Page 17 of Shattered Ice
Her hands flatten over her laptop. “You don’t scare me.”
“Good. Fear makes people sloppy.”
Her chin lifts. “What the hell do you want out of this, Hale? Besides staying off the bench.”
I could tell her that for the first time in a long time, something is interesting. But I don’t. “Results. Control. And to see what happens when someone finally pushes you back.”
“No one’s evernotpushed me,” she says, her words soft but fierce.
I study her, my voice soft, dangerous. “Yeah. I can tell.”
She stills, a flicker of something raw in her eyes before the shield slams back down. She clears her throat. “Monday. Five.”
“Monday. Five,” I echo.
She doesn’t look back until the doorway. Then, deliberate and sharp, she says, “You’re not special in here. You’re just a student. Same rules.”
I hold her gaze. “Rules are ice, Harrington. Only as strong as the temperature you keep them at.”
Her lips twitch. “Ice fits you better than warmth ever could.”
“Careful. You haven’t seen me burn yet.”
She leaves. The hum of the lights swallows her footsteps. I sit in the empty alcove, the air still warm from her. For the first time all semester, the suffocating quiet of the library doesn’t feel like a cage. It feels like a hunting ground. My phone buzzes again—Camden, then Coach. I ignore both.
There’s a single page left where her elbow rested. Tiny, neat ink. Smudged where her thumb pressed too hard, betraying her stress. It smells faintly of coffee and winter-clean shampoo.
Control begins with scraps.
The ink she left.
The smudge she couldn’t erase.
You claim the small things first. Then you expand until obedience spreads.
Chapter 11
Adrian
Thelockerroomreeksof rotting victory—steam, old soap, and stale sweat baked into the rubber mats. Autumn seeps in around the windows, the kind of thin, metallic chill that makes wounds ache. My lungs still burn from practice, the sting lingering like punishment. Overhead, the fluorescents buzz, a high, needling whine that drills through bone. I can’t escape it. I don’t want to. Pain keeps me sharp.
The ache in my quads is an honest pain, a clean burn I can understand. It’s the other ache, the one left by Addison’s silence, that I can’t shake. He ran us until the world blurred—suicides until bodies collapsed over knees, gasping into jerseys. He didn’t bark at me once. He didn’t need to. His silence was a razor, flaying me raw. I felt every missed shot, every hesitation,the weight of his gaze measuring, waiting for the golden boy to crack. His silence said it all.Replaceable.
I strip the tape from my stick, one deliberate, methodical pull at a time. Ritual. Control. If I get this right, maybe something else will fall in line. The adrenaline from the scrimmage hasn’t bled out yet; it’s under my skin, electric and twitching, feeding a violence that has nowhere to go. My gloves are wet with old sweat, leather sticking to my palms like a second skin. I flex my fingers. Sore, swollen, used. Everything I’m good at hurts.
My phone waits face-down. I already read the texts. Short, surgical, from my father.
Disappointed. Fix it. The name is more important than your ego.
That always lands. The name. Not me. Not his son. The brand. I am flesh on the ledgers, a walking, breathing investment, and my stock is down. The words summon a memory I’ve spent years trying to bury: me at twelve, in the passenger seat of his Mercedes after a championship loss. The polished silence of the car, the scent of his cologne, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. He didn’t look at me, didn’t speak for the entire ride home. That silence was a verdict. It decided what I was, and I’ve been trying to outrun it ever since. I press my thumb to my temple, digging in for a pain sharp enough to drive out the rest. It doesn’t help. My father’s voice doesn’t shut off. Not even hers can drown it out.
But Clara Harrington tries.
That look she gave me Wednesday—calm as a scalpel, like she’d already mapped where to cut. I haven’t shaken it. It’s a splinter in my skull. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t fold. She looked at me like I wasn’t inevitable. Like she wanted to dissect what made the machine tick, as if she could find a man underneath all the steel and scars. It’s the novelty of it that’s so infuriating.Everyone else on this campus sees a legacy, an asset, a prize. She sees a problem that needs to be fixed, an equation that doesn’t add up. She’s the first person in years to see me as something broken, and the insult of it is so profound it’s become an obsession.
I don’t know if that makes her brave, or stupid, or just makes me weak for letting it get to me.
A sharp slap of a towel against tile snaps me back. Rylan and Gio swagger in from the showers, laughing too loud, faces flushed with adrenaline and need. Rylan’s curls drip onto the floor. Gio tears at a protein bar wrapper with his teeth, his body language predatory. They move through the space like they own it. Like I let them. Someone’s speaker kicks up, the bass too heavy for the walls, a beat that’s more threat than celebration. No one tells them to cut it. This is what victory sounds like—ugly, loud, a room soaked in testosterone and hunger. Everyone’s riding high.
