Chapter 20
Xavier
I’m so not done. And yet… I have to be done.
I tell myself that I’m fine.
Totally. Completely. One hundred percent fine.
Which is exactly what I tell our enforcer, Lachlan, when he squints at me like he’s doing a damn MRI with his eyeballs.
“Dude.” He taps the side of my helmet. “You’re vibrating.”
“It’s called adrenaline, sweetie.” I shove past him onto the ice.
“Looks like denial to me.” He causally lifts his shoulder.
“The Nile is just a river in Egypt.” It’s a lie, it is denial. I’m vibrating because I haven’t heard from him. Artemis. The man who has climbed under my skin and left a piece of himself, so it taunts me every goddamn day.
Lachlan doesn’t buy it. Of course he doesn’t. He’s astute as fuck when it comes to his little flock. I haven’t slept, my coffee has had coffee, and I keep checking my phone like I’m waiting for fucking test results.
“Sure you’re okay?” He elbows me as he skates past.
“Peachy.” I can’t tell him the truth. Can’t tell anyone the truth. Not when the truth is a rival enforcer with wicked hands and a mouth that tasted like… home? Not when the truth is that he left a mark on me I can’t explain in the locker room.
Not a text. Not a meme. Not even one of those tiny, stupid ‘heart’ reacts on social media when he wants attention without actually saying he wants attention. Ghosted.
I am being ghosted by a millionaire who kissed me like I was oxygen.
I skate harder, faster, until my lungs burn and my brain short-circuits. Good. Maybe if I skate hard enough the overthinking part of me will die and stop rewinding that back seat of his car like I’m editing reel footage.
Coach blows the whistle. “Martinez. You planning to shoot sometime this century?”
Oh. Right. I’m holding the puck. And not moving. I fire it past the goalie so hard it clanks off the back pipe, ricochets out, and almost takes Colton’s head off.
He raises a brow. “Okay, what the hell did you drink this morning? Jet fuel?”
I don’t utter the truth—that I’ve been mainlining anxiety and iced coffee since six a.m.
Instead, I go with… “I’m just… focused.” On all the wrong things it seems. But I can still put the puck where it’s supposed to be. It’s a small comfort.
He snorts. “Focused on what? Murder? What’d I do to you, man?”
My brain keeps looping one question: Why hasn’t Artemis texted? I’m so fucking pathetic. He doesn’t owe me anything. We aren’t… anything. Hell, we weren’t supposed to repeat the first time it happened.
But the silence still prickles under my skin.
I thought something shifted between us in the back seat of his car.
A flash of memory accosts me like a stick to the face.
The smell of clean leather, the sound of it squeaking beneath me as I thrust into his silky, hot mouth.
The taste of pie after working up an appetite by coming down his throat.
Shit. My helmet suddenly feels too tight, my gloves too hot. I drive a shot so hard it smacks the crossbar and sends Colton cursing in two languages. Gus mutters, “Dude’s possessed.”
He’s not wrong. I feel it.
Another lap. Another shot. Another attempt at skating the thoughts out of my skull. They don’t go quiet. They just circle louder like my skates cutting through the ice.
There’s a group of kids hovering near the plexi, they practice after us once a week.
Their gear is held together by duct tape and hope.
A pang shoots through my chest. This sport shouldn't just be for the millionaires like Artemis and his brothers and the legacy kids like me and my siblings.
It should be for everyone. It should always be for whoever the fuck wants to play.
Artemis. Artemis. Artemis. Everything comes back to him, like fine threads of a tapestry. Does he regret the kiss…? The blow job…? Not messaging?
Probably not. Artemis de la Pena is above regrets. I’m such an idiot for even thinking about this, about him. Practice ends, and I sit in the locker room staring at my phone like it owes me rent.
Still nothing.
The steam from the distant showers blurs the mirrors, and the rhythmic thwack of tape being ripped off sticks fills the room, but I stayed frozen on the bench. Oliver flops onto the bench beside me, towel around his neck. “You haven’t blinked in a full minute. Should I call a doctor?”
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. Is this about a guy?”
I shoot him a look. “Drop it.” My heart is racing. Why does he think it’s about a guy? Did I say something without realizing?
“Just checking you’re not backsliding into chaos hookups.” His stare needles me like an X-ray machine, straight to the depths of my bones.
“It wasn’t—” I stop myself. “It was nothing.”
“So, you’ve been staring at nothing for days on end?”
“I said. Drop. It.”
He does, but his silence is louder than his chirping.
Usually, I tell him everything, more than I’d tell Sofia, the sibling I’m closest to.
A pang hits me dead in the chest. The sibling I’m avoiding because she’d know with one look at me that something isn’t right, and I don’t want to tell her I’ve somehow caught feelings for the ice prince.
I shower. Dress. Walk back across campus with my hood up, the December cold biting at my cheeks.
My phone stays silent. Each step makes something in me clench tighter.
I trudge toward the quad, the freezing mist off the Lake slicing through my parka while the holiday lights on the student union mock my internal isolation.
Fine. He wants space? Cool. I’ll give him the whole damn solar system. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets and mutter to myself. “I’m done pining. I’m not a fucking maiden waiting by the window.”
A passing freshman hears me and walks faster, casting me wary glances as he does. Good. He should.
But the second I reach my bedroom door, my resolve fractures. Just a tiny check. One quick refresh. Maybe he—My notifications ping. Not Artemis.
Family group chat? Buzzing. Literally. The vibration is enabled on my phone because I hate myself and want to feel if he texts.
Team chat? Buzzing.
Spam email from that mattress company? Buzzing.
We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.
I’m being trolled by everyone. But nothing from him. I resent how much I’m waiting for it.
The hockey house feels too quiet, too still, too fucking cold. Roman offered to put me up in an on-campus apartment, but I wanted to be around people, my hockey family, and yet… right now? I feel like I’m rattling around an empty building.
I lean against a kitchen counter cluttered with Nate’s discarded pads and my own open finance textbooks, the drafty windows of our Victorian hockey house rattling in their frames.
My phone pings again.
Coach: Need you sharp Friday. Scouts from Louisiana watching. Keep your head in it.
I laugh out loud—one of those unhinged, half-feral sounds—and lean my head against the door.
Perfect.
Great.
Louisiana. The one team I don’t want to play for. Roman’s team. If I make it, it won't be as a Martinez tag-along in the Pelican state. I want a city where my name is the first one the fans learn, not a footnote in my goalie brother’s biography.
Pressure from all directions and the one person I want to talk to is handling his millionaire apocalypse and ghosting me in the process.
I toe off my shoes, flop onto the couch, and stare at the ceiling.
I miss him. I hate that I miss him. And I hate that I’m hoping he misses me too. What is there to miss? We’ve barely spent any time together and yet… I feel so much more like myself when I’m with him.
But I also know this: if he walks through that door tomorrow, or next week, or next month… God help me, I’m not turning him away. Not when it still feels like there’s something here. Or at least, could be. Even if I’m the only idiot brave enough to admit it.