Chapter 7
HARLOW
The first thing I learned about living on campus is that silence is a complete and utter myth. Even at six in the morning, the dorm has a pulse. A door closing down the hall. A shower turning on. Someone’s alarm screaming through a wall like the building is personally offended by sleep.
My eyes snap open anyway, because my body has decided we’re awake, and my body is rarely interested in my opinion. I stare at the ceiling for a long moment, waiting for the heaviness to roll back in.
It doesn’t.
The quiet in my room is the wrong kind of quiet—it’s the kind that makes the loud parts of my head echo.
I get up before I can talk myself out of it.
Pulling on a sweater and leggings with thick socks, I shove my hair into a messy knot on the top of my head that will end up looking more like a bird’s nest than anything else later.
I grab my tote and slide my skates into it from their home in my closet.
Skating is the one place my brain doesn’t argue with me.
It can’t.
You can’t spiral when you’re balancing on blades, and the slightest tilt turns into a disaster. You can’t replay every bad moment of your life when you’re counting edges and listening for the scrape of steel against ice.
In a different time, before the therapists, psychiatrists, and nonstop doctor visits, the ice was my therapy. But that was before.
Before I stopped eating to fuel my body and instead started to starve it. I thought it was fine, but I was anything but.
Before, I could skate for a two-hour practice and barely feel fatigued. After, I couldn’t make it through warm-ups without feeling dizzy. My skating got sloppy, and I kept falling, cutting out any and all chances of advancing my passion any further.
I thought things would get better after I told my parents that I just didn’t feel like skating anymore. That my truths would stay with me, hidden, but that didn’t happen.
The day before homecoming my junior year, I passed out at school.
My parents were called, and all of my dirty secrets were put on display that day in the ER.
How Tyler had started to make comments about the amount of food I ate.
Which turned into texts suggesting I try to lose a couple pounds so I could wear this specific dress he liked for homecoming.
Then ultimately threatening to break up with me if I let myself go.
And when you are fifteen, dating a star player on the high school hockey team, who everyone sees as a golden boy, you convince yourself that the things he’s saying aren’t that bad.
So, I began eating less or making trips to the bathroom whenever I thought I had eaten “too much.” I had developed a terrible relationship with food, but I disguised it well enough that no one looked too closely.
Until that day. The doctors and my parents had me finish high school online, cutting any and all contact with Tyler.
Kai tore him to shreds as soon as he found out, which, unfortunately, I wasn’t around to witness.
Ever since, I’ve sworn off dating in general.
Looking back now, I realize that the outcome could’ve been much worse, and it’s taken a long time to make the progress that I have so far.
Still, my brain whispers about calorie counts with every meal.
It lies to me about my clothes, saying those that fit just right are too tight, that the ones three sizes too big are the perfect fit.
Whenever I pass a mirror or a glass window that shows me too much of my reflection, I often avert my gaze.
Some days, I just don’t have it in me to fight my old demons.
But other days, I’ve started feeling better. I don’t have to try on five different outfits, but that may be because I know what makes me feel more comfortable and simply buy the same things in all the colors available. I tend to stick to cooler tones, nothing vibrant that will draw more attention.
I know my journey to healing is truly just beginning, even at this point where I’ve made so much progress, but it’s a path I’m thankful to be on.
The rink sits on the edge of campus, tucked behind the athletic facilities like it belongs to the sports world more than the student world. The air outside is crisp enough to make my cheeks sting, which is a relief. Cold is honest. Cold doesn’t pretend.
The building is quiet, even for a Sunday. A few cars in the lot. No music. No crowds. No lights glaring. Just the faint hum of refrigeration that keeps the ice alive.
I swipe my student ID and step inside, the cool air greeting me. My shoulders drop without me telling them to. This is the closest thing I have to a reset button.
The lights are dim, the kind of low glow that makes everything feel softer.
The ice is empty, completely smooth and untouched from the last pass of the Zamboni.
My favorite kind. I go to the bench area, pull my skates from my tote, and sit.
The routine is its own kind of comfort: unlacing sneakers, tugging on skates, tightening laces in a pattern my hands know by heart.
Left. Right. Pull. Wrap. Lock.
My fingers are steady. My brain isn’t. Not yet.
I step onto the ice.
