Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kyle
The rink is dark when I slip inside. The overhead lights are off, and the stands are nothing, but shadows stacked on shadows, but the faint blue light from the scoreboard is enough to stretch across the ice in a cold wash that settles straight into my bones.
I stand there for a moment, letting the quiet press in around me, letting the emptiness swallow whatever pieces of me are still trying to hold it together.
I don’t know why I came here. Maybe it was muscle memory or some leftover instinct to escape, but as the silence settles deeper, I feel the truth rising through the cracks in my soul.
I came here because this is the only place I can fall apart without anyone expecting me to explain it.
I glance down at the phone clutched in my hand, the brightness of the screen lit against the dark.
The paused frame burns into me. My eyes raw, jaw tight, and Alycia beside me, pretending nothing inside either of us had just shifted.
I tell myself that I’m watching it for the optics, to understand how bad the damage is, and try to come up with a plan to fix it.
I pretend I’m dissecting it like I’m watching game film, a problem to study instead of a moment that gutted me.
But even here in the rink's darkness, that lie tastes thin. It’s impossible to outrun the truth.
I’m not watching because I want to fix anything.
I’m watching because I don’t know how to let her go.
I hit play for the fifth time in the last ten minutes.
The video jumps back to the beginning. Alycia’s practiced laugh falls into the mic with perfect ease, the same polished ease she wears every day like armor.
She handles the reporter’s joke with control, the way she handles everything else.
And then it cuts to me, and the shift is so stark it feels like a physical blow.
I can see the fractures I couldn’t hide all over my face.
The hurt I couldn’t swallow and the exact moment when the truth slipped through the cracks because I couldn’t pretend for one more goddamn second.
“Longevity,” I hear myself mutter, and it sounds worse on the recording than it did in my head.
I watch myself mutter the word as if I had to force it through clenched teeth.
Then I watch myself walk away from her, away from the cameras, away from the version of me who still thought pretending was possible.
Even though I’ve watched this moment so many times the edges should be dull by now, it cuts every time.
A sharp breath drags out of me as I wipe at my face with the back of my hand, but it does nothing to steady the pounding underneath my ribs.
I don’t know if I’m trying to make sense of what happened or if some part of me believes that if I watch it enough, I’ll find a version where I didn’t walk away, or worse, where she didn’t laugh.
The truth of the matter is that I can’t stand the way I look in that clip.
Like a man who wanted something real and didn’t know how to hold on when it cracked in his hands.
I look like I’m still standing there, begging her to choose me in a room full of cameras, even though I knew she wouldn’t allow herself to.
And underneath it all, I look like someone who is deeply and irrevocably in love with her.
The realization hits so quietly it almost sneaks past me, but once it surfaces, there’s no backing away from it.
The feeling coils in the pit of my stomach, stealing the strength from my knees.
I sink into the nearest row of seats, bracing one arm across the backrest as if I need it to keep myself upright.
The phone stays lit in my other hand, the paused frame glowing like something that won’t stop haunting me.
I don’t know how long I sit like that, breathing around the ache, listening to the low hum of the rink settling in the dark. At some point, staring becomes unbearable. I need to move. I need to bleed out these emotions I don’t know how to keep contained anymore.
My skates are on before I even realize it.
The first step onto the ice feels like slipping into the only language I still speak fluently.
I start to skate, not fast at first, just enough to feel the cold thread up through the whisper of motion tugging everything tightly wound inside me.
But the calm doesn’t come. The ache doesn’t loosen.
The thoughts don’t quiet. And I push harder.
Each stride digs deeper until my chest burns with a fire that demands attention. The pain feels cleaner than the one sitting behind my sternum, so I keep going, pushing until the edges of my vision blur and there’s nothing left but the breath dragging out of me in ragged pulls.
The ghosts don’t leave me; if anything, they skate in circles right beside me, sharper than the cold and harder to outrun.
I still carry the unspoken expectations as if they're stitched to my jersey. I’m the one who’s supposed to be fine.
The one who jokes first, forgives first, absorbs the hits before anyone notices something’s wrong.
The one who doesn’t break, because Beau was sick, and Cooper was angry, and someone had to hold the pieces while they figured their lives out.
Cole is handling his own demons, demons that none of us can see but him.
It was easier to stay in that role than admit I needed anything for myself.
Easier to be the steady one instead of the brother who made things harder for everyone.
But I couldn’t do that tonight when the hurt felt too sharp to swallow, and pretending felt like lying to my own skin.
Alycia’s voice threads through it all. Every version of her shows up in my mind at once.
The soft way she said my name when she finally let me in.
The careful tone she used when she didn’t want me to see that she trusted me.
And the one that wrecks me the most, the voice she used when she lied and said it couldn’t be real.
When she put distance between us like it was for professionalism instead of fear.
I know why she did it, but knowing doesn’t soften the hit. It only makes the ache sharper because for one impossible moment, I felt like I could want her. Now she’s pulled away from me, and I don’t know how to hold the version of me that reached for something real. So, I skate.
I skate because stopping means feeling all of it at once, and I’m not sure I’m built for that kind of collapse.
Not tonight, in an empty rink where everything echoes louder than I can handle.
I circle the rink again and again, trying to breathe past the tightness clawing up my throat, but keep pace, knowing exactly how fast I can go.
When my legs finally give out, my skates slow into a rough glide before stuttering to a stop near the boards.
Sweat clings to my neck despite the cold, but underneath it, a different heat builds, like I’ve been trying too hard for too long, and suddenly, there’s no strength left to pretend.
I press my forehead to the chilled plexiglass and let the cold bite through my skin.
It’s grounding in a way I’m almost ashamed to need.
I’ve played through concussions, bruised ribs, and fractures, but heartbreak is the first thing that’s ever made me want to fold in on myself.
This isn’t about losing her but realizing I never really had her in the way she had me.
The thought lands so clean and sharp it physically hurts.
My fingers curl at my sides like they’re the only thing keeping me upright, and for a moment, all I can hear is my uneven pulse thudding against the hollowest parts of me.
I don’t know how long I stand there before I hear the familiar crunch of blades carving across the ice.
Beau doesn’t announce himself, just the steady sound of him skating up behind me.
The same way he always did when we were kids and I pushed myself too far.
The same way he does now, years later, without needing to be asked.
“You’re going to crack the glass if you keep leaning on it like that,” he says, his voice settling in beside the hurt.
I exhale, a rough, shaky thing that barely counts as a laugh. “Wouldn’t be the first thing I’ve broken tonight.”
He stops at my side, close enough for warmth to exist between us, even in the cold, and waits. Beau’s always been good at giving me space without letting me drift too far.
“How long have you been out here?”
I don’t answer because I’m not sure. Time stopped being measured in minutes and started being measured in how many times I thought about turning around and walking to Alycia’s apartment instead.
He studies me for a long moment, then nudges the toe of his skate against mine, not enough to move me, just enough to make sure I feel it.
“You don’t have to do that stoic shit with me.”
The words land with a quiet accuracy only Beau ever seems to have, hitting the exact spot I’ve been trying to numb.
He doesn’t push or crowd me, just stays there beside the boards.
His presence is steady in a way that loosens something I’ve been holding in a white-knuckled grip.
The rink is all echo and dim light, making it impossible to hide.
Maybe that’s what finally cracks me open, because the words that have been clawing at the back of my throat since the moment Alycia ran away from me earlier outside the locker room push up all at once.
“I didn’t think it would hit me like this,” I admit, my voice low, raw. “I thought if I kept moving, kept skating, kept pretending—”