Page 18 of Shattered Ice
Everyone but me.
I peel the last strip of tape, roll it tight into a small, dense ball, and toss it into the trash.Clean break.Then—
“Hey, Hale.” Gio’s voice is lazy and sharp. Rylan’s smirk mirrors it, eyes narrowed, circling. Predators scenting blood. The room’s attention shifts. Conversations fade, heads turn. They smell an opening.
I don’t bite. Not yet.
“Word is you’ve got yourself a babysitter,” Rylan says, drawing out the word, tasting it.
The ripple moves fast—a whistle, a bench slap, the chorus of a pack looking for a weak spot. Ritual. Dominance. I have no patience for it tonight.
Gio piles on. “Hope she charges overtime. Heard smart girls don’t work cheap.”
A voice from the corner: “Does she pack your juice boxes too, Cap?”
Laughter, sharp as a punch. They’re testing me. Testing her. Wanting to see if the king bleeds.
I slam my locker shut. The sound rings out like a gunshot, and the chatter stutters.
“Shut it.” I don’t yell. I don’t have to. The word lands heavy, a promise of violence.
But Rylan doesn’t know when to quit. He leans into his stall, towel slung low on his hips, his grin lazy and mean. “C’mon, Cap. No shame in it. Unless…” He lets the word hang, sharp enough to cut. “...unless it’s because she’s fuckingcute.”
A switch flips in my chest, hot and violent. It’s not the observation. It’s the carelessness. The way he flattens her into something harmless—a mascot, a commodity, a scholarship girl here for their amusement. He thinks he can say her name, define her, make her theirs. They’re laughing at her, at me. And the ugly truth is, they read me. They saw the crack.
My fist hits the locker, harder. Wood splinters at the edge of the Titan crest. Pain rockets up my arm, hot and perfect. I feel the shock of it reverberate in my teeth, a clean break from the buzzing in my skull. The white-hot flash behind my eyes is a relief, a physical anchor in the storm of rage. I stare at the fresh scrape on my knuckles, watching a bead of blood well up. The copper tang rises sharp in the humid air. This, I can handle. This, I can control. A punishment I can control.
“Her name in your mouths is trespass,” I say quietly, my voice lethal. “Next time, it won’t end with splintered wood.”
The silence drops like a blade.
Calder lifts his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, Cap. Relax.”
The tension fizzles like ice hitting hot metal. Someone coughs. The volume on the speaker lowers. My blood is still boiling, but something colder twists beneath it.Why am I defendingher?Clara. The scholarship girl who looks at me like a problem to solve. The way her fingers brushed mine—accidental, meaningless, yet I can still feel the heat. The way she didn’t back down. Part of me wants to let them tear her apart, to prove she’s nothing special. But the thought of their mouths forming her name makes my jaw lock. She’s not their joke. Not theirs to claim. Not theirs to drag through the dirt. Their laughter turned her name into filth, and I wanted to make them choke on it.
The showers still hiss as steam thickens the air. I shove past shoulders and gear bags and let scalding water burn me raw.Reset,I tell myself.Reset.
When I drag on my hoodie, damp hair stuck to my forehead, my phone buzzes again. I ignore it. But then I hear it. This time, not my name. Hers.
“...tutor...” Gio again. Quieter, but it carries. A laugh follows. The pressure in the room shifts. Every guy feels it.
The main door creaks open, old hinges announcing a trespass.
And Clara Harrington walks in.
The noise dies instantly, sucked out of the room like a heartbeat held too long. Steam curls in silent ribbons. Towels hang from fists gone still. The entire, chaotic space freezes under the weight of her presence. The only sound is the drip of a distant shower and the low hum of the vents. A silence so absolute it feels louder than the music ever was.
She’s holding a folder tight to her chest, her knuckles white. Her boots are scuffed, jeans faded, dark hair knotted back. But her expression—focused, calculating, fearless enough to be a provocation—cuts straight through the air. She looks like she’s here to do surgery. I track her every move with the intensity I use to read a defenseman. I see the rigid line of her spine, the deliberate pace of her steps. She isn’t without fear; she has simply mastered it. And that, more than anything, is a direct challenge.
Rylan lets out a low whistle. Gio mutters, “Scholarship surprise.” No one laughs.
She tilts her head back, jaw set. The locker room parts for her, not because she dodges the bags and half-dressed players, but because she refuses to acknowledge them as obstacles at all. Her boots squeak on the wet tile as twenty pairs of eyes track her. Not once does her gaze waver from mine.
“You left these.” She holds out the folder, her voice cool and crisp, impossibly sharp in the sudden silence.
I blink, my mind struggling to catch up. “What?”
“Your notes.” The folder is a boundary, a threat. “Don’t make me waste my time twice.”