The first glide is always the best part. The way the cold catches you. The way your blades bite. The way the sound of your own movement becomes the only thing in the world. I push off, slow at first, letting my body settle into a rhythm. One lap. Two. The air is sharp in my lungs, clean and quiet.
Then I start doing what I came here to do.
Edges. Crossovers. Three-turns. A spiral that makes my hamstrings complain.
I don’t jump anymore. Not really. Not the way I used to—when I was younger and braver and my body wasn’t something my brain tried to control with numbers and punishment. When my muscles could support the movements.
But I still move. Still let the ice take the words I can’t say and turn them into something that looks like grace from the outside. It’s not grace. It’s survival.
I’m midway through a set of footwork when the door at the far end of the rink opens. The sound echoes in the empty building, too loud. My stomach tightens instantly, and I slow, coasting toward the boards, instinctively mapping the new variable.
A figure steps onto the walkway. Tall. Broad shoulders. Hoodie. Hair slightly damp, like he showered and still couldn’t sit still. Even from a distance, I recognize him immediately.
Grayson Bennett.
Of course.
The universe seems to have a sense of humor, and it hates me personally.
He doesn’t see me right away. He’s looking down at his phone, moving with the tired, restless energy of someone who doesn’t know what to do with his own skin.
I push off again, telling myself I don’t care. He can exist in the same building. I am capable of being a normal person around my brother’s teammate.
I am.
I skate past the center line, head down, focusing on my edges.
Then Grayson’s gaze lifts, and he sees me. It’s immediate—the way his posture shifts is subtle but real. Like he didn’t expect anyone else to be here.
His eyes track me as I glide toward the far end. He doesn’t stare in a weird, pervy way. It’s more like…he’s reading me, trying to understand this pull, in the same way I am.
I hate that I notice.
I also hate that my body does that stupid static thing again, the one it did at the barbecue when he drifted close enough for my nervous system to register him.
I circle back, keeping distance, trying to pretend he’s just another person and not…him.
Grayson moves closer to the boards, hands in his hoodie pocket. He waits until I slow near the bench area before he speaks.
“Didn’t know anyone had the rink this early,” he says, his voice still carrying a hint of sleep in it.
“I didn’t know anyone else would be here either,” I reply.
The bluntness comes out sharper than I meant it to. Like I’m accusing him of trespassing. But that’s the problem with my mouth when I’m tired or overstimulated—it jumps without checking if the landing is safe.
Grayson’s mouth twitches, like he’s amused but not going to call me on it.
“Fair,” he says. “I can leave.”
The offer makes me blink. Most guys don’t offer to leave. Most guys take up space and assume you’ll adjust around them.
“I didn’t say that,” I reply quickly.
Grayson’s gaze holds mine for a beat. “No. You didn’t.”
And there’s something in his tone that makes my throat tighten, like he’s heard this kind of sharpness before, and he isn’t threatened by it.
I glance at the ice, then back at him. “Are you…coming to skate?”
He lifts one shoulder. “Maybe. Mostly needed air.”
Air. Right.
Grayson’s gaze flicks to my skates. “I didn’t know you were a figure skater.”
It’s not a question.
“I’m not,” I say automatically.
He raises a brow. “You don’t skate?”
I swallow and correct myself. “I…yes. I skate.”
He looks faintly amused. “But you’re not a figure skater?”
If I say no, he might ask questions. And questions have answers. And answers often have a sneaky way of revealing the truth, even if you don’t want them to.
I could tell him that I used to love to skate and started when I was just four years old.
I could tell him that I used to practice just as hard, if not harder, than Kai.
I could tell him that I was good, very good.
I could tell him that I let a boy convince me that I wasn’t good enough, and that I let the poison he spewed spread through my body, ultimately putting an end to my skating.
I shrug instead. “I used to be.”
Grayson nods like that makes sense.
“I didn’t know PCU had open ice this early,” he says, glancing around. “It’s kind of…peaceful.”
“It’s only peaceful because no one’s here,” I tell him. “Give it an hour.”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Noted.”
Silence stretches between us. Not awkward. Not uncomfortable.
Just…there.
My fingers tighten around the boards without me meaning to. I can feel my pulse in my wrists.
Grayson shifts, his gaze flicking to the far end. “I won’t get in your way.”