Page 101 of On Thin Ice

At his stall, Viggy caught my eye for just a second, his expression unreadable. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed in my play or if he was wondering about the tension radiating between Ethan and me since we’d arrived this afternoon. Separately.

For weeks, we’d been driving in together—to save on gas, we told our teammates—but we’d barely spoken a word since I’d gone back inside to call Jax and tell him the “Bodies in Motion” issue was off the table.

Across the locker room, Ethan was methodically stripping off his own gear, never once glancing my way. The silence that had started last night after that disaster of a conversation had stretched for almost twenty-four hours, and now I couldn’t focus on anything except the hollow feeling in my chest.

And it showed in every single shift I put in on the ice tonight.

Two months of solid hockey and one bad night with new linemates might be all it took to send me back to the third line.

No matter how much I’d tried to focus, my mind kept replaying the moment when I realized all his talk about us being together for real had been just that—talk. A careful lie meant to soften the truth: that he’d never choose me out loud.

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that photo shoot up at all, but it was too late now.

And I really didn’t know what to do with that. The smart thing would be to move out of his house, give myself a clean break from him, but when it came to Ethan Harrison, I was anything but smart.

I shot another glance his way.

I didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know anything except that my chest had been aching since I walked away from that table, and now my hockey was suffering for it too.

Tomorrow’s video review was going to be brutal, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that my spot on the first line wasn’t the only thing at risk of falling apart.

I rolled my shoulders, feeling the familiar tightness from a late hit I’d taken in the second. My throat was dry from sucking wind during those long shifts when we’d been hemmed in our zone. All I wanted was to grab my post-game protein bar, head home, and try to forget about the scoreboard—and everything else weighing on my mind.

“You okay?” Miller’s voice broke through my spiral as he slid onto the bench beside me, his shoulder nudging mine in that easy, familiar way.

I glanced over, grateful for the distraction, even if I wasn’t sure I had the energy to fake a smile.

“Yeah,” I said, even though it wasn’t even close to true. “Just tired.”

“Tough game.”

“Tough week.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “You wanna talk about it?”

I exhaled, my breath coming out rougher than I intended. I couldn’t tell him everything, but Miller was the closest thing I had to a friend here in Austin, and I wanted to honor that by sharing things about my life that mattered.

At least the stuff I was allowed to talk about.

I turned to look at him. “I got the REND campaign.”

I’d talked to him a bit about the possibility of it a couple of weeks back, when Jax had first mentioned I was in the running.

I didn’t make a habit of staring at my teammates’ underwear, but I’d recognized REND’s logo on a pair of trunks he’d pulled on after a game one evening. It turned out Miller was a fan of their products, especially a particular style of brief he called his “slutty underwear.”

I knew precisely the ones he was talking about—they were some of my favorites, too. That convex pouch was a game changer under a pair of gray sweatpants.

Miller blinked, his head snapping up. “Wait, you did?”

I nodded, chewing on my lip.

“Holy cannoli,” he breathed, his eyes wide. “That’s amazing. Can I tell people I know a famous model now?”

“Only if you promise not to say anything until the campaign drops.”

“I won’t,” he said, practically vibrating with excitement. “My college roommates are going to die.”

“Mine too.” Some of the tension I’d felt since last night finally loosened. This was my life. It was real, and this was happening. “It’s kind of wild. They’re even talking about a billboard in Times Square for the rollout. It’s pretty much everything my agent and I have been building toward.”

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