Chapter 16
Angela
The elevator ride down from the penthouse took forty-five seconds. I counted every one of them.
One. My heart was slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird.
Two. The check in my hand felt hot, like I was holding a live coal.
Three. I could still hear Elijah’s voice rasping Get out.
Four. I was going to throw up.
When the doors opened into the lobby, I didn't walk out. I stumbled. My legs, which had carried me through three-hour ballet marathons, felt like water. I grabbed the marble wall for support, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
The concierge—the same one who had sneered at me the first night—looked up. He saw my face. He saw the devastation written in the mascara tracks on my cheeks.
He didn't sneer this time. He looked away, uncomfortable with the raw grief leaking off me.
I pushed myself off the wall. Move, I commanded my body. You have to move. You have to disappear.
I walked out into the cold night. The wind hit me instantly, biting through my thin coat. I didn't feel it. I was already frozen from the inside out.
A black town car was waiting at the curb. The back door opened.
"Miss Moretti," a driver said, stepping out. "Mr. Vance instructed me to take you wherever you need to go."
Mr. Vance. Cyrus. Not Elijah.
I looked at the car. It was a hearse. That’s what it felt like. A vehicle designed to carry the dead away from the living.
"The bus station," I whispered.
"The bus station?" The driver blinked. "Miss, it’s midnight. Surely you want to go to a hotel? Or—"
"Take me to the Greyhound station," I snapped, my voice cracking. "Please. Just... get me away from here."
I climbed in. The door shut, sealing me in leather-scented silence.
As the car pulled away, I turned to look back at the Sterling Summit tower. I looked up, counting the floors until I found the penthouse. The lights were blazing.
Somewhere up there, Elijah was bleeding. He was sitting in the wreckage of his life, hating me.
And that was exactly what I needed him to do. Because hate is fuel. Hate would make him play harder. Hate would make him forget me.
If he loved me, he would have fought for me, and he would have lost his career. If he hated me, he would survive.
I clutched the check tighter. Five hundred thousand dollars.
It was blood money. It was the price of a soul.
But it would pay for my mom’s kidney transplant. It would pay for a new life where no one knew my name.
I leaned my head against the cool glass and let the tears come. Silent, burning tears that offered no relief.
I love you, Elijah, I whispered to the empty car. I love you enough to be the monster.
The Greyhound station in Denver was a purgatory of fluorescent lights and lost souls.
I bought a one-way ticket to Salt Lake City. Why Salt Lake? I didn't know. It was west. It was far. It had a ballet company.
I sat on a hard plastic bench, hugging my dance bag, waiting for the 2:00 AM bus.
My phone buzzed.
I looked at it.
Elijah calling...
My heart stopped.
I stared at the screen. His name lit up the dark corner of the station. Elijah.
I wanted to answer. God, I wanted to answer. I wanted to hear his voice, even if he was screaming at me. I wanted to tell him it was a lie. I wanted to tell him I didn't take the money because I was greedy, but because I was desperate to save him.
But I couldn't.
If I answered, I would break. I would sob and apologize and tell him where I was. And he would come for me. He would leave the penthouse, leave his father, leave the team, and come for me.
And then Cyrus would destroy him.
I watched the phone ring. Once. Twice. Five times.
It stopped.
Then a voicemail notification.
Then a text.
Elijah: Don't do this. Angela, please. Tell me it’s a lie. Tell me you didn't just sell us out.
I read the words through a blur of tears.
I typed a response. My fingers shook so hard I kept hitting the wrong keys.
Me: It wasn't a lie. The money was real. The debt was real. I’m sorry, Elijah. You were just a means to an end.
It was the cruelest thing I had ever written. It was a dagger to his heart.
I hit send before I could vomit.
Then, I did the only thing left to do.
I took the SIM card out of my phone. I walked to a trash can near the vending machines. And I dropped it in.
The phone was dead. The connection was severed.
"Bus 402 to Salt Lake City, now boarding," the intercom crackled.
I stood up. I picked up my bag.
