Chapter 7
Declan
My hands ache.
I sit in my truck, cloaked in darkness, the engine dead. The rink looms in my rearview—a cold slab of concrete and metal that should feel like sanctuary but doesn’t. Not tonight. Not after the day I’ve had.
Sweat clings to me, a damp shroud from my self-inflicted hell of extra practice.
The team didn’t skate today, but my ritual doesn’t bend to schedules.
The moisture cools against my skin, turning sticky and cold as salt dries to grit along my hairline.
The chill seeps in, a slow shudder rolling through me, sinking deep.
My knuckles throb, split open from the last moment of rage. I slammed my fist into the post an hour ago—a final, frustrated crack after drills where every movement felt wrong. As if my own body had turned traitor.
My ritual feels splintered. I flex my fingers, sharp pain shooting up my arm. It’s good—pain is a clean language. Cause and effect. No confusion. No ghosts.
Except the ones already entangled in my head.
I can still feel the phantom heat of her thigh pressed against mine in that booth—a contamination, an invasion.
Someone has carved a mark into my existence, and no matter how many times I skate over it, I can’t scrub it out.
It’s under my skin, woven into everything.
The more I try to shove it down, the louder it screams.
I should be running my after-practice ritual back at my apartment: wiping down my gear, checking straps, re-taping my stick. But those motions feel tainted now, stripped of their meaning. The rhythm is shattered.
Every time I close my eyes to visualize pad buckles and tape, I see her against the booth wall, fighting the urge to touch me—and failing. And the uglier truth: I didn’t move an inch. I made her fail.
My phone buzzes on the passenger seat, a violent rattle in the stifling silence. The screen lights up—a harsh glow slicing through the dark.
It’s my father.
My gut coils tight. It’s not instinct—it’s conditioning. The name on the screen acts like a command, something old and small coiling inside my ribs, braced for the blow.
I let it ring twice, a pathetic rebellion, but it’s all I’ve got tonight. On the third ring, I answer, my aching hand stiff. The tape residue on my palm squeaks against the glass.
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any idea how pathetic you look?” His voice is cold, each word a knife sliding under my ribs. “A common brawler. Not a Reid. Not my son.”
So he knows. Of course he knows. Boosters, board members, alumni—Briarcliff is just another puppet he controls.
“It’s handled,” I say, my voice flat, a wall of ice.
“It wasn’t handled, Declan. It was a spectacle.
You dented university property. You embarrassed me.
You embarrassed the name. The name guarantees your spot on that roster, pays for your gear, the roof over your head.
Is this the discipline I’ve invested in?
You acted like an animal, risking everything for nothing. ”
I stare through the windshield at the empty lot. My breath fogs the glass, blurring the view, trapping me behind the haze.
My father doesn't ask why. He doesn't care if Rylan crossed a line.
Coach Addison asked. Even while stripping my starting spot, he locked eyes with me and demanded the reason. He cared about the man inside the gear.
My father only cares about the asset. The investment.
“I’m listening,” I say, because that’s the line in the script.
“…and if Coach Addison decides to pull you, I won’t stop him. You want to be benched your senior year? You want a review with the athletic administration? Think they won’t look at that temper? You’re one outburst away from losing everything.”
My jaw grinds. I know. Coach made it clear yesterday. One more strike, and I’m done.
“I understand,” I say.
“Good. Hold on.” A rustle, and then her voice cuts through—slick syrup, smooth and heavy. “Beatrice wants to speak to you.”
Sickness coils in my gut, colder than fear. I almost hang up, my thumb hovering over the red button, tight enough to make my knuckles throb.
“Declan?” Her voice is honeyed—it drips intimacy, heavy and wrong. “Are you all right? Your father is just worried. You know how he gets about the brand.”
“I’m fine, Beatrice.”
“Oh, you’re never fine.” Her laugh is breathy, wrong in all the right ways. “I heard about the locker. I didn’t know you had that kind of fire left in you. I’ve always admired your intensity.”
I stiffen, the image of her perfect lipstick, perfect hair, perfect everything etched in my mind.
Nothing about her is real. She’s my fiancée in the way a contract is a promise—signed for leverage, not love.
Forced on me, packaged as a merger. She won't be marrying me; she'll be buying the Reid name, and I’m just the asset that comes with it.
“I have to go,” I say, each syllable a lifeline.
“Don’t be like that,” she croons, her tone shifting, becoming sharper. “I like it when you’re difficult, Declan. It makes the investment worthwhile. A tame asset is boring. Just don’t damage the merchandise before the wedding.”
