Page 38 of Shattered Ice
“Clara Harrington,” she announces, her voice bouncing off the exposed brick. “You are criminally boring.”
I arch a brow, feeling the sticky residue of syrup on my temple. “Thanks?”
She grins. “Popcorn night. Genny’s picking the movie, which means we’ll suffer through something in French with subtitles too small to read. Save us. Come.”
Talia speaks up, her voice a quiet contrast to Zoë’s volume. “What she means is, we’re having a movie night, and we’d like you to come, if you’re not too busy.”
“I close in half an hour,” I say, gesturing to the industrial mop leaning against the back counter like a patient sentinel.
“Half an hour’s nothing.” Zoë's gaze narrows, cat-like, catching something in my face I don’t mean to show. “Ohhh. You’re thinking about him, aren’t you? The ice prince with the daddy issues?”
I drop the rag a little too hard on the counter, splattering sanitizer across my apron. “I’m thinking about not getting third-degree steam burns on my hands.”
Zoë’s grin sharpens, her dimple deepening like a thumbprint in clay. She knows she’s right, even if I’ll never say it. She pushes off the counter, her rings clinking against the marble. “Fine. Be mysterious. But if you turn into one of those girls who journals about hockey players and doodlesMrs. Clara Halein her notebooks, I’ll stage an intervention with tequila and a bonfire.” She hooks her arm through Talia’s. “Come on, T. Let’s leave the working girl to her duties. We’ll text you later, Clara.”
Talia gives me one last look—a quiet mix of understanding and concern—before Zoë pulls her out the door. The café door clicks shut, the sound slicing like a guillotine, and silence folds back over the room like a heavy blanket.
I finish closing alone. Chairs stacked, counters wiped, register counted. By the time I lock the heavy glass door, the air is sharp, colder than I expect. My breath fogs in a white plume.
The walk toward my dorm is familiar, but tonight it feels different. The campus is quiet, the pathways lit in pools of lonely gold under old-fashioned lamps. Every crunch of gravel under my boots sounds too loud. My exhaustion is a heavy cloak on my shoulders—not just from the job, but from the constant, low-grade hum of anxiety. The pressure of midterms, of my scholarship, of him. I’m so focused on the worn patch of sidewalk in front of me that I don’t see it at first.
A figure. A man-shaped absence where the light won’t go.
My heart seizes, a frantic, sickening lurch. A man is leaning against the lamppost just outside the pool of light, a shadow waiting in the dark. My hand flies to my keys, fingers closing around the longest one, my thumb pressing its jagged edge to my skin.Permission to bleed if I have to.My breath catches. My muscles tense. Every nerve ending screams a single, primal command:Run.
The figure pushes off the lamppost and steps into the light. Water beads on his hoodie, a cold halo clinging to the fabric. It’s him. Adrian Hale.
The terror doesn’t vanish; it just changes shape. The undefined threat of a stranger coalesces into the very specific, known threat of him. He stands there as if he belongs, his long body draped in a black hoodie, backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder. The light pools over his hair, damp enough that it curls at the edges. He doesn’t look up right away. He doesn’t have to. I feel the gravity of his attention before his eyes even lift. When they do, they find me without hesitation. Steady. Calculated.
“You left this,” he says, his voice low, holding up a folded sheet of paper. My notes, tucked with neat edges I know I didn’t leave behind.
I stop short, my feet frozen to the pavement.He went through my things.“I didn’t—”
He closes the space between us by half a step, the movement unhurried but sharp enough to make my heart hammer against my ribs. “Guess you did.”
He lifts the flap of my bag without asking and slides the page inside—an intrusion disguised as courtesy. The paper is warm from his hand, a shocking, intimate heat that lingers on my skin like static. My pulse kicks up, a frantic hummingbird against my throat.
“Thanks,” I say, my voice tighter than I mean it.
He doesn’t leave. He falls into step beside me before I’ve even chosen a direction, his stride longer than mine. The gravel crunches under our shoes in an uneven duet until he adjusts, syncing his rhythm to mine. Then he casually shifts around a puddle, forcing me to follow his chosen path. One half of me registers it as a simple courtesy. The other half screams until my blood runs cold:He’s matching your pace. He’s following you.
“You don’t usually work this late,” he says finally, his voice dragging low, like it belongs in darker places than a well-lit campus path.
My step falters. He says it like a fact, not a guess.He’s been watching me.A different kind of alarm, hot and confusing, creeps into my chest.
“How would you know what I usually do?” I ask, my tone sharper than I want, the words a necessary shield.
He doesn’t answer right away, just walks beside me, the scrape of his sneakers a steady, relentless rhythm on the gravel. When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet enough that I almost miss it. “I notice things.”
The simple statement lands like a threat. My mind races.What things? How often?The fear returns, cold and sharp. “You don’t usually lurk outside cafés.”
That earns a low sound from his chest—half amusement, half something else. “Maybe I wanted coffee.”
“You didn’t go inside.”
His gaze slides sideways, his eyes catching mine under the lamplight, sharp and unblinking. “Didn’t need to.”
The cold light cuts shadows into his face, carving his jaw hard, his cheekbones sharp enough to slice. His hoodie clings damp at the collar, the faint salt of sweat mixing with the rink air that still lingers on him. I straighten my spine, fighting for air that doesn’t taste of him, fighting to remember I’m the one in charge of our interactions. I am the tutor. He is the student.
