Page 23 of Shattered Ice
The locker room is dark when I pass through, the smell of rubber and sweat and antiseptic never turning off. My stall gleams like a coffin—neat on the surface, rage buried shallow beneath polished wood. There’s a dent in the door from earlier. The Titan crest has a hairline crack through the bottom ring. I press my thumb into it until the joint throbs, until the metal bruises back. Then I let go.
My phone pings again, not the team thread this time.
Unknown number: Compliance study hall reminders. Attendance mandatory. Tues/Thurs.
Another: Academic Center: Stats review packet attached.
And then, because the universe likes to stack things, my father.
Board dinner Friday. You will attend. Wear a tie. Be useful.
A muscle in my back seizes, an old, familiar tension.Useful.He doesn’t even bother with my name tonight. The screen’s glow is colder than the words. I type outCan’t. Practice.and delete it. I typeWill be there.and delete that, too. I pocket the phone. He’ll get whatever answer he wants. He always does.
On the way out, I nearly run into Declan in the tunnel. No sound until he’s right there—black hoodie, running shoes, tape around his wrist. He doesn’t do surprise; he does inventory, his eyes narrowed.
“You good?” It’s not soft. It’s a challenge.
“Fine.” I shoulder past, then stop. He’s the only one I don’t waste lies on. “Party was loud.”
His brow twitches, barely a tell. “Calder?”
“Calder. Gio. The usual bark. Nothing with teeth.” I pivot, needing to reassert control. “Your positioning was off today. You need to stay square to the shooter on that last rep.”
Declan’s mouth goes flat, the closest he gets to a smile. “You’re worried about my positioning when you’re the one who skated alone in the dark for ninety minutes? Priorities,Hale.”
The truth in his words is a clean, sharp sting. He’s the only person who can call me on my bullshit without me wanting to put him through a wall. His quiet, brutal honesty is the only thing that feels real most days, a necessary anchor. He doesn’t care about the Hale name; he cares about the man. That’s a debt I can never repay.
“I’m worried about us looking like a clinic on Friday,” I say. “Addison’s patience is thinner than the ice.”
He nods once, then gives it back, like always. “You were a step hot on the pivot. Left hip. Fix it before he does.”
I grunt. That’s as close as we get tothank you. Our language is critique and silence. He starts toward the gym. I don’t ask why he’s training at two in the morning; I already know. We’re the same kind of broken, our bodies moving until the noise shuts off. He pauses by the lockers, eyes flicking to the dent in the door. He doesn’t comment. He doesn’t need to.
“Keep the room quiet tomorrow,” I say.
“Always,” he answers. Not “Cap.” Not tonight. It lands heavier than loyalty ever does when it’s loud.
I leave the lights off when I enter my dorm room, the shadows a familiar comfort. My keys clatter on the polished mahogany desk, the sound too loud in the quiet. The air is still and sterile, smelling faintly of the lemon polish the cleaning staff uses, not like anything real. It’s a room designed to impress, not to be lived in.
I hang the hoodie over the back of the plush leather armchair and open the Stats packet out of spite. Numbers line up like enemies, daring me to fail. I grip the pencil too tight, dragging it down the margin until the lead snaps. I replace it. Try again. Circle the wrong figure. Cross it out. Start over. By the third page, the whole thing looks like a battlefield—arrows stabbing between formulas, ink smeared where my hand dragged too slow.
It should be simple, but the page fights back. It’s not that I don’t see the numbers. I see too much, too fast, and none of it stays still. It’s infuriating. I can read the most complex defensive formation in a split second. I can calculate the trajectory of a deflected puck in my head. I know the physics of this gamebetter than anyone on the ice. Why does a simple fucking page of numbers feel like an attack? Why can’t I make them obey?
Lazy,my father’s voice says.Careless. Undisciplined.
Underneath it, a new frustration burns, hotter and more dangerous. I can’t fucking figure her out. The fact that she doesn’t break, doesn’t bend, makes me want to find her weak spot. To own the one thing in this place I can’t control. Clara’s a problem I can’t hit, can’t skate around, can’t intimidate. It’s pissing me off more than any of this. She looked at me like I was an equation too simple to matter, and that gutted me more than their laughter ever could.
I press the pencil hard enough to score the paper through three sheets. That’s what weakness looks like. My own frustration, staring back at me from the page. I won’t let my father see this. I won’t let Addison see this. I’d rather face a five-on-one penalty kill than let them see this mess.
So I shut the packet and tell myself I’ll make Clara drag me through it on Monday. I’d rather bleed at her feet than crack open under his gaze.
Chapter 14
Clara
I’mearly.OfcourseI am. Room A312 hums with recycled air and the specific, high-pitched whine of aging fluorescent lights, the kind that makes the edges of paper look too white and burrows into your skull if you sit under them for too long. I crack the window three inches until the old metal latch protests with a groan; cold October sneaks in and sharpens the room, cutting through the stale, sterile air. The table’s scarred birch surface is smooth where the finish has been worried away by years of anxious elbows.
I run a sanitizing wipe over our side anyway—a small ritual of control—and lay out the materials in a grid that would make a drill sergeant salivate: Statistics on the left, Biology on the right, American History in the center. Fresh index cards are squaredto ninety degrees with the edge of the table. My pen and a spare. A mechanical pencil because he refuses to bring one. My entire setup is a declaration of order in the face of impending chaos.
