page 14 of Shattered Ice
Leaning over her desk, smirking like she owed him attention. That wide-eyed freshman staring at her like she was salvation. The one time she looked at me, it was sharp, dismissive, and then gone. And somehow that cut deeper than if she’d ignored me completely.
She was a resource. A public good. The possessive fury coils in my throat, raw and choking, a beast pacing the cage of my ribs. She wasn’t theirs to approach. She was already tied to me, whether she knew it or not.
I slap another ten pounds on each side. Stupid. Reckless. I lie back on the bench, grip the cold, knurled steel. The bar bites shallow grooves into my palms.Push it out. Burn it away.
The first rep shakes. The second nearly rips me apart. On the third, my elbow flares with a hot, tearing pain. The weight tips, gravity suddenly a hostile force, and a hundred and fifty pounds of iron starts its descent, seconds from crushing my chest.
Hands appear—steady, gloved, absolute—wrapping the bar just inside my own. The steel rattles under our grips as they guide it back into the cradle with a solid, definitive thud.
I sit up, chest heaving, sweat stinging my eyes, salt and rage blurring everything. I don’t need to look.
Declan.
He doesn’t say,That was stupid.He doesn’t have to. He just unwraps his hands, the worn leather of his lifting gloves creaking in the silence.
“You’re going to tear a pec lifting angry,” he says, flat. He grabs a towel and starts methodically wiping the machine beside mine. Calm, surgical. The opposite of everything boiling inside me.
“I’m not angry.” The lie scrapes out of my throat, tasting like ash.
Declan stops and looks at me with those analytical eyes that cut cleaner than a blade. “Right.”
He goes back to wiping, the silence stretching. That’s his way—state the truth, then let me choke on it. No judgment. No sympathy. Infuriating. And the only reason I can stand to be around him when I’m like this.
“It’s a fucking waste of time,” I bite out, stripping plates with too much force. Each one slams down, iron teeth gnashing in rhythm with my pulse. “That whole study hall. Useless.”
Declan moves to the dumbbell rack, his motions efficient, precise. “Looked like you got a lot of observation done,” he says, not glancing at me.
My hands still on the plate. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He tests a weight in his palm. “You stared at her for two hours straight. Didn’t see you look at a book once.”
Heat spikes in my chest. “I was—” My mind scrambles, empty. The truth claws too close to the surface.
Declan finally turns, eyes sharp, pinning me like he’s dissecting a specimen. “It looked more like you were pissed you weren’t theonlyone she was talking to.”
The words cut with surgical precision. A direct hit. My first instinct is to deny it, to lash out. But it’s Declan. I don’t waste lies on him. The truth of it hangs in the air, heavy and undeniable: I wasn’t mad about study hall. I was mad about her. About the way she gave pieces of herself to anyone who asked while I sat there starving for what none of them deserved. The memory of Rylan at her desk makes my hands itch for violence.
I don’t answer. I just rip the last plate free and drop it with a clang that reverberates through the room. A confession bleeding out in silence. Every word I refuse to speak scrapes across my teeth, iron-sharp.
Declan gives a slight nod, confirming the diagnosis he already had. He doesn’t advise. He doesn’t comfort. He just takes hisdumbbells and walks to the far corner, turning his back to let me stew in the wreckage of my own thoughts. Conversation closed.
I’m left alone with the clanging echo of my anger, sweat slicking my palms, the chalk-stained floor blurred at the edges of my vision.
The bastard was right, and it made my blood burn.
Tomorrow is Wednesday.
Tomorrow she’ll sit across from me again.
No audience. No teammates. Just her and me.
And tomorrow, Clara will find out what happens when I decide someone’s mine to control.
Chapter 10
Adrian
Thefluorescentlightsofthe Briarcliff library hum like a dull blade—worn, but still sharp enough to draw blood. The sound burrows behind my eyes, a constant, electric threat. Five p.m. sharp. Forty-eight hours since Clara Harrington used that grammar-school tone and sliced me open with surgical precision, exposing nerves I thought I’d buried beneath ice and bone.
