Chapter 2
Talia
The sound hits first. It always does.
It’s not merely sound; it’s a force—a roar that thuds against my chest and reverberates through the soles of my boots until my teeth ache.
The Briarcliff Ice Arena is a chaotic swirl of navy and light blue, the air biting cold and sharp against my lungs, thick with the metallic tang of ice mingling with popcorn and sweat.
I shove my hands deep into the pockets of my denim jacket, pressing my knuckles into the seams, grinding into the fabric.
It’s a habit. A tell that anchors me, keeping me from fidgeting or picking at my nails until they bleed.
The strap of my backpack digs into my shoulder—a tangible reminder that I have something solid to cling to if everything tilts. A tether.
The crowd presses in. I squint against the brightness that stings my eyes.
The deafening commotion swirls around me, an unrelenting cacophony threatening to drown out my thoughts.
My shoulders creep up toward my ears, instinctively bracing for impact.
I force them down—muscles screaming with the effort.
Expand. I command my lungs to work, inhaling sharp, frigid air.
You wanted this. You made this choice.
This isn’t survival; it’s reclamation. A deliberate, defiant screw you to the man who tried to shatter me last year. He may have stolen nights, robbed me of sleep, and splintered my trust with a temper that turned hands into weapons, but this moment is mine. He doesn’t get this too.
This arena, this team, is my father’s legacy. It’s a place of love, not fear. I refuse to let the memory of a monster poison the one space where I used to feel safe.
My gaze sweeps past the chaotic crowd and settles on the ice. The teams are just finishing warm-ups. I watch him, and the frantic pounding in my chest slows, hitching to match his measured rhythm.
He has a ritual. Before the anthem, he skates a tiny half-circle, carving a line in the ice—mine.
He taps the left post with his stick, then the right.
A prayer. A ward. He adjusts the glove on his left hand, pulling the strap tight.
I can see the shadow of his jaw moving behind the cage of his mask—mutters, vows, curses.
He looks different. Controlled. Every stride speaks of survival through stillness. I recognize a fellow survivor when I see one. Another prisoner. And I envy his walls, envy the way danger doesn’t seem to touch him—how he shapes it instead of shrinking beneath it.
Then his head moves. Fast. Scanning the stands.
His masked gaze locks onto our section.
The shock hits so hard it hurts. I freeze, breath catching in my throat, hands aching in my pockets. It’s impossible to know if he truly sees me, but the connection feels intrusive, like a searchlight pinning me in the dark.
The horn blares—warm-ups over.
He misses his tap. Stumbles. Then slams his stick down and forces the ritual back on track. He skates stiffly to the blue line. Focus wrecked. Sequence broken. And his gaze still burns, branded into my skin.
I give myself rules because rules feel like scaffolding. No earbuds. Don’t leave before the horn sounds. Stand for the anthem, even if my knees tremble. If it gets overwhelming, breathe to four, count the steps to the aisle—but do not run.
My pulse stutters, then steadies around that last command.
The anthem begins. The crowd rises, voices swelling, a thousand threads weaving into one. My knee wants to lock; I make it bend. I stand anyway. The cold bites deeper into my lungs, and I embrace it. Chin up. One rule upheld—a small, stubborn victory no one else will ever see.
When the puck drops, the arena detonates.
“Go! Go! Go! Shoot it, Hale!”
Clara is on her feet beside me, a supernova of energy, voice raw and shredded as she screams. She’s all in, vibrating with an intensity that matches the arena itself.
On the ice, Adrian Hale—the captain—takes the puck, his body a fluid line of coiled power as he skates hard along the boards.
He centers it. A slapshot. A flash of a glove.
A collective groan erupts from the stands—a single, unified sound of disappointment. Clara drops back into her seat, bumping my shoulder.
“He had him! God, he had him,” she groans, but a fierce, proud smile breaks through.
“They’ll get the next one,” Genny says from my other side, voice cool and steady against the chaos. She’s filming—not like a fan, but like a documentarian. Her lens tracks patterns, not just the puck.
Zoe leans two seats down, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Gio! Get your head out of your ass! My grandmother could make that pass!”
Clara laughs, nudging me. “She’s hopeless. He knows.”
