Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Kyle
The worst part is how normal everything looks.
Ramona stands near the boards with a few of the players’ families, helping a little kid adjust a pair of oversized gloves while she laughs quietly with the parents beside her.
Kids spill onto the ice like a swarm of excited bees, parents hover near the barrier with phones raised, and jerseys flash in every direction under the bright overhead lights.
The entire rink hums with the joy these charity skates are supposed to bring, but I’m standing at center ice, feeling like my bones are hollow.
Cole taps my helmet as he skates past. “You alive over there?”
I don’t answer because I’m not sure there is anything left in me to answer with. The longer I stand under these lights, the more the world feels two-dimensional. I’m stuck somewhere underneath it, numb and half present, like a cardboard cutout propped up where a real person should be.
Cooper’s whistle cuts through the noise, a sharp sound that usually snaps me back into my body.
Today, it just rattles around inside my chest, echoing in a space that feels too wide and too empty.
I push forward on autopilot, drifting into line.
The ice shifts under my skates, but even that grounding sensation feels dulled, like there is a thick layer between me and everything else.
Beau glides up beside me, lowering his voice. “You sleep at all?”
His question lands right in the center of the ache I’ve been pretending is just exhaustion and anything other than what it actually is. “Yep.”
It’s a lie, and a bad one. Beau’s eyes soften in that quiet, older brother way that makes me want to skate straight through the boards. “You don’t have to talk, but don’t disappear on us.”
I nod, but inside, that’s exactly what I want to do.
To fade out of frame and dissolve into the cold air, leaving all of this behind.
But PR had other plans. All hands on deck for the annual community skate to celebrate the holiday season.
Time to remind Portland that we’re part of the community and all that nonsense.
I wanted to stay home. Even Cooper tried to convince them it was a bad idea, but they insisted.
The public wants to see the happy couple, and what the public wants, the public gets. The rest of our feelings don’t matter.
A part of me is hoping she won’t come. Janine said she wasn’t sure.
The board said she should. The media schedule said she must. A bruised, stupid part of me still hopes she’ll stay away long enough for me to get through the next two hours without seeing her face and feeling everything I’ve been trying to bury clawing to the surface.
I’m still clinging to that last shred of hope when the media team breaks through the crowd, and I see her. Across the rink, Michele pauses mid-conversation with a young boy, her eyes flicking from Alycia to me with quiet concern before she gently nudges the kid toward the ice.
My chest locks so hard it feels like I took a puck square to the sternum.
She looks like she always does at events: crisp lines, perfect posture, neutral tones that make her look polished and untouchable.
A professional shield I used to admire because of how strong it made her seem.
Now it just feels like a wall I’m on the wrong side of.
The hope I was holding drops out of me instantly.
“Damn,” Beau follows my gaze, jaw tightening. “I thought maybe…”
“Me, too.”
Alycia doesn’t see me at first. She’s speaking to her team, directing the shoot like she hasn’t shattered every part of me I didn’t know was breakable. Like the last two weeks were just a scheduling hiccup. Then her eyes land on me, just long enough to split something open.
An unmistakably pained expression flickers across her face.
She masks it immediately, but not before her mouth presses into a line that looks dangerously close to regret.
It punches straight through the numbness I’ve been moving through for over a month, tearing it wide open like it was never real protection at all.
My chest lurches hard enough that I almost lose my footing, because that tiny, impossible look is the first real thing I’ve seen from her since the night she walked away.
It hurts in a way I don’t have language for. My heartbeat stumbles over itself, trying to reach her even though she’s already looking away. I just stand there, swallowing down the ache like I didn’t just watch the one person I want more than anything pretend I’m nothing at all.
Beau’s voice reaches me, low enough that no one else can hear. “Kyle…”
I can’t look at him. If I do, everything I’m barely keeping inside will spill straight through me. So, I force my attention forward, toward anything that’s not the hollow throb still echoing from that single, stolen look.
