Chapter Nine
MILA
The next day, I was halfway to my next class, digging through my bag for my phone, when I heard the determined clack of heels across polished floors. I didn’t even need to look to know Elise was closing in.
“Mila.” Elise’s voice was sugar-drenched steel. “Got a second?”
She didn’t announce herself. She never needed to. She appeared, Nina and Tori trailing a step behind, their eyes darting as if uncertain whether they were backup or witnesses.
I didn’t answer. Just pivoted, keeping my face blank.
“You’ve been busy.” She smiled, as if I’d already lost. “Attempting to reclaim old territory. Flirting with someone who isn’t yours.”
She stepped closer, eyes wide that went flat with steel. “Let’s skip the fake smiles and get to the part where you leave. Again.”
My hand curled into a fist.
Elise checked her manicure. “Because if you don’t disappear soon, someone’s going to make sure you do. And next time, it won’t be gentle, or by your choice.”
The hallway thinned as the bell rang. Seconds—maybe less—before the crowd vanished completely. As students ducked into classrooms, my sightline to Theo and Jax cleared. Both watching. Hawk-eyed and silent.
Tori, Elise’s ever-loyal shadow, looked like she wanted to melt into the floor.
Behind her, Theo leaned against the wall, thumbs tapping at his phone. Disinterested—or pretending to be. But I knew better. He was watching. They both were.
I couldn’t tell if they’d heard what Elise said or if they already knew. Either way, slow, simmering heat sparked low in my gut. If they were in on this, if they were helping her twist the knife, we’d have words. Real ones.
But neither of them moved. And I bet they wouldn’t, not until someone else made the first play. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Elise leaned in, her cloying perfume choking me with its proximity. “Luke’s already mine. So is this school. You? You don’t even register.”
I met her gaze, steady. “You sure sound threatened for someone who claims to rule everything.”
Her smile twitched. “I’m not threatened. I’m just done playing nice.”
Then she turned, hair flipping over her shoulder, heels striking the floor like punctuation marks as she walked away.
Tori—Theo’s not-quite girlfriend—bit her lip, avoiding my eyes. Nina, Elise’s other loyal minion and social ladder-climber, seemed to be loving every second of the scene. She followed, but Tori hesitated. Just for a second. And then she was gone too.
Seconds after, the guys left too, heading to the cafeteria, Leaving me in the hallway, back pressed to the locker, already planning the next move. This wasn’t just about jealousy. This was about erasure. A declaration of war with a body count. Because that threat? It carried bodily harm.
I rolled my shoulders back, pivoted, and stalked toward the cafeteria.
My fight wasn’t really with Elise; it was with Luke—always with him.
The second I smacked my palms on the hockey team’s lunch table, the room went still.
Conversations cut off mid-word. Luke sat dead center, elbows braced on the table, fingers drumming out a slow, controlled rhythm. His kingdom. His court. His silence.
He looked up—calm, indifferent. Cold.
“What kind of king lets his lackeys deliver his messages?” I said loud enough for the whole room to hear.
Chase snorted into his soda. Theo’s mouth twitched. Jax raised a brow like I’d just offered to arm wrestle death. Luke didn’t blink.
“You let your little followers issue threats?” I snapped. “You think that makes you powerful?”
His eyes narrowed. Tap-tap-tap—his fingers stopped.
And then he stood. I expected words. Retaliation. Something sharp and strategic. What I got was his hand—warm and hard—closing around my wrist. Heat shot up my arm. Not painful. Not forceful. Just… undeniable.
He dragged me out of the cafeteria. Every eye followed. Elise’s smirk faltered when she saw his hand on me. Her world didn’t account for deviations in the script.
The hallway was silent. Lockers stretched out on either side like lined-up soldiers in a standoff. Luke pushed me gently against the wall, his hand slamming beside my head, body caging mine without touching. He wasn’t angry. He was seething.
“You don’t know what you’ve started.” His voice crawled over my skin, making it hum.
“Then enlighten me.”
“You keep poking shit you don’t understand—my family, Elise, the people who don’t care how many bodies they bury to stay clean.”
“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.”
And I knew he meant it. In that moment, under the arena lights, I felt it like gravity. He would burn the whole kingdom down if it meant keeping me. And maybe that was why I kissed him. Soft, slow, reverent. As if I was telling him—I see you, I want you; I’m scared as hell, but I’m still here.
His mouth moved against mine, starved and certain. And for a while, we forgot the world waiting outside the rink. Forgot our names, our duties, the minefields we would eventually have to cross.
In that box, we weren’t heirs or outcasts. We were just a boy who wanted to breathe and a girl who wanted to be enough. And for one night—we were.
But that was before.
His past touch vanished, and I jolted back into the present.
He eased back. Didn’t speak. Everything in me ached with the echo of that night—the truth he’d shared, the promise he’d never kept because I’d left.
“We’ll see who breaks first,” he whispered.
I smirked, lifting my chin. “Spoiler alert—it won’t be me.”
He dropped his hand as if I’d burned him and stepped away. Didn’t say another word. Didn’t look back. But his jaw was tight. His fists clenched. And every part of his walk away screamed one thing—this wasn’t over. Not even close.
Later, when I went to my next class, I passed Logan near the science wing. He was whispering to Elise—too close, too hushed.
The words carried: “Take care of it.”
Logan’s dark eyes caught mine, his smile all teeth and no warmth. Elise didn’t turn around.
Unease crawled down my spine for the first time since I got back. I held his stare, pretending not to flinch. But deep down, I knew—I’d miscalculated. Badly.