Page 22 of On Thin Ice

He glanced over at me, and his expression softened almost imperceptibly. “I don’t, Stryker.”

I set my fork down and wiped my hands on my napkin, even though they weren’t dirty. My heart was suddenly beating harder than it should’ve been for something as simple as a name. “You can call me Bell, you know.”

Ethan looked at me, eyebrows lifting just slightly.

I forced a shrug. “Everyone else does.”

He didn’t respond right away, just studied me for a second too long. Long enough that I felt stripped bare under the weight of his gaze.

“Not a fan of your first name?” he asked.

I gave a short, humorless laugh. “Let’s just say my dad picked it, and that’s reason enough to hate it.” My words came out sounding way more bitter than I intended, but the harsh reality was that Iwasbitter. And a part of me wanted to see what Ethan would do with that knowledge.

Instead of pressing me on my attitude, he just gave a quiet nod and said, “You don’t talk about him much.”

For a moment, I was tempted to make a joke the way I usually did whenever someone asked me about the fucker, but here, tonight, sitting next to a man I’d idolized my whole life, I didn’t want to.

I scraped my thumb along the edge of my plate and let out a slow breath as I glanced toward the porch light, where a moth batted its wings in its glow. I dragged my gaze back to Ethan. “You ever have someone in your life who was supposed to love you,” I said quietly, “but all they ever did was fuck you up?”

He went still beside me, then shifted slightly in his chair. When he spoke, his voice was careful. “No,” he said. “I … I can imagine, though.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

“I’ve heard some stuff about your relationship … with your dad, I mean.” He hesitated, and something that looked a bit like guilt flickered across his features. “Nothing too specific, just general tension.”

My stomach tightened. I could guess what he’d heard. I knew the Aces General Manager, Chris Ramos, had spoken with my college coach, Jorgen Halstrom, when the team was looking to draft me about the rumors that said I could be high-maintenance and had a chip on my shoulder.

But no one ever stopped to wonder—or even just ask me—why that was.

If Ethan thought I was just some entitled brat with daddy issues? That would fucking wreck me. For some reason that I couldn’t explain—or rather, I could but didn’t want to examine too closely right now—I needed him to know the truth.

I didn’t look away when I spoke. Not because it didn’t hurt to admit this out loud, but because I refused to hide. What I’d been through, what I’d survived, wasn’t something I was going to flinch away from. I held his gaze, steady and sure, because this was my truth, and I owned it.

“I was thirteen when my dad caught me kissing a boy on my hockey team. The next day, he shipped me off to some camp run by a megachurch he was affiliated with. He called it therapy. Said it would fix me.”

Ethan’s jaw clenched, and his eyes flashed with horror, but just for a second. The kind of reaction you’d miss if you weren’t watching for it, but I was.

I was always watching him.

“Jesus,” he said, his voice rough around the edges. “Bell …”

My chest tightened at the way he said my name. Not Stryker.

Bell.

Like he’d heard me. Like hesawme.

“I know what you’re probably picturing, and to be clear, it wasn’t the worst kind of place like that. I know people who’ve been through absolute hell in one of those camps, but it still fucked me up for a while. The shaming. The isolation. The constant message that something about me was broken.”

Ethan didn’t interrupt. He just listened, his eyes never leaving mine. But his knuckles were white where they curled around his water glass, the tension in his grip betraying how hard he was trying to hold himself together.

I scrubbed my hands down my face. Blowing out a long breath, I admitted, “I lasted two weeks. Finally told them I’d successfully prayed the gay away.”

I could see the effort it took for Ethan to keep his expression neutral—his brow was furrowed and his jaw was tight, as though each word forming in his head had to be vetted before it reached his lips. One hand rose to the back of his neck, rubbing slowly, before dropping back to the table with a quietthud.

“I know I don’t have the right to ask this,” he said finally, his voice low, almost hesitant. “And youdefinitelydon’t owe me an answer. But I was under the impression that you like girls, too. Is that not the case?” His tone wasn’t skeptical or accusing, just curious.

And while his question wasn’t entirely unexpected, it still caught me a little off guard. It’d been a long time since anyone had asked for clarification on my sexuality. I was loud about who I was—sometimes obnoxiously so—and most people didn’t need to ask.

---