The rink noise swells around me. Blades carving ice, kids laughing, and cameras snapping for social media posts. It all feels muted. My body is here, skates lacing grooves into the surface, pads weighing down my shoulders, but none of it feels real besides the ache she left behind.
I need to move. Motion has always been the one thing that anchors me, the thing that pulls me out of my head.
I glide to center ice, hoping muscle memory will catch me the way it always does.
The moment my blades find their rhythm, I feel the truth she tried to bury in professionalism, and the way it branded itself into my chest. It knocks the air right out of me.
She looked at me like she was trying, and failing, not to feel something.
Cole skates up beside me, shoulder brushing mine. “You good?”
“Not today.”
He stays there in silence for a few seconds, matching my pace like I’m seconds away from coming apart. The quiet between us is stretched tight over too many things I’m not saying.
Then, like she has timed it with some cruel internal clock, Alycia steps onto the ice walkway with the rest of the PR team.
Each step is controlled, like she planned it five beats in advance.
She’s close enough now that if I turned, I could study every detail of her face and commit it to memory.
I can’t look, not when one glance already cracked me open.
Instead, I drag in a breath that doesn’t reach my lungs. Beau glides by, catching my eye just long enough to read what I’m trying to hide. Even with my brothers and a team I trust around me, and noise filling the whole arena, I have never felt more alone.
I skate a slow curve along the boards, forcing my breathing into something steady.
The air is chilly enough to sting my throat, but even that doesn’t ground me the way it should.
Nothing does. Every time I blink, I see that split second on her face, that raw flicker she tries to smother the moment our eyes meet.
Something too honest to be anything but real. Then she buries it.
The pressure in my chest spikes again, sharp enough that I have to grip my stick tighter to keep my hands from shaking. I push into another stride, then another, but each one feels wrong, like my body is fighting itself.
“Easy,” Beau calls from near the boards, watching me with that steady expression he saves for moments he knows he can’t coach me out of. “You’re pushing too hard.”
I nod, but I don’t slow down. If I stop, everything I’m trying to outrun will crash straight into me. Near the players’ entrance, Alise hands out foam sticks to a group of excited kids, offering Beau a soft smile when he glances her way before she turns back to help a little girl find her friend.
A cluster of reporters gathers near the barrier, adjusting lenses and mic packs, the low buzz of preparation filling the space like gnats I can’t swat away. Someone waves for the PR team to move into position, and there she is again.
Alycia walks toward them with her phone in one hand and an event schedule in the other, expression composed, posture perfect, every line of her body arranged with disciplined control.
It should look like strength. Today, it looks like a wall I can’t get through.
My throat pulls tight as I watch her direct the media team with practiced ease.
People listen and trust her. They follow her lead without hesitation. I used to be one of them.
She steps farther into the crowd, and a little girl in a pink Timberwolves hoodie tugs at her sleeve, wide-eyed and starstruck.
Alycia drops into a crouch immediately, softening her posture, letting the kid babble about her favorite players while her mother snaps pictures.
Alycia smiles for them. Wide, warm, camera-ready.
Except I can see the crack in it from here.
Her cheeks don’t lift all the way. Her eyes stay dim, like the light can’t quite reach them.
She poses with a family next, tucking herself between two toddlers, her hand steady on one of their shoulders.
When the father thanks her, she looks away too fast, swallowing something she doesn’t want to feel in front of strangers.
Every few seconds, her eyes flick to me.
Immediately hidden, like she doesn’t want to look but can’t help checking if I’m still there, watching and hurting.
The numbness I’ve been moving through for days surges into something brutal and alive, pressing up against my ribs until it hurts to breathe.
She isn’t just pretending for the cameras; she’s pretending for everyone, holding it together while she breaks in the tiny edges of her expression she thinks no one can see.
But I see it. I always have. It wrecks me straight through.
Cole’s skate taps mine lightly as he comes up beside me, voice low. “You don’t have to go over there yet.”
“They’ll drag me over eventually.”
Cole glances toward the space she’s holding between us like it’s the only thing keeping her upright. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”