Page 43 of The Pucks We Freeze
Then Willow turned to me.
There was a pause. One of those full-body silences when every word you want to say gets caught behind your ribs. She didn’t need to say anything. We both knew what we were feeling.
Instead, she just gave me that smile. The soft one that had wrecked me the night of her graduation party. The one that would haunt me in every empty room she wasn’t in.
Before I was ready, she walked inside the bus station.
I stood there for another minute, maybe two, heart thudding like it could outrun the moment if it just tried hard enough. But I didn’t follow.
I didn’t wait to watch her board the bus or pull away. I was afraid that if I did, I’d go after her. Instead, I told myself I had to get to practice.
I turned around and left before our goodbye could wreck me.
Now, an hour later, I still felt it. The pull. The ache.
I had to remind myself she was gone. She was on the bus heading back to Braysen, and her world was moving on without me in it.
The ache in my chest didn’t feel like goodbye. It felt unfinished. Like something still lingered in the air between us… something that hadn’t left with her.
Now I was back where I always went when my mind got too loud—the arena. The place I trusted more than my own thoughts. A place where sweat, skates, and ice were the answer.
The chill greeted me the second I stepped onto the rink. The echo of my blades cut across the surface. The sound steadied me, even as everything else in my chest rivaled for control.
I didn’t want to feel this hollow.
But without her here? The silence was louder.
I skated in lazy laps, letting the rhythm of it settle into my bones. My stick tapped lightly along the boards. I wasn’t pushing myself—just moving. Breathing. Trying to remember who I was a week ago.
She promised she’d come back, but she never promised how long the wait would feel.
I glided toward the bench, planted my stick across my knees, and leaned forward.
That was when I saw them.
Talon stood across the rink near the tunnel. His tight posture was something I’d grown used to lately. Beside him, Wren Perry held a clipboard pressed to her chest like it carried more than just team notes—like it held leverage.
They were talking, too close for it to be casual. She was saying something I couldn’t hear, but the way she angled her chin said she wasn’t asking for permission.
Talon didn’t smile. He just nodded.
Wren. Governor Perry’s daughter and Wells Perry’s sister. The same Wells who drove Tatum out of town by leaking intimate photos of them together, twisting the truth into a scandal. Talon had nearly burned everything down in the aftermath.
So why was Wren here?
Lately, she’d been everywhere. Showing up at games, outside the locker rooms, always with that clipboard and her cold, calculating eyes.
It was hard to read the tension between them. Talon wasn’t pushing her away, which only raised more questions.
What was he getting himself into?
And whose side was Wren really on?
I didn’t know, but I’d be watching.
If Willow wasn’t here and corruption continued to spread through Rixton, I needed my game face on. I had to stay two steps ahead.
The ice beneath me was steady, but everything else? It felt like it was about to crack wide open.