I walked toward the bus, leaving Angela Moretti—the girl who loved Elijah Vance—behind on the dirty station floor.
Elijah
The penthouse was silent.
The security guards were gone. My father was gone. The Dean was gone.
Even the air seemed to have left the room.
I sat on the floor of the living room, leaning against the sofa. My shirt was torn. My lip was split. My hand—my right hand—was throbbing with a violence that made my vision swim. I had re-injured it in the fight with the guards. I could feel the heat radiating from the cast.
But the physical pain was nothing. It was a distraction. A mosquito bite compared to the gaping, bleeding wound in my chest.
I’m my father’s daughter. I always take the cash.
The words echoed in my head, bouncing off the glass walls.
She had said it with such coldness. Such precision.
I looked at the coffee table. The check was gone. The photos were still there—images of us kissing, laughing, living a lie.
I reached out with my left hand and picked up a photo. It was from the car ride to the cabin. Angela was laughing, her head thrown back, the sun catching her curls.
"Liar," I whispered.
I ripped the photo in half.
Then I ripped it again. And again. Until it was just confetti on the black marble floor.
She had played me. The whole time. The reluctant acceptance of the contract. The tears about her dad. The confession in the cabin.
It was all a performance. She was a dancer, after all. She knew how to act.
And I—the genius, the strategist, the Iceman—had fallen for it like a rookie.
My phone buzzed on the floor next to me.
I grabbed it.
Angela: It wasn't a lie. The money was real. The debt was real. I’m sorry, Elijah. You were just a means to an end.
The text stared up at me. Black letters on a white screen.
A means to an end.
A transaction.
I felt something snap inside me. A strut, a beam, something structural that held my soul together. It broke with a deafening crack.
I stood up. I walked to the window.
I looked out at the city. It was beautiful. Glittering. Cold.
I hated it.
I hated the penthouse. I hated the silence. I hated the ghost of her that lingered in every corner.
I turned and walked to the kitchen. I opened the cupboard. I grabbed a glass.
I threw it against the wall.
It shattered.
I grabbed a plate. Smash.
I grabbed the vase she had filled with flowers. Smash.
I tore through the penthouse like a hurricane. I flipped the coffee table. I ripped the curtains off the rod. I destroyed everything that she had touched. Everything that reminded me of the softness I had allowed myself to feel.
When the living room was a wreckage of glass and broken furniture, I stopped.
I stood in the center of the chaos, breathing hard, my chest heaving.
I walked to the bar. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey.
I didn't pour a glass. I drank from the bottle.
The burn was good. It numbed the edges of the hole in my chest.
I walked to the bedroom. The bed was still unmade from this morning. Her scent was still on the pillows.
I stripped the sheets off the bed. I threw them in the corner.
I sat on the bare mattress, the bottle in my hand, and stared at the dark TV screen.
My father had won. He always won. He knew people better than I did. He knew that everyone had a price.
He had bought my mother’s silence with a country house. He had bought Angela’s love with a check.
Love is a liability, he had said.
He was right.
I took another drink.
Tomorrow, I would go to the rink. I would skate. I would score. I would win.
I would be the Captain. I would be the First Round Pick. I would be the Vance heir.
But I would never, ever be Elijah again.
Elijah died tonight. He walked out the door with a check in his hand and a lie on his lips.
The Iceman was all that was left.
And the Iceman didn't feel pain.
Two Weeks Later
Angela
Salt Lake City was beige.
The mountains were beautiful, yes, but the city itself felt washed out. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe the color had drained out of my eyes.
I was living in a motel on the outskirts of town. Room 14. It smelled of bleach and cigarette smoke.
I had deposited the check. The money was in a new account. I had wired the funds to the hospital in Colorado. My mom’s surgery was scheduled for next week. She thought I had won a settlement from the university for wrongful termination. Another lie.
I was working at a diner. The night shift. It kept me busy. It kept me tired.
I hadn't danced in fourteen days. My body felt stiff, foreign.
It was 3:00 AM. The diner was empty except for a trucker eating pie in the corner.
The TV mounted above the counter was playing ESPN.
