Chapter 21
Talia
The fluorescent lights in the study hall hum like they’re chewing on nerves, not electricity.
I drop my backpack onto one of the long wooden tables—the kind that’s seen a decade of carved initials and abandoned coffee rings—and pretend the textbook I pull out is something I can read. My eyes blur after two sentences. My pulse hasn’t slowed since brunch.
I keep replaying everything. Declan showing up. Sitting beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. My dad’s voice. The slammed-shut truth about the funding.
Unless I discourage your involvement…
I haven’t breathed right since.
The door creaks open.
My stomach drops.
Of course it’s him.
Declan strides in like he owns the oxygen in this room. Hoodie up, bag slung over one shoulder, hair still slightly damp from a shower. He doesn’t look around. Not once. He doesn’t search for me or hesitate or pretend he’s here for any other reason.
He walks the entire length of the room and sits down directly across from me.
My pulse stumbles. “You can’t sit here.”
He leans forward, forearms braced on the table. “Too late.”
I want to shove all my books onto the floor just to have something to do with my hands.
Instead, I glare. “Declan. I said—”
The scrape of chairs interrupts me.
Clara and Adrian slide into the seats beside us like they’ve been watching the whole thing from the hallway and decided this was a situation requiring immediate intervention.
“Hey,” Clara says, eyebrows raised in a way that is both innocent and absolutely not. “Fancy seeing you two here.”
Adrian—six-foot-too-broad, golden boy grin dimmed by something sharper—gives Declan a look. A captain-to-captain, soldier-to-soldier kind of look.
Declan answers it without moving a muscle.
“What happened?” Adrian asks quietly. Not to me. To him.
Declan doesn’t sugarcoat it. He explains the brunch. The ultimatum. Alistair’s threat to pull the program’s grant if I’m not cut loose.
Clara’s jaw drops. “He can’t do that.”
“He can,” Adrian says, voice flat. “He funds the travel budget. The facility upgrades. The new training center. If he pulls the plug, we’re back to riding buses and fighting for ice time like a state school.”
My stomach twists. These guys are D1 royalty. They come from money, but the program runs on extra money. Alistair isn’t threatening their tuition; he’s threatening their advantage. He’s threatening the prestige they all bleed for.
“Exactly what my father tried with us,” Adrian says, cutting smoothly in. His voice is quiet but it hits like a blade sliding home. “Money as a leash. Reputation as a choke chain.”
My head snaps toward him.
Clara nods, eyes suddenly bright with something fierce. “He tried to break us apart. Adrian’s dad. Said I was a distraction. Said Adrian needed focus.” She scoffs softly. “What he meant was obedience.”
Adrian turns to Declan. “And what did you do?”
“Didn’t bend,” Declan says. The words are low, vibrating through the table.
“Good,” Adrian says. “We don’t need the jet. We don’t need the new weight room. We can win on bad ice if we have to.”
I stare at him. He’s the captain. He’s saying he’ll let the program bleed rather than let Alistair Reid win.
The door swings again.
Maya walks in first—sharp-eyed, carrying her laptop like a weapon—followed by Zoe (who looks like she fought someone for the last iced coffee on campus) and Genny (quiet, cardigan soft, but eyes always watching).
Zoe drops into a chair. “Okay, I’m sorry, but this tension is so loud it’s giving me hives. Who’s talking?”
Maya’s gaze flicks between me and Declan, expression shifting just a millimeter—enough to know she’s already piecing the story together.
Genny gently nudges her chair closer to mine. “You look tired, honey. The real kind.”
The air tightens in my chest. I don’t want this. I’m not built for this kind of attention. This… care.
“It’s fine,” I manage. “Declan’s father is just… leveraging the team against me.”
Clara pulls out a small neon sticky note, scribbles something, and slides it across the table with all the stealth of a spy.
I glance down:
You’re not doing this alone.
Not anymore.
Me, Adrian, Maya, Zoe, Genny — we’re in.
(…the guys are in too. They just don’t know it yet.)
My throat closes. Completely.
I blink hard, swallowing around something sharp and warm. I look up and they’re all looking at me—not pitying, not probing. Just present.
Declan watches all of it silently, jaw tight, like he’s witnessing a miracle he never expected to exist.
I fold the note slowly, carefully—like it’s something breakable—and tuck it into the pocket of my hoodie.
“Thank you,” I whisper, even though the words feel too small for all of this.
“We take care of our own,” Clara says softly.
Declan’s gaze shifts to me. Heavy. Certain.
“I’m not stepping back,” he says.
Silence falls like a held breath.
