CHAPTER 1 — THE CRUEL CAPTAIN #2
The whistle sounded again, longer, and someone shouted my name from the bench.
Mason got there first, skidding to a stop beside me with fine snow spraying up around his skates.
His hand hovered over my arm without touching, because he knew I hated being helped before I asked for it, and I hated even more that he knew.
I tried to get up, but my shoulder answered with a stab so violent my teeth clenched hard enough to hurt.
“Don't touch me,” I said, my voice rough inside the helmet's cage, before I even knew if Mason was going to, because the possibility of needing help in front of so many people irritated me almost as much as the pain. “I'm fine.”
“You hit the boards like you had a personal vendetta,” Mason replied, but his eyes were serious. “Stay still until the team gets here, or I swear I'll call Valerie to take a picture of your heroic pose on the ice.”
“Reed, I said I'm fine,” I said, forcing the words out firm, though the pressure in my shoulder was starting to pulse in a rhythm my pride couldn't silence.
I would have gotten up just to prove it, even with my shoulder throbbing like a warning, if people hadn't cleared a path near the ice entrance.
Two assistants came from the side, but it was Noah who passed them with a confidence that made my rage flare before my body could get off the ground.
He slipped the guards over his shoes, crossed the rink with quick, careful steps, knelt in front of me as if he had every right to be there, and fixed his eyes on my face.
Up close, he was an even greater affront.
He had faint shadows of fatigue under his eyes, skin flushed from the arena's cold, and that mouth I remembered in moments I'd never admit to, even under threat.
The badge swung when he leaned in, and my gaze fell on the printed name before I could stop it: Noah Bennett, Sports Physical Therapy.
As if the university had decided to turn a cruel joke into an official position.
“Damon,” he said, firm, professional, without any tremor that would betray the past, and the use of my name felt indecent in that public space, as if he'd opened a locked drawer in front of everyone. “Did you hit your left shoulder or the entire side?”
His voice hit me in places that had nothing to do with the fall.
It was lower than I remembered, more controlled, but it still carried a familiar texture that made my skin react beneath the layers of equipment.
Four years ago, that voice had said my name in the dark of a dorm room, too close to my mouth, and I'd almost done the only honest thing in my life.
After that, the same voice turned to silence.
“Get your hands off me,” I replied, though he hadn't even touched me yet, because just seeing him close enough to reach me already felt like an invasion.
Noah didn't blink. That was new. The old Noah would have reacted with anger, sarcasm, or visible hurt; the man in front of me just took a deep breath, assessed my posture, and looked at Mason as if I were a difficult patient, not someone who had every right to hate him.
“Did he try to get up?” Noah asked, without taking his eyes off me, as if he knew Mason's answer would be more reliable than anything coming out of my mouth right then.
“Tried with his eyes,” Mason replied, stepping back half a step to give room, but keeping his stick on the ice as if ready to stop me from doing something stupid. “His body seems less convinced.”
“Reed,” I growled, but the pain stole the threat from my voice, which made everything worse, because even my best friend knew when my arrogance was trying to cover a real problem.
Noah pressed two fingers against the side of my helmet, not to caress, not to calm, but to tilt my face in the right direction and check my eyes.
The touch came through the cage, brief and impersonal, and still my body went absurdly aware of how close he was.
I caught the scent of mint, clean fabric, and therapeutic cream from his hands, a new combination that mixed with the old memory of bad coffee, rain on campus, and skin too warm in a room too small.
“Look at me,” Noah said, and there was enough authority in his voice to make the back of my neck go rigid—especially because some absurd part of me almost obeyed before remembering who was giving the order. “Blurred vision, nausea, dizziness?”
“You're confusing a fall with wanting to vomit at the sight of you,” I replied, holding his gaze with all the coldness I could muster while my breathing still fought to steady itself.
Mason let out a muffled sound beside me, and someone behind Noah called for calm, but Noah just tilted his head, refusing to give me the satisfaction of a reaction.
He raised his hand toward my shoulder, stopped before making contact, and waited.
The pause was worse than the touch would have been—it forced me to realize he was asking permission with his body, even after I'd been an asshole with my mouth.
“I need to assess the shoulder,” he said, his tone low enough not to draw a crowd and firm enough to shut down any argument. “I can check over the equipment, or you can stand up, pass out in front of the sponsors, and hand Valerie the best story of the week.”
I wanted to hate the response. Wanted to hate the calm, the quick intelligence, the nerve to confront me in the middle of the arena.
Instead, my body chose to notice his hand hovering inches from my chest protector—the long fingers, the steady wrist, the memory of what those hands had been before they became a threat.
That irritated me enough to make me give in, just because refusing would look like fear.
“Do your job, Bennett,” I said, spitting out the surname like it could still wound Noah more than it wounded me. “But don't pretend this changes anything.”
“I don't pretend when I'm working,” he replied, and only then did he touch my shoulder—with a calm so controlled it seemed designed to needle me right where anger and memory tangled together.
The pressure was light at first, clinical, mapping the area over my gear, but my body reacted as if his hand had passed through every layer to reach bare skin.
The pain was there, real and insistent, but along with it came a wave of heat that had nothing to do with the injury.
Noah noticed something—his eyes narrowed for an instant, not with triumph, but with focus.
That detail nearly undid me more than the collision had. He still read my body too fast.
“Pain, one to ten?” he asked, his fingers still firm on the exact point where the pain was starting to spread beneath the gear and down my arm.
“Four,” I lied, because anything higher in front of the team, Noah, and the entire arena would've been admitting a weakness I was still pretending I didn't have.
“Try lying better,” Noah said, the words landing so cleanly that a few players near the bench stifled nervous laughs. “Your trapezius is rigid, your breathing changed, and you've been guarding your left arm since before the fall.”
“Congratulations. Northaven must be so proud, teaching its interns to spot the obvious,” I replied, trying to drag the conversation back to the safe ground of cruelty—territory where I knew how to fight.
“Northaven taught me anatomy. You taught me that pride screams loudest when something hurts,” Noah said, never raising his voice, but hitting a place no crash against the boards had reached.
The words hit low and deep, in a place I didn't let anyone touch.
For a few seconds, the arena came back into existence around us: the murmurs in the stands, the scrape of idle skates, the click of cameras, the weight of the team watching.
And yet everything felt reduced to Noah's hand on my shoulder and the unbearable fact that he'd just weaponized a memory without naming it.
“You lost the right to talk about what I taught you,” I said, bringing my face close enough that my helmet cage nearly brushed his forehead. “Lost it four years ago, when you decided to run your mouth to the wrong people.”