Chapter 29 Lines in the Ice （Kieran）
LINES IN THE ICE (KIERAN)
My body feels scraped out when I close Wren’s door. I stand in the hallway for a second, palms on my thighs, trying to breathe past the tightness in my chest.
You did the first part.
Now do the rest.
My knuckles throb. The bandage is stiff with dried blood. I shove my hand into my pocket and head home.
Mason’s on the sofa when I walk in, laptop open, mid-way through a scouting clip. He pauses it the second he sees me.
His eyes drop to my hand. “Jesus. So it’s true.”
I kick the door shut and sink onto the cushion beside him. “Yeah.”
“Where’s Wren?”
“Sleeping in her dorm.” My voice goes thin. “She’s okay. Or, she will be.”
Mason exhales once—slow, measured—then shuts the laptop fully.
“What happened?”
“Reed put something in her drink,” I say. Saying it aloud feels like swallowing broken glass. “Tried to take her upstairs.”
Mason goes absolutely still. Goalie-still. The kind of focus he gets right before a shootout.
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Yeah.”
“Guys said you went nuclear.”
“Understatement.”
He looks at my hand. “Good.”
My throat tightens. “I’m not letting him get away with it.”
“Then you talk to McCarthy,” Mason says, voice low and firm. “Before warm-ups.”
“We have a game tonight,” I snap. “Reed gets scratched—”
“We’ll juggle lines,” Mason cuts in. “We always do. Losing a center isn’t the end of the world.”
Then, quieter, sharper, “But letting him skate after doing that? That’s the end of your conscience.”
I drag a hand through my hair. “Half the team’s gonna lose their shit.”
He shrugs once, not gentle. “Half the team can deal. Wren matters more. And honestly?”
His jaw flexes. “I’ve got a sister. If anyone tried that on her…” His voice drops to something cold. “I’d put the guy through a wall.”
The breath I let out feels jagged. “Yeah.”
“Good.” He nods toward the hallway. “Go shower. Tape your hand right. Walk into McCarthy’s office looking like you’re in control, not like you just crawled out of an ER.”
A beat.
“But don’t wait.”
I nod.
He squeezes my shoulder once—solid, unshakable. “You’re doing the right thing, O’Connor. Even if it costs us. Even if it costs you.”
I stand, and the room tilts for a second. Mason doesn’t look away.
“Go,” he says. “Handle it.”
Coach McCarthy’s door is cracked when I get to the rink. The light from his office cuts across the dark hall like a spotlight. I can hear the faint murmur of a video—commentary turned off, just skates, stick taps, the scratch of blades on ice.
My mouth’s dry. I take a fortifying breath and knock once before pushing the door open.
Coach is at his desk, two monitors going—one with the last game, one with a spreadsheet of shifts. He looks up, sees the bandage on my hand, and immediately pauses the video.
“Close the door,” he says.
His voice is flat. Not a great sign.
McCarthy leans back in his chair, gaze moving from my hand to my face. His expression doesn’t give me much—just tight lines around his eyes. The smell of coffee and old tape fills the room.
“You want to explain why my starting center showed up this morning with a face like ground meat,” he says, “and my alternate captain looks like he lost a fight with a cinder block?”
I swallow and nod. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“Start talking.”
So I do.
I tell him about the party. About Wren leaning against the wall in her oversized hoodie, phone in her hand, promising she’d stay put. About the blender incident in the kitchen. About going back and not finding her there. About the way my chest squeezed tight, the unease I tried to shake off.
I tell him about seeing Reed halfway up the stairs with her hanging off him, knees dragging, head lolling.
I don’t embellish or dramatize. The facts are sickening enough.
Coach’s face gets tighter the further I get. When I describe catching her before she hit the step, his jaw ticks.
“And then you hit him,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.” My hand throbs in answer. “A lot.”
“You broke his nose. And you could’ve broken your own hand.”
“I don’t care,” I say before I can soften it. “He was dragging a girl upstairs when she could barely stand. Her eyes weren’t focusing. She could barely say my name.”
Coach’s gaze sharpens. “You’re sure she wasn’t just drunk?”
The word hits me wrong. I lean forward before I can stop myself.
“She wasn’t drunk,” I bite out. “She had one beer and a single sip from the bottle he handed her. That’s it. She knows her limits. And even if she didn’t—” My jaw locks, heat rising fast. “It wouldn’t give him a free pass.”
Coach studies me, silent.
“This had nothing to do with her clothes or how she looks,” I add, voice low and steady. “She couldn’t type, Coach. She tried to text me, and her hands wouldn’t work. At the hospital, they said it looked like a sedative. They’re running specialized panels.”
