Page 24 of Iced Out
“Oh, so I should be scared of your friends?”
“No.” He stepped in, chest brushing mine. “You should be scared of what happens when I’m not there to stop them.”
“Interesting,” I murmured. “You think you’re the hero in this story even when you don’t lift a finger to do anything different than orchestrate the carnage?”
“I think you don’t know how close you are to getting hurt.”
“Funny.” My gaze locked on his. “I could say the same about you.”
His breath was warm against my cheek, and for one insane second, I thought he would kiss me. Thought he would bridge the chasm he’d built with silence and rage and distance. The one I’d initially carved between us. But he didn’t.
Instead, his fingers lifted—slow, reverent—and brushed the curve of my jaw. My breath caught. His eyes darkened.
And just that fast, the world snapped out of the present and jarred me backward into the past. It was late. The rink had emptied hours ago, save for the low thrum of the compressor and the distant tap of my broom against the concrete.
I’d been wiping down the benches when he skated over, breathless and flushed, hair plastered to his forehead beneath his helmet.
“Don’t leave yet,” he said, tugging his gloves off with his teeth. “Skate with me.”
“I’m not exactly dressed for it,” I said, glancing down at my hoodie and jeans. “No Skates. I’ll trip.”
He grinned, that slow, crooked one that always knocked the air out of me. “I’ll hold you up.”
Then he pulled a pair of skates from behind his back—my size, of course. He always noticed the details no one else did.
That night, he didn’t let go of my hand. Not once. We circled the rink in silence, the scrape of his blades carving a rhythm into the ice. My fingers were frozen. My cheeks flushed. But his hand—his grip—was warm, grounding. Like he could keep me upright just by willing it.
After a while, he pulled me gently toward the penalty box, climbed in first before reaching for me again, like letting go even for a second wasn’t an option.
I sat beside him, breath clouding in the air between us, and he just stared forward like he was watching something only he could see.
Then, softer than I’d ever heard him, “I can’t do it.”
My chest tightened. “Do what?”
“King Enterprises. The board meetings. The handshakes. The empire.” His voice thinned, brittle at the edges. “It’s a cage they’ve spent my whole life building.”
“But you’re good at it,” I said. Because he was. He could command a room with half a smirk and a perfectly measured pause. He knew how to talk numbers like they were a second language. He wore legacy like a fitted suit.
“Being good at something doesn’t mean it feeds you.” His thumb brushed mine again, slow and searching. “But on the ice…”
He finally turned toward me then. And whatever he saw in my face cracked something in his.
“…on the ice, I breathe.”
His words lodged in my ribs. But it was the look in his eyes that made my heart forget how to beat—hollowed out and hungry, like he was drowning in a world that kept shoving his head underwater. And still, somehow, he looked at me like I was air.
His voice dropped. “I think about you. All the damn time.”
The confession hit like a slap and a balm at once.
“I try not to,” he said. “Try to focus, train, pretend this”—his thumb pressed against my knuckles—“wasn’t the best part of my day. But it always is. It always was.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“I want you in a way that doesn’t shut off. It’s not just the way you look, though yeah, you walk into a room, and I’m done for. It’s how you see things. How you don’t bullshit me. You make it hard to lie to myself. Even when I want to.”
His fingers tightened around mine. “If it ever comes down to a choice between legacy and oxygen…” He leaned in then, forehead brushing mine. His voice was a whisper meant only for me. “I’ll choose the ice. I’ll choose breathing.” Another beat. “I’ll choose you.”
