Chapter 13
Adrian
Elm House empties out of my ears in waves—the bass first, then the scraped laughter, then the wet slap of shoes on sticky floors.
I don’t go home. I stalk the night, jaw locked, fists jammed in my pockets.
Cold air knifes through my hoodie, ripping what little heat remains from my skin until I’m raw.
Good. I need to feel something sharpened, not just the bruises under my gear.
The path around the quad glows in slices under the lampposts, everything between swallowed in October shadow.
It fits my mood. Bare branches shiver as the dark closes in.
The campus feels like prey, crouched under the weight of its own silence.
I replay the party because I’m a fucking idiot.
Her voice, clean and lethal. The way the room’s temperature dipped when I baited her.
The way she didn’t blink when I made the whole pack laugh with her name in my mouth.
I did what I was supposed to do. I set the tone.
I reminded the room—and myself—that she isn’t mine, isn’t close, is nothing but an obstacle.
You keep a boundary or you bleed. Simple as that.
The problem is, for the first time, the boundary feels like it’s on the wrong side of the line.
I’m the one who feels caged in, and she’s the one on the outside, looking unimpressed.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, the screen lighting up with the team thread. Digital jackals, circling the scraps.
Calder: babysitter’s got fangs
Gio: ice queen won’t drink w/ us
Rylan: tell her to bring flashcards to elm lol
I don’t answer. Not because it doesn’t bite—I’m used to being the target, but this is different.
This is about her. A possessive, ugly coil tightens in my gut at the sight of her name on their screens, in their mouths.
They see a joke, a conquest, a temporary diversion.
They don’t see the steel in her spine or the intelligence in her eyes.
I scroll, thumb hovering. One more message about her and I’ll gut the thread.
The urge to delete the whole chat claws at me, to kill their laughter before it festers.
I won’t feed hyenas sniffing around something worth chasing.
I won’t give them her. She’s not a punchline.
Not for them. If Calder says her name again, I’ll take a tooth for it.
I cut down to the rink instead of the dorm, adrenaline burning, my jaw aching with the urge to hit something that hits back.
The arena’s locked, but the side door never sits right in winter.
A little pressure on the rusted bar and it grudgingly gives with a groan of metal like bones grinding.
Inside, the air is damp and metallic, the kind that settles in your chest and won’t leave.
The lights are off except for the emergency strip, turning the ice into a slab of faint, ghostly silver. Empty boards. Empty stands. Perfect.
It’s different in here without people. My footsteps echo, hollow and thin, up into the rafters.
Pipes groan somewhere in the walls. The place smells of coolant, wet wood, and old sweat that no bleach ever completely kills.
The boards creak like bones settling in the dark.
The rink is a cathedral for predators, with pews of empty seats and ghosts whispering louder than hymns.
I lace up by phone light, the leather stiff with salt, fingers numb and uncaring.
Salt stings the old splits in my skin. I step out and the first glide bites—blade to crystal, a clean hiss that cuts straight through the noise in my head.
I skate lines until my quads shake. Sprint the length.
Stop so hard ice dust sprays my shins. Again.
Again. The physical burn is a welcome distraction, a way to translate the chaotic energy in my head into something I can control.
I push until my muscles scream, trying to outpace the memory of her, but she’s faster.
Every stop on the ice, I hear her voice, steady and unbroken.
The echo of my own breathing ricochets off concrete and steel, coming back like some other animal’s.
Every stride scrapes my thoughts down to bone.
Every stop rattles the glass like punishment.
I skate until a memory surfaces, sharp and unwelcome: ten years old, a championship game, a missed shot in overtime.
My father was silent the whole drive home, the chill in his gaze a punishment worse than any yelling.
That’s what this feels like. The prelude to a judgment that never comes, only the silent, endless expectation to be more than human.
That silence taught me everything—that failure isn’t an outcome; it’s a character flaw.
That love and approval are conditional, tied directly to performance.
It’s the lesson that lives in my bones, the one that drives me to skate in a dark, empty rink at two in the morning.
Coach says discipline is a habit. My father says optics are everything. Neither says a word about the part where you turn yourself into a machine so the human stops leaking out where people can see it.
I don’t think about her. That’s the lie I repeat with every slash of my skate.
Don’t think about the girl who didn’t flinch.
Don’t think about her mouth. Her voice. Don’t think about the way the room felt when she refused to be intimidated.
She’s nothing. She’s not theirs to mock. She’s mine to break.
I think about midterms. The compliance office. Addison’s icy silence. Calder’s mouth and how much fun it would be to turn his teeth into a lesson. My name on the back of a jersey and how it weighs more than the man wearing it.
I skate until the idea of sleep sounds like surrender. Then I keep going. Surrender isn’t an option.