Disgust rises, hot and acidic.
She wants the monster. She craves the danger because she thinks she holds the leash.
I hang up.
The silence that follows slams down, thick and absolute.
I grip the steering wheel, my split knuckles screaming as they press into the leather. The ache spreads up my forearms, into my shoulders.
I think about the fight. Rylan’s sleazy mouth.
I think about my father’s cold disgust.
I think about Beatrice’s warm, parasitic need.
Psycho.
Headcase.
Rylan throbbing those words out from the floor, and they’re not wrong. Not entirely.
Love in my house comes with conditions: obey, perform, endure. My father’s love is a contract. Beatrice’s is a cage. I learned young that stillness is survival. Control is the only way to keep the walls from shaking.
The curse isn’t superstition. It isn’t the ritual. It’s inheritance.
And Talia—her name, her fear, the scent of peppermint and old paper—wedges between the links of that chain, pressure on the weakest point.
A fracture.
I drop the phone into the console. My pulse is a tight, uneven beat in my throat, the cab too silent, too static. I’m about to put the truck in gear when a hard rap hits the passenger window.
I flinch.
Adrian’s face appears through the glass—hood up, breath fogging in the cold air. His stare cuts through the dark like a blade.
I unlock the door, and he climbs in without waiting for an invitation.
He shuts it quietly. No words at first. Just takes me in—the raw knuckles, the taped residue on my hand, the posture like I’m holding the world up with my spine.
“You saw,” I say.
He huffs a humorless breath. “Yeah. I was right there when it went down.”
His jaw works, tension grinding through it. “Rylan opened his mouth about Clara first—again. I was two seconds from putting him through the benches myself.”
I turn slightly. “So why didn’t you?”
“Because you moved faster.” His voice is low, matter-of-fact. “And because Coach was already coming down the hall. If I’d stepped in, it would’ve been both of us getting hauled out.”
He leans back, eyes dark, dangerous.
“You didn’t lose control, Declan. You did what needed to be done. If I’d gotten there first, the dent would’ve been a hell of a lot bigger.”
A beat of quiet stretches between us—thick, heavy, honest.
“You need anything handled?” Adrian asks, his tone deceptively soft. “Rylan. Your old man. Anyone.”
I swallow hard. The offer isn’t exaggeration. It’s a promise. A warning. A vow.
“No,” I say, even though part of me wants to accept. “Not yet.”
“Then say the word when ‘not yet’ becomes ‘now.’”
He opens the door, and the cold rushes in, leaving the cab too empty. Too quiet. And all the noise comes back twice as loud.
I shove the truck into gear.
On my way out of the lot, I check the rearview mirror. My own eyes catch in the reflection, illuminated by the dashboard lights—dark, hollow, shadowed like my father’s. I hate it enough that I almost wrench the wheel back toward the rink, back to the only place I know how to be useful.
Instead, I drive home on autopilot and drop my gear bag just inside the door.
The apartment is dark, air heavy, more crypt than home. The blinds are half-closed, everything exactly where I left it because I don’t let anyone else in. No sign of life except the faint hum of the fridge and the rink stamp still ghosted on the back of my hand.
I don’t stop. I move through the shadows straight to the bathroom, driven by the need to wash the feeling off my skin. I crank the shower handle as far as it’ll go.
Steam floods the bathroom in seconds, the heat flirting with scalding. I stand under the spray for a long time, water pounding my shoulders until it bites. It’s punishment and purification rolled into one.
I let it burn, trying to scour off Rylan’s filth, my father’s expectations, Beatrice’s possessive purr.
Trying to burn off the contamination of the booth. The peppermint of her breath, the tremor in her shoulders, the tiny drag of her hoodie against my arm.
Trying to burn off the memory of thinking I wasn’t alone on the ice earlier… that hair-thin prickle at the nape of my neck that said someone was there. Someone watching. Small, quiet, and terrified. Someone who knew how to look for exits the way I do.
I let it burn until the mirror fogs completely.
I brace my hands on the tile, head bowed, and watch the water swirl down the drain—pink at first where it hits the split skin on my knuckles. Blood, ice, evidence of impact. Except this time there’s no cheering crowd, no horn—just the echo of Say her name again in my head.
When I finally turn off the water, the sudden quiet feels too loud. Droplets run down the walls, ticking against the tub like a slow clock. A penalty box with no clock running down.
I get out, wrapping a towel around my waist. The mirror is still opaque. I wipe a section clear with my forearm and stare at my reflection.