Page 24 of Shattered Ice
At 4:57 I check my phone.
A text from Zoë:
Don’t let him set terms. make him bleed for every answer.
A second from Genny follows like a seal on an envelope:
Speak clean. Cut once. Leave him bleeding.
I smile without meaning to, a brief flicker of warmth. Then I lock my screen, place the phone face down, and wait. The waiting is part of the battle. It’s where I gather my focus, steel my nerves, and remind myself what’s at stake. This isn’t about him. It’s about my future.
He arrives at 5:06. Not a step sooner.
The door slams open. Adrian doesn’t enter—he invades, six-foot-three of coiled muscle and barely contained fury. Cold rides in on him, tin-sharp and invasive. The fluorescent lights dim as if cowering from him. His gray Briarcliff hoodie is pulled low, casting shadows across eyes that burn arctic blue, while his sleeves are violently shoved up forearms mapped with veins like tributaries of rage. Sweat or ice melt glistens at his temple, catching light when he moves. The room fills with his scent—eucalyptus and cold, medicinal and mean. He brings the rink's chill with him, the temperature in the small alcove dropping enough to raise the hairs on my arms. No greeting. No apology. He yanks the chair out with enough force to leave marks on the floor, then drops into it, letting the metal-on-linoleum screech saw through the silence between us.
“Babysitting hours start at five,” he says, his voice low, almost bored, but with a current of something else running underneath it. “You charge extra for overtime?”
“Only when the client’s late,” I answer, my voice just as flat. “Let’s get started.”
He sprawls back like the chair is a throne he graciously allows to exist under him. He flicks a look at the layout on the table as if it personally offended him by being orderly, a silent judgment on my desperate need for control.
“We’re starting with Stats,” I say, my voice all business as I pull a clean review packet free, the blank copy I printed for this session. “Let’s see what you actually did.”
A muscle twitches in his jaw. He reaches into his backpack without looking and sets his own battered packet on the table between us. It doesn’t land so much as it’s discarded. The top corner is bent, folded over on itself. The margin is stabbed with graphite, a series of dark, angry lines. Arrows lunge at numbers like they’re prey. There’s a smear of ink where his hand dragged through wet lines. The packet isn’t homework; it’s shrapnel.
I don’t make a sound. I simply pull the packet to my side of the table.
I scan the page once, twice, and the pattern is there before I can pretend it isn’t. It’s not just messy; it’s consistently incorrect in a way that feels significant. Sevens become ones when he recopies them from one line to the next. A nine flips to a six. In a simple data table, he misaligns a column, loses a line of data entirely, then corrects it with an arrow that points to the wrong row. The work isn’t lazy. It’s labored. Aggressive, even—like he tried to throttle the math into submission and the math slipped away just to spite him.
“You did these… last night?” I ask, keeping my tone perfectly neutral, clinical.
“After,” he says, his voice a wall.
“After what?”
“Noise.” The word hangs in the air, a complete sentence, a closed door. “Go on, Tutor.”
I slide the packet back toward him. “Read the first question aloud.”
His eyes lift to mine, flat and hard as slate. “You can read.”
“So can you.” I tap the line with my index finger. “Out loud. I want to hear you process it.”
A beat of tense silence. He doesn’t move. I don’t look away.
Then he leans forward, planting an elbow on the table, and the room tilts with his proximity. My breath catches, a stupid, involuntary hitch. Six inches of stolen distance that feels like a mile. His forearm plants right over the packet, like he might crush the print with weight alone.
“Maybe you’re shy,” he says, his voice a low drawl. “Want me to hold your hand while I sound out the big words?”
“That explain why you avoid them?” I keep my voice cool, refusing to take the bait. “Read it.”
His mouth cuts upward—no teeth, all threat. Then his eyes drop to the page.
“‘Given two inde—’” He stops abruptly, clears his throat, and runs the word again faster, barreling through it. “‘Independent events, A and B—’”
I hear it. I see it. It’s not the stumble itself—it’s the shift. The subtle bracing before a multi-syllable word. He rushes when the words get longer, clipping the syllables together like they’re obstacles he needs to clear. Articles and prepositions—the small connective tissue of a sentence—vanish altogether, skipped like they don’t matter. But when he hits the numbers—the percentages, the ratios, the mathematical notation—his tone hardens, becomes steadier, more precise. He lands those clean, then trips again the moment the sentence switches back to text.
He finishes the paragraph and throws the pencil down on the table like a gauntlet. “Happy?”
