Chapter 20 Liam
Chapter twenty
Liam
The puck slams into the boards so hard the vibration climbs straight up my stick.
“Again,” Silas growls, already looping back through the neutral zone.
I collect the rebound and send it back to him. We barely warmed up, we just threw our gear on and hit the ice, thinking we could out-skate what just happened.
But we obviously can’t.
Silas winds up and unloads. The shot sails wide, smashing into the glass. The whole pane shudders.
“You’re off,” Felix calls from the blue line.
“Fuck off,” Silas snaps.
I chase the puck into the corner, my chest tight with something that has nothing to do with cardio.
I can't believe she just left the very second rescue arrived. No scene. No meltdown. Just a too-calm, “I need time,” and then she was gone.
I scoop the puck and fire it at Felix. It goes harder than it needs to. He still handles it.
“One-on-one,” he then says to Silas, eyes sharp. “Center ice. Liam, you’re in net.”
I push off toward the crease without arguing. We need to hit something, and it better be pucks and each other than walls.
Felix and Silas face off at center, and I can see the aggression in both their stances. This is going to hurt.
Felix wins the draw and comes at Silas hard. The check when they collide makes the boards rattle, both of them going into it with more force than any practice drill requires.
Felix breaks free with the puck and circles wide. “Scent matches,” he pants, breath puffing white. “And for what? So she can walk out like we were just—” he cuts around Silas, “—a nice smell she passed on the street?”
Silas strips the puck off him with a brutal poke-check and charges my way. “Or because it’s not real,” he throws back. "Maybe it's just, fuck, I don't know. Some weird side effect from her DuoBlocks."
His shot is a cannon. I snatch it with my glove, the impact stinging my palm even through the padding.
“That’s not how DuoBlocks work and you know it,” I say, tossing the puck to Felix.
Silas lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well, maybe we don't know as much as we think we do."
Felix picks up the puck and we reset for another draw. This time Silas wins it, but Felix stays on him.
“The connection felt real before the scents,” Felix says, digging in on the forecheck. “Games, sledding, the stupid movie, the sauna… that was us. Not chemistry.”
“Or it was chemistry we just couldn’t smell yet,” Silas bites out. He tries to spin away but Felix shadows him. “She said it herself, maybe our bodies were picking up more than we thought.”
“I don’t buy that,” Felix throws back. He finally scoops the puck free and tears down the ice. His shot rings off the post. “You can't smell someone's your scent match unconsciously, you do it with your nose.”
I track the puck as it ricochets wide. Silas doesn’t immediately go after it. He’s pacing the neutral zone now, blade tapping an uneven rhythm on the ice.
“I don’t know what I buy,” he says at last, low and raw. "I just know she's gone, we're here, everything smells like jasmine and peach in the chalet, and I can't fucking think."
Yeah. That.
Her scent is everywhere back there. Part of why we rushed out here was because the rink is the only place that smells like nothing but ice.
“Water break,” I call, pushing off toward the bench.
They follow, slower. We pull off gloves and helmets, steam rising off us into the cold air of the empty rink.
For a minute, no one talks. We just stand there, drinking, breathing, not looking at each other.
Felix caves first. “So what?” he asks, voice rough. “We just… let her walk away?”
"She asked for time," I say, forcing my voice to stay level. Panicking won't help anyone. "We have to respect that."
“Yeah, well, my rational brain understands that,” Felix mutters, dropping his empty bottle on the floor. “But my stupid alpha brain wants to throw her over my shoulder and keep her close.”
Silas snorts, no real amusement in it. “And I still can't believe we’re scent matches. After we already thought we’d met ‘the one’.” His hands flex on his stick. “You know what the odds are?”
“Astronomical,” I breathe. “But not zero.”
We let that sit.
"I keep thinking about her," Felix says after a beat. "Our ex. Her scent was... incredible. I was stupid in love. But with Naomi it's like—" he breaks off, searching. "It's like every part of me is consumed by her."
“Same actually,” I admit. “All this time I thought she was the one as well. But yet being with Naomi feels different. Deeper. More… right."
Silas barks out a short laugh. “So what, we spent years thinking we were with our one true scent match, and actually we were… what? Ninety percent compatible or something?” His jaw tightens.
I shrug. “Scent compatibility isn’t binary.
We’ve always known that. Some people smell good, some people smell like nothing, some people hit you like a truck.
” I meet his eyes. “Our ex hit me like a truck. Naomi hits me like… a spaceship. Maybe she’s our full scent match, and our ex was a partial scent match. ”
Felix makes a low frustrated sound. “So we've been mourning someone who wasn’t actually our true scent match… Only to finally meet the real one who just ran away.”
“Stop,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “She didn't run away like our ex did. She’s allowed to need air.”
"That's a real nice analysis and all," Silas says. "But I don't see how that gives us any guarantee things will turn out well… I'm dying at the idea we might never see her again."
“We can’t force her to do anything,” I say. “But we also don’t have to sit and do nothing.”
"And what's your brilliant plan?" Silas challenges.
I turn the thought over. We need a reason to see her again. Something legitimate, not desperate. A way to show her we're serious about this, without overwhelming her.
"We tell Mia we've made a decision about the festival game, which we have," I say slowly. "But we say we want to tell Naomi ourselves. She was assigned to get us back on the ice, so it would make sense."
Felix perks up despite himself. “Go on.”
“It gives us a reason to see her again that isn’t ‘please come back, we’re sad,’” I add. “We tell her we’re playing. We thank her for getting us there. Then we see if she… leaves a door open.”
Silas is quiet for a long moment. His eyes are on the ice, far away. “And if she doesn’t?”
“Then we still play,” I say. “We still take the ice on the anniversary, and we prove to ourselves that day doesn’t own us anymore. With or without her.”
He huffs out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh. “You and your radical emotional growth.”
“Do you disagree?” I ask.
He thinks about it, jaw working. “No,” he says finally.
“Perfect. We’ll call Mia after practice.”
“For the record," Felix taps my shoulder. "I am one hundred percent getting my hopes up.”
Silas snorts. “I'm not.”
"Don't be emo." Felix heads back toward the ice, dragging Silas with him.
I strap my glove back on and follow them. We run drills for another hour, pushing ourselves past exhaustion.
But underneath it all, that restless energy remains. The knowledge that we can't go back to how things were before Naomi walked into our lives.
But at least we're not giving up.