Page 4 of Shattered Ice
When I return to the locker room, it’s a tomb. No music, no noise. Just the slow drip of melting ice and the hum of pipes. I drop onto the bench. Addison’s words cling to me.Tutor. Scholarship. Talia.Each one is a new chain. I reach for my phone, my thumb swiping the glass with a violence that feels like control.
Buzz.
Academic Center Notification: Tutoring Appointment Scheduled. Monday, 5:00 PM. Room A312. Further sessions to be scheduled for Wednesdays.
The first shackle snaps shut.
Buzz.
Study Hall Confirmation: Tues/Thurs, 7–9 PM. Proctored by Talia Addison. Attendance Required.
They built the walls of my cage. My time is no longer my own.
Buzz.
Tutor Assigned: Clara Harrington.
The final insult. My handler.
I read the name twice. Foreign. An intrusion. A crack in the foundation I’ve spent my life pouring concrete over.Clara Harrington.The name cuts through me like broken glass. She doesn’t belong here, an outsider who will see me at my weakest. She’ll sit across from me with secondhand books and wounded eyes and just…know. Know that I’m not untouchable. That Hale bleeds.
I will not allow it. I will not be a project for a ghost in a marble hall.
Something dark coils in my gut, hot and violent. I don’t enjoy being vulnerable. I don’t like being seen. And I sure as hell don’t like being studied by someone I could break with my bare hands. She’s an infection—something foreign lodged under my skin. If I can’t cut her out, I’ll grind her down until she learns the cost of trespassing. She’s stepping into my cage without an invitation; I’ll decide if she walks back out.
I lock my phone and hurl it into my duffel bag. The weight of the name doesn’t leave. It lingers like a threat.
Clara Harrington.
The first variable I can’t control. She’s not just an obstacle. She’s a foreign body in my system. One I must neutralize. I will learn her weaknesses, her tells, and the scent of her fears. I will collect every detail until I know how to unmake her, piece by piece.
Chapter 3
Clara
TheBriarcliffCaféreeksof burnt espresso and old money. Every inhale is a reminder of what I don’t have—bitter coffee, syrupy sweetness, and the stink of entitlement that seeps into concrete and bone. Behind the counter, I steam milk for a drink I couldn’t afford if I starved for a week. The air presses down, thick with roasted beans and pretentious little bottles labeledbourbon vanillaandgolden chai.
Everything in here gleams: marble counters, concrete buffed so smooth it reflects the light, an espresso machine that costs more than what Mom and I lived on for six months after the funeral. I watch steam rise, a white ghost twining through steel and shadow, and for half a second it feels like armor—a delicateshield between me and the predators sipping lattes on the other side.
I wipe the steam wand with a rag folded four times so I don’t burn my fingers. I’ve learned the choreography: foam, pour, smile.Don’t let it slip.I move like a puppet with a knife at her back, eyes alert, posture straight, mouth tilted just friendly enough to pass. The dance of prey that knows it’s being watched.
Three hours in, my forearms ache from pounding espresso and my calves from standing too long, but my shoulders stay loose because fatigue is blood in the water here. These people can smell it, devour it. After this, I have a shift at the library, pulling desk duty. The thought of the quiet there is a balm. Not a performance. Just breath. The absence of someone waiting to pounce.
The next customer slides her phone across the reader like she’s flicking away a scrap of trash. Her scarf probably costs more than my entire semester.
“Small black coffee,” she snaps, every syllable clipped and cutting. Her friends cluster behind her, all icy smiles and razor-edged laughter that isn’t aimed at me but slices just as deep.
“Maybe scholarship kids like it scalding,” one whispers, just loud enough to be heard. “Keeps them awake for all their jobs.”
The laughter is sharp, hungry; not a joke, just a ritual of power. Their perfume clings like money turned rancid. My hands—rough, calloused—feel too big, too dirty for the glinting glass and steel of this world. They’re scarred currency, every blister and callous proof of an hour I’ve sold, a price they’ll never have to pay. I hand her the cup with my best customer-service smile, flat and polished as plate armor. I watch them float away. Gravity is beneath them. Consequences are beneath them. They glide. They don’t speak; they decree. And people like me? We deliver.
The bell above the door chimes. I barely look up.
It’s Professor Lansing from the History department, the one who oversees the library archives. My grip tightens on the rag, a pulse of cold running down my spine. Lansing doesn’t belong here. He looks like he’s carved from policy and disappointment. He cuts straight for me, his shoes clicking like a gavel, sentencing me before I speak. His shadow stretches huge and hungry across the polished floor.
My breath stutters. For a moment, the shadow is wrong—bigger, broader, filling a doorway that doesn’t exist anymore. The hiss of the espresso machine recedes; the scent of coffee twists sour in my throat. My body remembers before my mind does: fear, cold, and absolute. I stare at the overhead lights until the world snaps back.It’s just a shadow. You’re safe. You’re at work.But the chill lingers, a phantom hand on my shoulder.
“Clara Harrington,” he says, his voice a scalpel.