When I finally strip the skates off, the skin at my heel is raw, dotted with blood. I cover it with a fresh strip of tape by habit. Pain isn’t clarity; it’s just a way to fill the space where mistakes breed. The old superstitions: bleed before battle, never let it show.
The locker room is dark when I pass through, the smell of rubber and sweat and antiseptic never turning off.
My stall gleams like a coffin—neat on the surface, rage buried shallow beneath polished wood.
There’s a dent in the door from earlier.
The Titan crest has a hairline crack through the bottom ring.
I press my thumb into it until the joint throbs, until the metal bruises back. Then I let go.
My phone pings again, not the team thread this time.
Unknown number: Compliance study hall reminders. Attendance mandatory. Tues/Thurs.
Another: Academic Center: Stats review packet attached.
And then, because the universe likes to stack things, my father.
Board dinner Friday. You will attend. Wear a tie. Be useful.
A muscle in my back seizes, an old, familiar tension.
Useful. He doesn’t even bother with my name tonight.
The screen’s glow is colder than the words.
I type out Can’t. Practice. and delete it.
I type Will be there. and delete that, too.
I pocket the phone. He’ll get whatever answer he wants. He always does.
On the way out, I nearly run into Declan in the tunnel. No sound until he’s right there—black hoodie, running shoes, tape around his wrist. He doesn’t do surprise; he does inventory, his eyes narrowed.
“You good?” It’s not soft. It’s a challenge.
“Fine.” I shoulder past, then stop. He’s the only one I don’t waste lies on. “Party was loud.”
His brow twitches, barely a tell. “Calder?”
“Calder. Gio. The usual bark. Nothing with teeth.” I pivot, needing to reassert control. “Your positioning was off today. You need to stay square to the shooter on that last rep.”
Declan’s mouth goes flat, the closest he gets to a smile. “You’re worried about my positioning when you’re the one who skated alone in the dark for ninety minutes? Priorities, Hale.”
The truth in his words is a clean, sharp sting.
He’s the only person who can call me on my bullshit without me wanting to put him through a wall.
His quiet, brutal honesty is the only thing that feels real most days, a necessary anchor.
He doesn’t care about the Hale name; he cares about the man. That’s a debt I can never repay.
“I’m worried about us looking like a clinic on Friday,” I say. “Addison’s patience is thinner than the ice.”
He nods once, then gives it back, like always. “You were a step hot on the pivot. Left hip. Fix it before he does.”
I grunt. That’s as close as we get to thank you.
Our language is critique and silence. He starts toward the gym.
I don’t ask why he’s training at two in the morning; I already know.
We’re the same kind of broken, our bodies moving until the noise shuts off.
He pauses by the lockers, eyes flicking to the dent in the door. He doesn’t comment. He doesn’t need to.
“Keep the room quiet tomorrow,” I say.
“Always,” he answers. Not “Cap.” Not tonight. It lands heavier than loyalty ever does when it’s loud.
I leave the lights off when I enter my dorm room, the shadows a familiar comfort.
My keys clatter on the polished mahogany desk, the sound too loud in the quiet.
The air is still and sterile, smelling faintly of the lemon polish the cleaning staff uses, not like anything real.
It’s a room designed to impress, not to be lived in.
I hang the hoodie over the back of the plush leather armchair and open the Stats packet out of spite.
Numbers line up like enemies, daring me to fail.
I grip the pencil too tight, dragging it down the margin until the lead snaps.
I replace it. Try again. Circle the wrong figure.
Cross it out. Start over. By the third page, the whole thing looks like a battlefield—arrows stabbing between formulas, ink smeared where my hand dragged too slow.
It should be simple, but the page fights back.
It’s not that I don’t see the numbers. I see too much, too fast, and none of it stays still.
It’s infuriating. I can read the most complex defensive formation in a split second.
I can calculate the trajectory of a deflected puck in my head.
I know the physics of this game better than anyone on the ice.
Why does a simple fucking page of numbers feel like an attack? Why can’t I make them obey?
Lazy, my father’s voice says. Careless. Undisciplined.
Underneath it, a new frustration burns, hotter and more dangerous.
I can’t fucking figure her out. The fact that she doesn’t break, doesn’t bend, makes me want to find her weak spot.
To own the one thing in this place I can’t control.
Clara’s a problem I can’t hit, can’t skate around, can’t intimidate.
It’s pissing me off more than any of this.
She looked at me like I was an equation too simple to matter, and that gutted me more than their laughter ever could.
I press the pencil hard enough to score the paper through three sheets. That’s what weakness looks like. My own frustration, staring back at me from the page. I won’t let my father see this. I won’t let Addison see this. I’d rather face a five-on-one penalty kill than let them see this mess.
So I shut the packet and tell myself I’ll make Clara drag me through it on Monday. I’d rather bleed at her feet than crack open under his gaze.