Someone in the row behind us laughs. A small, involuntary smile touches my lips before I can stop it, and I pull my chin deeper into my scarf, hiding the brief crack in my armor. The performance costs me. This is fine. I’m fine. I’m surviving this. I’m winning.
Winning looks ordinary from the outside. To everyone else, I’m just a girl at a hockey game with friends. Inside, it’s trench warfare: breathe, unclench, don’t bolt. Tonight that war feels louder, messier, like someone keeps reaching inside me and twisting all the dials to max.
Clara leans forward again, her entire being locked on the ice. On him. The whole student section knows they’re a thing. A few guys in front of us chant “Hale’s girl!” when she stands, and she flips them a happy, confident bird, claiming the title.
It’s like watching a foreign language I don’t speak but so badly wish I understood. That easy, public claiming. She’s his, he’s hers, and the entire world gets to watch. She lives that loud, that free, with no fear of cost.
I can only admire it from a distance. An astronomer watching a star I’ll never touch. It throws the vast, quiet, defended emptiness of my orbit into sharp relief—a reminder of everything I used to want—before wanting became dangerous.
The play moves to our end. A defenseman slams an opponent hard into the boards in front of us. The crack of the plexiglass is a gunshot.
I don’t flinch; my whole body seizes. Breath vanishes, stolen from my lungs. My hands fist inside my pockets, nails digging into my palms so hard I know they’ll leave crescent moons.
The sound slices through me like déjà vu, sharp and visceral. My stomach flips, memory and reflex colliding in a sick, painful lurch. Crowd noise dissolves into a high-pitched ringing. The smell of ice is replaced by something metallic. Blood.
Stupid. Weak. Get it together. Not him. Not that room. Just a game.
Rage spikes through the fear—rage at myself, at the reaction, at the fact that he still holds this much power, this foothold in my head. This is exactly why I hide. It feels like failure. And tonight was supposed to be different.
I don’t move. I won’t flee.
The anger hits me first, aimed inward, then I force it outward—at the echo that tries to own me.
I count my exhale to four, unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth.
Push my shoulder blades down, down, until my spine stops rattling.
Stay. I make the command mine. I hang on to the idea that if I can survive this moment without bolting, maybe I can survive the next one too.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Maya flinch as well—a small, sharp jerk before her expression goes carefully blank. A tiny flicker of recognition passes between us. What’s your damage? A silent question. The kind of acknowledgment shared only when people know too much of the wrong things.
“You good, T?” Clara’s voice cuts through the static, stripped of her game-day fizz. Her hand hovers near my arm, not touching. She knows better.
I drag a breath in. Then out.
“Yeah. Fine. Too… loud.” The lie comes out clipped, edged with anger at myself, not her.
She nods, but her eyes linger, full of quiet understanding I both appreciate and hate. I look away first, desperate for an anchor, anything to pull me back from the edge.
My gaze sweeps past the chaos of players and benches and lands on Genny. Her camera isn’t on the ice. It’s on my father—focused, intent. I file that away. Genny doesn’t film people unless there’s a pattern she wants to study. Which means my father is—once again—giving her something to analyze.
Maya isn't watching the game either. Her eyes are fixed on the Titans bench, on Dante Voss and Cole, her expression tight with something old and dark and unreadable. Another secret in the stands. There are always more secrets than people here.
My father stands with his arms folded, jaw set.
Genny’s zoom tightens on him. A muscle feathers in his cheek.
He taps his play card once, twice. Same tells every game, like the ice has rhythms only the two of them can hear.
He’s the rock this team breaks themselves against. He loves them, in his own gruff way.
He loves me too—enough to worry, which is why I’m hiding how hard this is.
I can’t let him see me shake. He needs me to be okay, so I will be.
My gaze moves on, past his sturdy, protective stance behind the bench… and lands on the goalie.
The second period is brutal, a grinder of a game, but Declan is playing like a man possessed.
He moves differently tonight. Sharper. Reckless.
A puck ricochets off a skate, spinning wildly toward the upper corner.
It’s a dead play—impossible to stop—but Declan throws himself across the crease, body fully extended, snatching the rubber out of the air with a violence that snaps his glove hand back.
He crashes to the ice, pads sprawling, but the puck is caught. The whistle blows. He doesn't stand up immediately. He stays on one knee, chest heaving, mask tilted down. Then, slowly, deliberately, he lifts his head.
