Chapter 29 #2
“That all you got?” Calder snarled.
Nate spat, breathless, eyes wild. “You took everything from me—my shot, my image, her! You couldn’t stand that I made it.”
Calder slammed him back against the glass. The pane shivered. “You made it because I bled for it, you ungrateful little—”
Nate drove his knee up hard. The older man doubled slightly but didn’t fall. He grabbed Nate by the collar, twisted, and threw him flat onto the ice-side mat. The thud echoed. Calder didn’t pause; he followed, fists hammering. Old rage, fresh betrayal. Father versus son. Alpha versus brat.
“Calder!” I yelled this time. My voice cracked.
He landed another punch—this one clean across Nate’s cheek—and Nate’s head snapped to the side. Blood spattered, bright against the rubber floor.
“Enough!” I shoved forward, palm catching Calder’s shoulder. He barely blinked at me, chest heaving, eyes locked on the man beneath him. For a heartbeat, I thought he might actually kill him.
Nate’s breaths came ragged, but the smirk still hovered, bloody and smug. “Go ahead,” he rasped, teeth pink. “Finish it. Then watch them drag your ass out of here in cuffs.”
Calder froze. The sound of that smirk filled the silence around us.
He let go.
Nate rolled onto one elbow, wiped his mouth, and grinned wider even as blood ran down his chin. “Still the same,” he said. “Still a coward when it counts.”
The hit came faster than thought. One sharp arc of Calder’s arm, one impact that cracked through the air and dropped Nate like a cut puppet. He hit the mat with a dull, final sound.
For a long moment, no one moved.
Calder stood over him, panting, knuckles split, chest rising and falling like surf after a storm. The veins stood out in his neck; his entire body shook with the aftermath. He looked at me then, just once, and something soft flickered under all that rage.
I swallowed hard. My arm ached where Nate’s fingers had left their bruise.
Nate groaned, pushing himself up to one knee. Blood streaked his face; his eyes burned, smaller now, confused and furious.
“This isn’t over.” He pointed at his father, hand trembling. “You hear me? You think she saves you? You’re both done.”
He staggered past us, shoulders caved in, steps uneven. Out the door, down the hall, gone.
The sound of the exit slamming echoed through the arena like a final whistle.
I didn’t move. My legs had turned to stone. Calder’s breathing filled the space between us—rough, uneven, threaded with something like disbelief.
He turned slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of one torn knuckle. For once, he didn’t look like a coach or a father. Just a man who’d spent his whole life fighting and forgotten how to stop.
The silence stretched until it hurt to breathe.
All I could hear was my pulse and Calder’s voice, softer now, almost hoarse. “You okay?”
I wanted to answer—yes, no; I don’t know—but the words stuck somewhere between my chest and the split in my lip. So I just nodded, fingers trembling against the glass. His knuckles dripped red onto the floor. Mine did too.
Neither of us blinked.
His fingers brushed my cheek, careful, trembling. The pads of them grazed the split in my lip, tracing the sting like he could rewind the pain just by touching it. His jaw locked.
“He hit you,” he said, not a question. The words rasped, low and dangerous. “I’ll kill him.”
I caught his wrist before he could move. “Don’t.” My voice sounded small, broken glass against concrete. “Just… stay with me.”
Something in him eased. The fury shifted, turned inward. His thumb slid down to my chin, holding me there as if checking I was real.
I swallowed hard. “Are you… are you fired?”
He huffed a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t cracked halfway through. “From Crestwood? Probably.”
A beat. My throat closed around the next words. “As a Serpent?”
His eyes met mine then, darker, softer. “Not sure,” he said. “Why?” The question sharpened. “Why did you take on everything alone? Why do that?”
The rink hummed around us, empty but alive—the sound of generators and the faint echo of our breathing. I looked up at him, the man everyone called trouble, ruin, waste. He looked like all of those things and none of them at once.
“Because I love you.” The words came out steady. No fanfare. Just truth. They hung there, heavier than the silence that followed.
He blinked like he’d been struck again. I waited for him to argue, to flinch, to remind me what loving him cost. Instead, he let out a rough breath, the kind that let everything go.
Might as well be free in every sense of the word.
Calder stepped closer until the space between us disappeared. His hand slid behind my neck, warm against the chill seeping through my jersey. He smelled like sweat, metal, adrenaline, and something fierce that would never be tamed.
He touched my face again, gentler this time, thumb smoothing over the bruise blooming under my eye.
“Come home with me,” he murmured. “Stay.”
The plea settled between us, quiet, impossible, real. My hand found his, sliding our fingers together, blood mixing with ice melt. The rink lights buzzed overhead, flickering like they couldn’t decide whether to hold on or burn out.
Neither could I. But for that moment, I stayed.