Breaking News: Sterling Silverbacks Clinch Playoff Spot.
I froze. I looked up.
There he was.
Elijah was on the screen. He was standing in the tunnel, surrounded by reporters. He looked... terrifying.
He had shaved his head. The messy, dark hair I loved to run my fingers through was gone, replaced by a severe buzz cut. His beard was scruffy.
But it was his eyes that scared me.
They were dead. Flat, cold, and empty.
"Vance!" a reporter shouted. "Three goals tonight. You seem to be peaking at the right time. What’s changed?"
Elijah looked at the camera. He looked right through the lens, right through the screen, right into my soul.
"Focus," Elijah said. His voice was a gravelly monotone. "I cut the dead weight. Now I’m just playing the game."
"There were rumors of a distraction earlier in the season," the reporter pressed. "Trouble with management?"
"Resolved," Elijah said. "It was a business disagreement. It’s handled."
Business disagreement.
That’s what I was. A failed merger. A bad investment.
"And the hand?" the reporter asked. "You’re not wearing the wrap anymore."
Elijah held up his right hand. It looked scarred, tough.
"Pain is information," he said. "I stopped listening to it."
He turned and walked away, disappearing down the tunnel.
I stared at the screen long after he was gone.
He had done it. He had become the monster to survive the pain.
I felt a tear slide down my cheek. I wiped it away angrily with my apron.
"Hey, miss?" the trucker called out. "More coffee?"
I turned away from the TV. I picked up the pot.
"Coming," I said.
My voice sounded hollow. Like an echo in an empty room.
I poured the coffee. I wiped the counter. I kept moving.
Because if I stopped moving, I would remember the way he looked at me in the Joffrey theater. I would remember the promise of a life in Chicago.
And if I remembered that, I wouldn't survive the night.
So I worked. And I watched him from a thousand miles away, turning into a legend while I turned into a ghost.
Elijah
The playoffs began.
We crushed Denver State in the first round. 4-0 sweep. I scored seven goals.
We destroyed Michigan in the semi-finals. It was a bloodbath. I put Kronsky—the guy who hit me—into the boards so hard he left on a stretcher. I didn't feel bad. I didn't feel anything.
Now, it was the Finals. The National Championship.
We were in Boston. The TD Garden. NHL scouts packed the rafters. My father was in a luxury suite, drinking scotch and looking smug.
I sat in the locker room before the game. The noise was deafening. Jax was blasting music. The rookies were puking with nerves.
I sat in my stall, taping my stick.
Heel to toe. Smooth. Black tape.
"You good, Cap?" Jax asked, sitting down next to me.
He looked worried. He had been looking worried for weeks. He tried to talk to me about Angela once. I told him if he said her name again, I’d trade him to a Division III team in Alaska.
He hadn't mentioned her since.
"I’m ready," I said.
"You’re scary," Jax noted. "You haven't smiled in a month."
"Smiling doesn't win championships," I said, standing up.
I pulled on my jersey. The C on the chest felt heavy.
I walked to the mirror. I looked at myself.
I looked like a weapon.
Perfect, I thought. Weapons don't have hearts.
"Let’s go!" I shouted, my voice booming through the room. "Let’s finish this!"
The team roared. We marched out to the ice.
The lights hit me. The noise hit me.
I skated a lap. I stopped at the blue line.
I looked up at the stands.
Usually, I scanned for her. Even when I knew she wasn't there, my eyes looked for the curly hair, the nervous smile.
Tonight, I didn't look.
I looked at the scoreboard.
0:00.
Time to work.
I gripped my stick. My hand throbbed—a dull, constant ache that I had learned to ignore.
The puck dropped.
I won the draw.
And as I skated up the ice, carving through the defense, I realized something.
I was the best player in the country. I was going to be rich. I was going to be famous.
And I would trade every single second of it for five more minutes in that cabin with the girl who broke me.
But you can't trade memories for reality.
So I shot the puck. I scored. The crowd screamed.
And inside the armor, inside the noise, inside the Iceman... Elijah Vance quietly finished dying.