Page 21 of Iced Out
The game ended in victory—of course it did. Blackwood didn’t lose. Not with Luke leading them.
I was up and moving before anyone else in our row. A quick goodbye to Avery and I hurried into the aisle and pushed my way up the stairs and toward the closest exit.
The crowd spilled out, buzzing with energy and school pride. People pushed past, shouting, laughing, wrapped in the post-win high. Avery, not far behind, disappeared into the press of bodies, probably off to keep her overprotective brother from getting into it with someone from Crestview.
By the time I got to my car, my stomach twisted at the sight. A gaping hole was in my driver’s side tire where someone had carved a slice in it. I ticked through my options, discarding all two of them—call my mom or roadside assistance. Making this more of an issue would be what whoever had done this wanted.
Not wanting an audience, I climbed into the driver’s seat and marked time. When most of the cars around me had pulled out, the parking lot almost empty, I got out. Bending down, I popped the trunk and then went to the back to pull out the jack and my spare tire. I wasn’t helpless. I positioned the jack into place and got to work.
I thought I was in the clear, but I didn’t get far with changing the tire before I felt him. Luke stepped beside me.
I pushed up to my feet and stood before him, allowing defiance to paint across my expression.
His presence was suffocating. His gaze, lethal. “Seems you have an admirer.”
“Not the kind I want.” The comment was dual sided, the hit making its presence known as his gaze shuttered even more.
He took the lug wrench from me and quickly changed to the spare, depositing the slashed tire in the trunk. I lowered the jack and tossed the tools in too before closing the trunk. It didn’t mean anything, what he’d done. And he made sure to let me know with the icy stare sent my way.
“I know what your mom did,” he snapped. “And now you’re back like nothing happened?”
“You don’t know a damn thing,” I fired back, but inside, I froze for half a second at the possibility that he knew more than I thought he did. Or that he was somehow involved. But he couldn’t be. He was bluffing. That tick in his jaw. I was sure of it. He couldn’t know that we’d burned through some of the money just to survive. I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit to what my mom had taken, whether it was directly from his dad’s company or the VP boyfriend, like Mom had said.
That damn muscle in his jaw jumped, and panic laced my blood. Even worse—he probably thought he knew everything.
“You disappeared,” his voice was icy. “After a chunk of money vanished from the books, your mom bailed and took you with her. And somehow, my dad was left holding the fallout.”
I sucked in a breath.He doesn’t know the truth. Not all of it. But if he kept digging—if he found out what really happened… everything could unravel, and we would be in even more danger. All he thought he knew was that my mom stole money from his dad’s company and that I’d used him. That last part wasn’t true. I hadn’t cared about his financial worth then, and I didn’t now.
His eyes narrowed, seeming to clue in that I was hiding something from him. “You think I won’t find out? I will.”
I angled my chin higher. “Then I guess we’ll both be surprised.” I waved to the tire as I opened my door. “Thanks for that, even though I know it didn’t mean anything.” The car started with the push of a button, and I drove off, leaving him standing there. I paused at the stop sign before the main road and glanced back.
Luke was still there, standing exactly where I’d left him, chest rising as though he’d sprinted a mile.
For one second, I saw him—not the arrogant hockey god but the guy who used to trace stars on my skin when no one was watching. And it hurt more than it should’ve.
I shut the door on the thought—and him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LUKE
Several days passed. Mila and Avery got close again—too close for Chase’s liking. He didn’t say it, but it showed. The fists curling when they laughed in the hallway. The way his eyes tracked Mila when she wasn’t looking, sharp with dread.
It wasn’t about jealousy. Not that kind of thing. Chase just didn’t want Avery dragged into something she couldn’t climb out of. He didn’t trust Mila not to disappear again. Not to hurt his sister.
And I got it. Because I didn’t trust her either. But it wasn’t that simple.
None of us said it out loud, but we all felt it—pieces shifting on a chessboard we couldn’t fully see. Someone else was moving them, and sooner or later, we would be forced to play.
I hated it. Because the minute I moved onto that board, I stepped into my father's world. The one built on silence, shadows, and power plays. The one where he’d ordered me to stay the hell away from Mila. The one I’d been trying to outrun since I was old enough to realize what the King name actually meant.
When Dad or Lorne wanted something, people got hurt. I wasn’t a good guy, far from it. But what they did? That was something I’d dreaded stepping into.
But maybe I was already in it. Maybe I always had been. The slip of paper with Lorne’s signature okaying the sale of the boardwalk building seemed like a segue in, as well as Drew’s hint that Dad was stressed and they needed me there sooner rather than later.
Mila being back only made it worse. She was in classes with at least one of us. Easy to keep tabs on and watch. And I did. Constantly.
