Page 13 of Iced Out
I locked the bathroom door behind me, the echo a little too final. My hand still trembled from Elise’s tray smashing into my chest, but it wasn’t her I was spiraling about. Not really.
From my bag, I pulled out my backup shirt—a tight white tee. I didn’t choose it to blend in but to be seen. Once on, I studied myself in the mirror. It hugged my body like a second skin, the faint outline of my bra visible beneath, my breasts strained against the fabric. My gray eyes were smoky, filled with fire. Fury lit me from the inside out.Let them come at me.
I yanked out my phone. My thumb hovered for a moment before tapping the contact I swore I wouldn’t. It rang twice.
“Mila?”My mom’s voice slid through as if she’d been holding her breath all day.
I leaned back against the cool tile wall, stared at the flickering light overhead. “Why are we really back here?” I needed to know the day-in, day-out torture was worth it.
A pause. Long enough to feel like an answer. “You know why. Blackwood Academy opens doors. You graduate from there, you get into whatever college you want. And this job will give us financial security. That was the deal.”
“Bullshit,” I said quietly. “That was the bait. What’s the hook?”
I could hear her exhale. A chair scraping in the background. Papers shifting.
“We agreed to a clean slate. I thought we could make it work—one year. Just enough for you to finish strong and move on.”
I didn’t believe her. It was the same canned answer she gave me before. It hurt. We’d always been a team. She told me her plans, her secrets, and I’d shared mine. But not now. From the moment she said we were moving back, she’d been a vault.
Hanging up, I pushed the unhelpful conversation with my mom aside, wishing it could’ve given me answers, or at the very least, helped take my mind off today’s latest shit show.
I didn’t want to care about any of it, especially Luke. But the thing about pretending not to care? It was harder when I remembered the last time he looked at me like he meant it. Andwhen the thought hit, the memory rolled through my mind like a tidal wave I had no hopes of fighting.
The roof of the arena still radiated warmth from the sun, even though the night air had cooled. I lay back on the worn plaid blanket, spine against steel, eyes lost in the kind of sky you only got in these places—far from city lights, where stars punched through the dark like tiny, stubborn rebellions.
Luke lay beside me, one arm bent under his head, the other stretched just enough that our hands brushed, knuckles ghosting against one another in lazy intervals. We hadn’t spoken in minutes. We didn’t need to.
Everything about tonight was quiet—our breath, the flick of wind curling around the building’s edge, the distant hum of the rooftop lights blinking behind us. It was the kind of quiet that filled you up and hollowed you out all at once.
Then it streaked across the sky. A shooting star. It burned silver and then was gone in a breath, but I felt it like an earthquake in my chest.
Luke turned his head toward me. “Did you see that?”
“Hard to miss.” I smiled, but my eyes stayed on the trail it left behind, already fading. “Quick, make a wish.”
He huffed a low breath. “You believe in that stuff?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Say it anyway.”
He didn’t speak right away. Just stared upward like the stars had answers he didn’t know how to ask for. Then: “Freedom.”
The word was simple. But his voice made it anything but.
I turned my head then. Studied the sharp lines of his jaw, the way his mouth pressed into a quiet frown. “From what?”
He didn’t look at me. “All of it. My name. The company. The weight I didn’t choose but can’t seem to drop.” He finally glanced over. “It’s as if I’m always holding my breath for a life that isn’t mine. Just once, I want to exhale.”
The ache in my chest deepened. I swallowed, voice tight. “I wish I had that kind of courage.”
His brow furrowed. “You do.”
“No.” I turned back to the sky, stars swimming in my vision. “I wish I trusted myself enough to go after what I really want. That art wasn’t just some reckless dream to my mom. That money didn’t have its claws in everything. That I could believe my talent mattered more than making rent or playing it safe.”
He didn’t interrupt, just listened, the way he always did when I cracked myself open, piece by piece. Things were different with him—he was the only person I had truly let in to see all of me. And it felt like I was the same for him.
“I wish wanting something didn’t feel like betrayal.”
My throat thickened. “I want to believe it’s okay to want more. Not just survival. But something that’smine.”