The word hospital lands between us, heavy and cold.
Coach drags a hand over his mouth, eyes closing for a beat.
“She’s okay?” he asks, softer.
“She will be,” I say. “She’s home. Sleeping. But that’s not the point.”
He opens his eyes again. They’re harder now. Sharper.
“You come straight here from there?” he asks.
I nod. “Stopped at my place to shower.”
“And you went with her to the ER.”
“Yes.”
He leans back, chair creaking, and stares at the ceiling for a long second.
“Do you understand what you’re accusing him of?” he asks finally.
“I do.”
“You’re calling one of your teammates a predator, O’Connor. That’s not a word we throw around because we’re pissed about a girl.”
The sentence hits me like a slash to the back of the knees. My fists curl.
“This isn’t about me being pissed about a girl,” I say, forcing each word out steady. “This is about her almost ending up unconscious in a stranger’s room because one of our guys decided he was entitled to her body.”
There’s a beat.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he asks.
The question hangs in the air like a puck on edge.
Anything else.
The bet flares in my head, ugly and bright. Reed’s smirk. Isabelle’s voice. The way I let myself go along with something I knew was rotten from the second I agreed to it.
I swallow. My tongue tastes like metal.
“I left her alone in the hallway,” I say instead. “I thought it would be fine. That’s on me. The rest is on him.”
Coach studies me for a long time. The silence stretches, thin as ice over shallow water.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says finally. “I’m scratching Reed for tonight. Not as punishment—yet—but as a precaution while we figure this out. He doesn’t dress, he doesn’t skate, he doesn’t travel until I say otherwise.”
Relief hits my chest and anger collides with it, sparking.
“But,” Coach adds, holding up a hand, “I’m not putting this to bed in-house. I’m calling Compliance and Title IX. They’ll want your statement, and they’ll reach out to the girl. If they decide to move forward, this becomes a university matter. You don’t control what happens after that. Understood?”
My stomach flips. “Yes, sir.”
His gaze drops to my hand again. “You understand there may be consequences for beating the hell out of a teammate at a party, even if your motives were…understandable.”
“I’ll take whatever you throw at me,” I say. “As long as he never touches her again.”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. For a second, I see something like grudging respect there, twisted up with disappointment and worry and the weight of being responsible for thirty guys and a whole program.
“You’re going to talk to Compliance this afternoon,” he says. “Then we have a game to play. Go downstairs. Stay away from Reed. And don’t say a goddamn word about this in the room.”
“Understood.”
He picks up his phone. Conversation over.
The door shuts behind me with a soft click that feels like a starting gun.
Reed is leaning against the opposite wall when I come out, arms crossed, his nose bandaged. Someone slapped a butterfly Band-Aid over his cheekbone. He looks like he walked into a door.
He looks like I didn’t hit him nearly hard enough.
“Wow,” he says, his voice thick, clogged. “Straight to Daddy.”
I stiffen, feel my hands curl, nails biting into the palms.
Reed’s eyes glitter, bloodshot but calculating. “You really want to go this route, O’Connor? You sure you want people digging through every detail of last night?”
I stare at him. “You roofied her.”
He snorts. “She was drunk.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Yeah, because princess would never drink at a party.” He rolls his eyes. “Maybe she took something herself. Maybe she’s not as innocent as you think.”
White noise roars in my ears.
“You were hauling her upstairs when she couldn’t walk.”
“I was helping,” he snaps. “She almost fell on the stairs. I was taking her to lie down so she didn’t puke.”
The way he says it—slightly louder, just enough that someone passing could catch the words—makes my skin crawl. He’s already building a narrative. Helpful guy. Overreacting boyfriend. Misunderstanding.
“Coach benched you,” I say. “That’s not changing.”
“Tonight,” he says evenly. “Maybe longer. Or maybe they look at things and decide your little story doesn’t play as well when it’s not fueled by cheap beer and a guilty conscience.”
“Guilty of what?” I grind out.
He smiles then. Slow. Nasty.
“You sure you want to ask me that?” he asks quietly. “You sure you want them interviewing everybody? Asking what kind of bet was floating around the house lately? Who started it? Who the prize was?”
My heart stops.
He sees it. His smile widens.
“Ask Isabelle,” he says, voice silk over broken glass. “She’s got an excellent memory.”
I turn away. If I stay, I’m going to fracture his skull.
Reed calls after me, voice gone sing-song. “Better hope you win tonight, O’Connor. People get real testy about distractions when there’s an L on the board.”
I don’t look back.