He doesn’t look at his defensemen. He doesn’t look at the ref.
He looks up. Section 104.
The air leaves my lungs. He’s checking. Even in the middle of the war, with sweat dripping down his neck and adrenaline flooding his veins, he’s checking to see if I’m still here. If I’m still watching.
I am. I can’t stop.
The final horn blares—a sound of victory. Titans win, 4–2.
The arena erupts. The team floods the ice, piling onto their anchor: Declan Reid.
Clara is a blur of motion, rushing down to the glass.
Adrian skates by, helmet off, hair dark and damp with sweat.
He sees her, and the hard, brutal lines of his face soften into something I’ve never seen on him.
He taps his stick twice against the glass where her hands are pressed—a private gesture made public, a claim.
I hang back, a ghost at the victory party.
My father gives me a quick wave from the bench—a warm, proud smile that doesn’t quite reach his worried eyes.
I return it and feel the whispers ripple around me.
That’s the coach’s daughter. A label and a cage.
It’s been only us since Mom left, but “us” always felt safe. Tonight, though, I feel exposed.
“Hey, we’re all heading to Elm House,” Clara says, jogging back up the stairs, eyes bright with a joy so pure it aches to look at. “You have to come. The guys will be there.”
I almost say yes. The word is right there, the act of rebellion, of reclamation—go out, be normal, keep the momentum.
But the thought of the crush of bodies, the noise, the expectation to smile…
I’ve spent every ounce of energy sitting here.
The reclamation act is over. I tell myself it’s strategy—pick your battles, pace the fight—but it tastes like failure.
“I can’t,” I say, the lie familiar and dull-edged. “I have a paper to work on.” My standard avoidance, my shield.
Her smile falters, but she nods, too good a friend to push. “Okay. Next time.”
“Next time,” I echo. The word feels small, hollow, but necessary.
I hate how it sounds in my mouth. I say my goodbyes and wait a few minutes for the majority of the crowd to thin out and the ice to clear. I escape, pulling my jacket tighter, craving the sterile silence of my dorm.
My path takes me past the tunnel leading to the locker rooms, a wide concrete mouth still spitting out staff and media. I keep my head down, watching my feet.
And then I feel it.
A change in the air. A sudden gravity that pulls at my skin.
I look up.
The rest of the team is moving down the hallway, a loud river of navy jerseys and laughter, but Declan isn't with them. He has separated himself from the pack. He’s leaning against the concrete wall just inside the tunnel entrance, one leg crossed over the other, arms folded over his chest.
Waiting.
He’s looking straight at me. It’s not a glance or a scan.
It’s a direct, unblinking, consuming stare that pins me to the spot.
His helmet is off, dark-blonde hair damp and clinging to his forehead, sweat tracking down his temples.
His eyes are green—a sharp, unsettling green so dark it’s almost black from this distance.
And there’s something in the way he looks at me—too steady, too hungry—that pries under my ribs. My father represents a control that protects; Declan represents a control that devours.
The concrete smells like damp rubber and disinfectant; a drip ticks somewhere in the rafters. My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag until the canvas bites.
I don’t drop my gaze. I refuse to run. I hold the look like a line I’m drawing across the floor: I’m here.
He pushes off the wall. A slow, predatory movement. He doesn't smile. He doesn't nod. He just lets me see him. Really see him. And what I see terrifies me more than his strength. I see a crack in the perfect armor. A hunger that looks like it hurts.
He looks... wrecked. And he wants me to see it.
A split second stretches into eternity. The roar of the crowd is gone. The world narrows to the ten feet of concrete between us.
A trainer claps him on the shoulder, and the spell shatters. Declan doesn't flinch, but his jaw tightens. He gives a sharp nod, but his eyes stay on me for one more brutal second. Then he turns and disappears into the dark of the tunnel.
I stand there, hand frozen on my bag strap, heart pounding a frantic, painful rhythm against my ribs. It’s one thing to be looked at; I’m used to that. Being seen, though, is another thing entirely.
Whatever he saw… it felt dangerous.
I breathe once, deep enough to sting. Then I turn toward the exit—slow, not running. It’s a small victory, but it’s mine.