Chapter 20 #2
When I finally coast to the bench, the ice is a mess of lines and gouges, like someone carved every mistake into it and left them there. Most of the guys are already off, showers running somewhere down the tunnel.
Cole slaps my shoulder on his way out. “Don’t drown in your thoughts, kid.”
“I’m treading water.”
“Try floating. It’s less dramatic.”
He disappears, his laughter echoing behind him.
My breath fogs faintly in front of me, curls, and vanishes before it ever reaches the far boards.
She is still here. Alycia stands near the penalty box, talking to one of the comms techs.
Her posture is perfect, back straight, chin up, but her fingers worry the edge of her tablet.
Even from here, I can see the tiny tremor that gives her away.
I tell myself to go shower. To leave this alone and not make it harder than it already is.
But I don’t listen. I push off the bench and glide toward her, blades whispering across what is left of the ice.
My shadow stretches along the boards, long and thin under the bright lights.
She hears me coming but doesn’t look up right away.
When she finally does, the movement is small, careful.
Her eyes meet mine for less than a second, and the air changes.
Static prickles under my skin with the same charged air that has been humming between us since the night outside her apartment.
“Alycia,” I say, voice lower than I meant it to come out.
She exhales like the sound of my name costs her something. “Hendrix.”
The tech clears his throat and excuses himself. The door to the tunnel clicks behind him, and suddenly, it is just us in this pocket of cold air. The lights buzz overhead. Somewhere in the distance, the Zamboni rumbles.
“You look…” The word snags in my throat, but I swallow it down and try again. “Overworked.”
“It’s fine, just a long day.” She says it dryly, like anything else would be too close to the truth.
“Longer than most?”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“You shouldn’t have to handle it alone,” I whisper.
Her gaze flicks to the empty stands, then back to me. “I don’t have another option, Kyle.”
There is that version of her she gives the world. Capable. Controlled. The one who never asks for anything. And I am suddenly so tired of being kept on the surface with her when I know what it feels like underneath.
“You know, you didn’t answer my text last night.” I shift closer, enough that I can see the reflection of the rink lights in her eyes.
“I thought I did.”
“And ignored it?” I ask, even though I already know the truth.
She’s going to give me some half-ass answer about her dress color, but the question she sidestepped—Are you okay?—is the only one that matters.
“I didn’t know what to say.” Panic, longing, guilt all flash through her in the space of one breath. “I told you emerald photographs better.”
“By pretending the only part of my message that mattered was the dress?”
Her knuckles go white around the tablet, and that tiny, involuntary flinch is my answer.
“No,” she says finally, voice unsteady at the edges. “I ignored the part where you… acted like you actually cared.”
“Alycia.” Her name comes out rough. “I wasn’t acting.”
Her voice betrays her—raw, frayed, unguarded—before she clamps it down again.
“They’re already going to be watching us at the gala.” Her jaw tightens like she is trying to guard every word. “Media. Sponsors. PR. If you look at me like that, they will believe it is real.”
She sees the confusion hit me, so she pushes on.
“I need this to be nothing more than a story, Kyle. Not… real. If any real feelings get involved and this goes badly, I’m the one who will pay for it.”
“It feels real,” I say, because I’m done pretending it doesn't.
My skates whisper as I shift, gravity tugging me one inch closer. Every instinct in me wants to close the rest of the distance. To see if she breaks for me—not apart, just open.
I’ve played overtime in packed arenas with seasons on the line, but none of that demanded this much control.
I know she wants me. I can see it in the tremor in her jaw and the way she can’t quite look away.
I am one wrong move from either her mouth or goodbye, and I have no idea which one I would take if she gave me the choice.
“Don’t. Please don’t say that,” she whispers, her eyes darting to my mouth before she forces them away again.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t…” She swallows hard, throat trembling. “I can’t go into that room knowing you’ll look at me like we’re something.”
“We are something.”
Pain flashes through her eyes so fast it feels like a hit. “No. You are something. I am a story people pick apart for weakness. If you look at me like that at the gala, I am the one they’ll shred.”
“Alycia…”
“And worse,” she adds quietly, “I would let them.”
I suck in a breath that doesn’t feel like enough. “I’m scared, too. Not of them. Of you. You walk into a room, and I forget every promise I made to keep this easy. I forget we are supposed to fake anything. I forget myself.”
“Kyle.” She takes a shaky step back, survival winning out. “Please don’t do this.”
“Tell me why.”
Her lips part, then press together again like her body is trying to answer for her, and her brain won’t let it. She doesn’t look away. She just goes still, caught between wanting and running. If she leaned in even a fraction, I would forget every line we swore not to cross.
“Because if you keep looking at me like that,” she whispers, “I’m going to fall into something I can’t climb out of.”
My chest tightens until it hurts to breathe. “Alycia.”
“I can’t risk it. Not with the cameras. Not with the team. Not with you.”
We stand there, breathing the same thin air, both pretending we aren’t remembering last night. Pretending that text did not hit as hard as it did. Maybe that is why the words climb up my throat again now. Not as a joke she can brush off. As the truth I meant the first time.
“You look good in green,” I say quietly. “But you would look better in blue.”
She shakes her head once, a small, helpless motion. “You make this damn near impossible.”
“I know.”
Another breath shudders out of her, and then she turns away before she breaks in front of me. Her heels tap quickly and unevenly against the concrete, like she is trying to outrun what almost happened.
I watch her disappear into the tunnel, swallowed by shadows and fluorescent hum. The cold wraps around me again, sharp and unforgiving. Wanting someone shouldn’t feel this much like standing alone in a quiet rink. But it does.
Especially when I know she wants me, too, and is still walking away.