Page 29 of Born of Ice

Spot on.

The screeching sound that pierces the cold, winter air sends the birds scattering from the trees nearby.

It’s a howl. A mad, broken sound loud somewhere around me, filling the dead tense silence, but I feel lost in that time and space, as if it’s all happening in slow motion and then that scream transforms as bitter, painful, cruel laugh rips from my throat, while tears flow down my cheeks, and I realize it’s coming from me.

Because the puck hit my shin pads, and I haven’t felt a thing. Not one tingle or a sense of pressure. Nothing.

Out of nowhere, there is a spray of ice as Exton falls to his knees in front of me, probing and touching every part of my legs. “Where? Where did I hurt you?” he asks, panicked and terrified but I only throw my head back and laugh harder. Madder.

“See?” I scream. “Nothing! There’s nothing. Nothing hurts! Don’t you fucking see, nothing will ever hurt! I’m nothing!”

The laughing stops, but the tears don’t.

“Let me take you inside,” he says softly, his brown eyes watching me with an emotion I've never seen before. It's not pity or sadness. It's…something else.

“You really are an idiot, Axe,” Severin tells him just as my as my chair starts to move and I put my hands on the wheels stopping him.

Yeah…he is. But…weirdly, I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now.

His puck…it set something free in me. It settled something deepwithinme. I won’t walk…and that’s okay.

“No. Let’s keep playing.”

9

Definitely a masochist

Exton

“You shot flying pucksat her?” Stella bellows with her arms flailing in the air. She stormed into our house exactly thirty minutes after we came back inside from our little game on the ice. How the hell she knew what we were doing is beyond me, seeing as Electra lives in the middle of nowhere.

“Honestly, I’m not sure why you’re angry—orsurprised—for that matter,” Electra interrupts my ass chewing but without lifting her eyes from the book she threw at my head the other day. Something boring about figure skating. “You’re the one who sent the lunatic my way.”

“That’s it. Quinn, you are out and I’m moving Electra into my house.”

“Yeah, no,” I snort without thinking and freeze. Why the hell did I just say that? Isn’t this exactly what I wanted? To be free of her and go back to my life?

Yet today on the ice…that cry she let out…it did something to me. Something I cannot understand but when my puck hit her legs and she screamed like a banshee, I was sure she could feelsomething and I fucked up. Only to realize it was her way of saying goodbye to that tiny sliver of hope then and there.

My puck shattered that thin layer of ice around her heart and a dull sense of resignation washed over her. She didn’t look angry about it. She wasn’t pissed. Electra was devoid of emotions and that’s what got me.

I’ve never cared for anyone’s emotions and all that feeling crap before her. It never even crossed my mind, yet today I not only cared, I fuckingfelther pain as if it was my own.

And I felt fear. Like never before.

Sheshouldbe pissed. Sheshouldbe angry as hell. So, the second she let go of that thread, I picked it up. And I will hold onto it, making it stronger and thicker until she not only stands but skates again.

Now this gets the little star’s attention, and she cocks her eyebrow at me. “Careful, Exton, or I might think you are a secret masochist.”

I’m starting to think there is nothing secret about it. Iamone. Because with all of her jabs, curses, tantrums, and not to mention the early wakeup calls, I had the most fun in a long while.

“He’s been called worse,” Severin supplies unhelpfully from the kitchen. Why that fucker is still here, I have no idea. I also have no idea why it irritates me to no end that he just handed Electra a glass of juice.

“I have no doubt about it.” She rolls her eyes playfully at him, accepts the glass with a small smile and goes back to her book.

“Don’t you have to be at practice by five?” I send him a glare, drumming my fingers on the counter.

“I do.” He sighs as if he’s disappointed by that fact.

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