Zoe mutters, “I knew it. Hopeless.”
Adrian grins slowly—dark, approving. “Then let’s make him regret threatening us.”
I stare at him.
Declan. The boy I keep telling myself I can’t let in. The boy who just declared war on his own inheritance to sit at this table.
And something deep inside me—something scared and stitched and bruised—moves. Just a fraction. Just enough to let him matter.
By Monday morning, I’ve convinced myself last night was a fluke.
They’ll all forget. Declan will cool off.
Then I open the door to my dorm and walk straight into a six-foot-three problem.
Declan is leaning against the opposite wall, hood up, hands shoved in his pockets, like he’s been there long enough to be part of the architecture. His head lifts the second my door clicks.
“You’re early,” I blurt.
“You’re late,” he counters, pushing off the wall.
My spine snaps a little straighter. “You can’t do this.”
He falls into step beside me anyway, long strides easily matching my shorter ones. “Walk you to class.”
“That’s what I mean. You can’t do that.”
“I’m already doing it.”
God, he’s impossible.
The hallway smells like burnt coffee and cheap body spray. My skin prickles with the usual awareness—footsteps, voices, doors—but it all feels… blunted. Muted under the solid presence at my side.
He shifts my backpack to his shoulder before I can protest, like it’s nothing more than an extra strap across all that muscle.
“Give that back,” I snap.
“No.”
“Reid.”
His mouth twitches. “Addison.”
We push through the doors into the cold, bright slap of January air. Our breaths fog in front of us as we cross the quad. Heads turn. Conversations dip. I see it in the corner of my vision—people nudging each other, whispering.
Hockey psycho walks coach’s daughter to class.
“Oh my God,” I mutter under my breath. “Could you at least try to look less like a bodyguard and more like someone who knows what personal space is?”
He actually huffs out a laugh.
It’s small, startled, like it escapes before he can strangle it back. His shoulders loosen a fraction. I feel eyes on us from everywhere.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I say.
“Doing what?”
“Laughing. In public. Where people can see.”
He cuts me a sideways look. “You make it sound like a crime.”
“With your reputation? It’s… confusing.”
We reach the science building. I stop at the door and hold out a hand. “Backpack.”
“Nope.”
“Declan.”
“I’ll trade you.”
Suspicion coils in my chest. “For what?”
He shifts the strap higher on his shoulder. “For not pretending I don’t exist the second we’re inside.”
My cheeks burn. He saw that coming.
“I have class,” I say stiffly.
“So do I.” His voice stays maddeningly calm. “I’ll sit behind you. I won’t talk. I just—” he pauses, searching for words, “…want you to know I’m there. In the light. Not the parking lot.”
I hate how much that lands.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But if my professor yells at us, I’m blaming you.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He opens the door for me like some inconvenient medieval knight, and I walk through it, heart pounding too fast for an eight a.m. lecture.
He keeps doing it.
Tuesday, he’s waiting outside my psych class. Wednesday, it’s bio lab. Thursday, he’s propped against the wall outside the library like he has all day to kill and nowhere better to be.
He always takes my bag; he always matches his stride to mine. He always walks on the outside of the sidewalk—between me and the road, between me and the open.
And every time I tell him he can’t, he does it anyway.
By Friday, the routine is set in stone.
Stats class. The room where he first gave me the tea.
He slides into the chair beside mine just as the professor starts writing on the board. Our desks are the kind that bolt together in pairs, so his knee brushes mine when he sits.
Static skates up my leg.
“You’re supposed to be invisible,” I mutter.
He leans back, long legs stretching out in front of him, knee bumping mine again. “I don’t do invisible.”
“That’s the problem.”
He doesn’t say anything for the first twenty minutes. Just sits there, taking notes with that tight, controlled grip.
Then, quietly, without looking away from his notebook:
“Game tonight.”
I don’t look at him. “I’m aware.”
“You coming?”
“For my dad,” I say. “Obviously.”
“Just your dad?”
The pen almost slips in my hand. I exhale slowly. “And maybe to see if you can actually stop a puck when you aren't busy stalking me.”
He goes still. Then his mouth tips at the corner. “I’ll try to focus.”
“Miss Addison,” the professor calls from the front. “Would you care to explain what happens when we reduce our sample size but not our confidence interval?”
I clear my throat, forcing my brain to fire. “The margin of error goes up,” I answer. “We’re less precise, so our estimates get sloppier.”
“Exactly.”
Declan’s shoulder brushes mine as he shifts to write, voice low.
“See? That’s why I need you there. To keep my stats from getting sloppy.”
