Page 40 of Shattered Ice
He doesn’t know the half of it. Fear wasn’t all I fed on. She leaned. For a second, she leaned.
“I didn’t touch her.” The denial sounds weak even to my own ears, the memory of my shoulder pressing into hers flashing hot and immediate in my mind.
“You didn’t have to.” He takes a step closer, his presence a quiet, immovable force as the rubber floor creaks under his weight. “You’re treating her like a rival player you’re trying to shut down on the boards. She’s not. She’s a girl already carrying the weight of the whole goddamn world on her shoulders.” He stops in front of me, his eyes dark and serious. “You keep pushing her like that, you’re going to break her, or she’s going to break you. Either way, the team loses. And Adrian—others noticed. You weren’t invisible last night.”
His words hang in the air, a brutal, undeniable truth. He didn’t come at me with emotion; he came at me with strategy. He framed my obsession as a liability to the one thing I am sworn to protect: the team. It’s the only argument I can’t counter. My mind flashes with an image of Clara’s face, shattered. Then another of me, completely unraveled, losing every last piece of the control I cling to. For the first time, this game I’m playing with her doesn’t feel like a hunt. It feels like a risk. A real one.
My first instinct is to lash out, to tell him to mind his own fucking business. But it’s Declan. The one person whose loyalty I’ve never had to question, who has never wanted anything from me but for me to be better. And he’s right. I’m being reckless. I’m losing control. Clara is the one who will pay the price for it.
I don’t answer him. I just turn back to the weights, my movements stiff, my jaw locked so tight it aches. Silence sits in my throat like broken glass.
Declan doesn’t wait for an apology. He just gives a single, almost imperceptible nod, as if to say,You heard me.He picks up his water bottle and walks out, leaving me alone in the ringing silence. The door hinges groan, leaving the room hollow with his absence.
I turn back to the bench press, my muscles coiled with a useless, frustrated energy. I lie down, grip the bar, and try to push. The strength is gone. My focus is shattered. Declan’s words have scraped me clean, leaving nothing but the ugly truth. I can’t even lift the bar. With a curse, I let it settle back into the cradle. The bar won’t budge. Neither will the thought of her.
I stand there for a long time, a cold iron dumbbell in my hand. The energy I came here to burn off is still there, a toxic sludge in my veins, tangled with the poison of Declan’s warning. It rots in me, black oil coating every vein. I’ve been called out by the one person I can’t dismiss, and he didn’t do it for judgment. He did it out of loyalty.
He’s right. I’m going to break her. Or she’s going to break me. The thought is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a countdown clock that just started ticking in my head.
I have practice in a few hours, and my head is a mess. For the first time, I’m not just worried about controlling her. I’m worried about controlling myself. Control is slipping, one finger at a time.
And the fall is coming.
Chapter 24
Adrian
Thelibrarycarriesthestale weight of recycled air and the endless hum of fluorescents, a building designed to punish rather than discipline. The storm outside makes it worse. Rain lashes the tall, panoramic windows in angry, diagonal waves, the wind groaning against the glass like the whole library wants to lean inward and listen. The atmosphere is thick, charged, a perfect mirror for the tension coiling in my gut.
I take the empty seat beside her, but it’s her space I’m really claiming. It’s not a coincidence. Not convenience. It’s a flag plant, a quiet invasion—territory seized while she watches. She looks up briefly, her mouth tightening into a flat line.
“You’re late.”
“Fashionably,” I say, dropping my books on the table with a thud that makes her wince.
“Midterms are in one week, Adrian,” she says, her voice clipped, all business. “This isn’t a performance. It’s triage. Now, show me the history chapter you were supposed to read.”
She doesn’t tell me to move. Not yet. Clara Harrington sits upright, spine too straight, her notes stacked in their usual perfect symmetry. Fortress-building in paper and ink.
And for once, her hair is down.
It’s not styled. Nothing about her ever is. But the sight of it hits me with a jolt. Dark, loose waves spill over one shoulder, strands glinting deep brown under the harsh fluorescent light. I want a fistful of it, the urge sharp enough that my hand twitches on the pencil. It’s the kind of soft, unruly texture that begs to be twisted between fingers, fisted tight and pulled. I don’t let my gaze linger, but the damage is done. A flicker of an unwelcome thought lodges low:what it would feel like to touch, to own, to mess up that careful order.
It’s a break in her pattern, a crack in the armor I’ve become obsessed with studying. Everything about her is controlled, contained, deliberate. But this is soft. Unruly. It doesn’t fit the data. It’s a tell—a sign of vulnerability she’s not even trying to hide—and it makes me even more determined to see what other secrets she keeps locked away.
She tucks a piece behind her ear, a quick, efficient movement. She doesn’t notice me watching. Or maybe she does and refuses to give me the satisfaction of reacting. Her sleeves are tugged down, the cuffs frayed where her thumb must rub them raw. The cardboard sleeve on her coffee cup is soft and peeling, as if she's been sanding it down with her nerves. I drag the cup closer, aligning it on my side of the table. A stolen trophy. She has tells. She hates them. I catalog every single one.
The storm sharpens the air between us. Every shuffle of paper, every scratch of pencil, sounds unnervingly loud. Thunder cracks, and though the glass shivers, our breath remains steady. She leans over a book to explain a formula, and the faint citrus scent of her shampoo drifts up, sharp enough to cut through the stale air.Citrus and ink.I inhale as if I've earned it. I shouldn't notice. I do.
When I don’t move fast enough, she slides her notebook closer, her arm brushing mine. Just the rough fabric of my hoodie against her softer sweater, but the contact hums through me, a low-voltage current.
She doesn’t flinch. Neither do I. The silence that follows is heavier than the storm outside.
“Show me where you messed up,” she says, her voice pulling me back.
I glance at the page, then at her. “Pretty sure you already know.”
“Humor me.”