“That was terrible,” I whisper.
“You smiled.”
“I grimaced.”
“Smiled,” he insists.
Unfortunately, I think he’s right.
By the time night falls, the whole campus feels electric.
Friday games always do this. The air gets sharper, the noise bigger. I stand with Clara, Zoe, Maya, and Genny in the student section, the glass stretching out in front of us like a second frozen rink. My dad is a dark shape on the bench, arms folded.
Warmups start.
The team pours onto the ice in a blur of navy and white. Sticks tap, pucks scatter.
And then he’s there.
Declan.
He glides out of the tunnel and into the crease. He does his usual pre-game circuit—left post, right post, center—gloves tapping metal in a quiet, private rhythm.
Tonight, it feels different.
“You’re staring,” Zoe murmurs.
“Shut up,” I mutter.
He skates a few drills, tracks a puck, kicks it cleanly to the corner.
Then—without warning—he peels away from the net and starts skating toward our section.
My heart jumps into my throat.
I tell myself he’s cutting a normal lap. A loop. Nothing to do with—
He doesn’t look around. Doesn’t scan the crowd.
He comes straight to me.
The closer he gets, the stranger the world feels. The noise smears at the edges.
He slows to a stop right in front of our glass.
Snow sprays up from his skates, dusting the boards. My friends all go quiet.
His chest rises and falls under his jersey. He lifts his glove in a small, unmistakable salute toward me.
Every Titan fan within ten feet screams.
He doesn’t skate away.
Instead, he glides closer, until he is pressed right up against the boards.
The arena hums. People are watching—the refs, the other team, the fans. A goalie leaving the crease during warmups to talk to the glass is weird. A goalie doing it with this much intensity is a statement.
He doesn’t take his helmet off—that would draw a penalty, or at least a yell from the ref. But he leans in until his facemask is scraping the plexiglass.
His eyes find mine through the bars of the cage.
Green. Intense. Locked on.
No cameras. No Beatrice. No father. Just me.
My lungs forget how to work.
He presses his forehead against the glass. The metal of his cage clinks softly against the barrier, a sound I feel in the soles of my feet more than I hear.
It’s intimate. It’s forehead-to-forehead, breath-to-breath, with an inch of bulletproof glass between us.
His mouth moves.
I can’t hear him, but I see it.
Just you.
My heart stutters so hard it hurts.
I shake my head, just barely. This is too much. Too risky.
He doesn’t push. He just stays there, pressed against the glass, waiting.
“Holy shit,” Zoe whispers.
“It’s your choice,” Clara adds, voice soft and sure. “Not his. Not Alistair’s. Yours.”
Choice.
He’s not asking for forgiveness. He’s not hiding this in some dark hallway. He is putting his face against the glass in front of two thousand people and waiting for me to acknowledge him.
My hand lifts before I can stop it.
My fingers tremble as I raise them to the glass, hovering a millimeter away from where his cage rests.
My pulse is a drum in my ears.
I press my palm to the glass.
He exhales, the condensation from his breath fogging the plastic between us. He closes his eyes for a second, leaning into my hand like he can feel the heat of it through the barrier.
It feels like touching him.
Cold metal, hard plexi, and yet—there’s a jolt that shoots straight down my spine.
I glance toward the bench.
My dad is standing there. He’s watching Declan. He’s watching me.
He doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t signal the ref. He doesn’t call Declan back to the crease.
He just watches. And then, slowly, he turns his back and looks at the clipboard in his hand.
Permission.
I look back at Declan. His eyes are open again.
He taps his stick against the glass right in front of my chest—thunk—then pushes off backward, gliding away toward the crease without looking back.
The crowd explodes.
My hand stays pressed to the glass long after he’s gone.
“What the hell was that,” Zoe demands, half shrieking, half delighted.
Maya is already typing something in her notes app. “That was a statement. Alistair Reid just lost the narrative.”
Clara leans into my side. “That wasn’t just grovel, T. That was a claim.”
Heat prickles behind my eyes. I blink fast, refusing to let tears fall in the middle of a packed arena.
I pull my hand back, fingers tingling, and wrap them around the sticky note in my hoodie pocket instead.
We are not letting you do this alone.
On the ice, Declan drops into his stance, head up, eyes locked on the first attacking player.
I tell myself I’m here for my dad. For the program. For the team.
But as the puck drops and the roar swallows everything else, the truth settles low and undeniable in my chest:
I’m here for him, too.
And no matter how long I make him work for it, he just told an entire arena exactly where he stands.
Not in the dark.
Not in the shadows.
Right here.
With me.