Aria’s POV
The clock on the lobby wall said 4:57 a.m. when I shoved the rink door open for the second morning in a row. My stomach was a knot of leftover anger and zero sleep. Mom’s text from the night shift still sat unread in my pocket. *Boots money came through, baby. Go hard today.*
I couldn’t go hard if I was sharing oxygen with the human glacier who thought “princess” was both an insult and a greeting.
Cole was already on the ice. Of course he was. Black hoodie under his hockey gloves, stick abandoned by the boards, doing these long, powerful crossovers that looked more like dancing than any enforcer had a right to. He stopped the second he saw me, chest rising hard, breath fogging in the cold.
“You’re early,” he said.
“You’re on my half.”
He glanced down at the red line under his skates and slowly drifted backward, hands raised like I was holding a weapon. “Happy?”
“I’ll be happy when this week is over and Patel realizes this is the worst idea in rink history.”
I dropped my bag on the bench, fingers stiff from the parking-lot cold, and laced my boots tighter than necessary. The familiar bite of the leather felt like armor. I stepped onto the ice without looking at him again. The surface was still virgin in places, glassy and mean, exactly how I liked it before the Zamboni and the rest of the world ruined it. I claimed the far end and started with deep edges, pushing until my thighs burned, trying to pretend the six-foot-something problem at the other end didn’t exist.
It lasted exactly eleven minutes.
I could feel him watching. Every time I landed a jump, the air changed, like he was holding his breath. It made my skin feel too tight. I moved into a flying camel, picking up speed, letting the rotation clear my head. The cold air tasted clean. For one stupid second I forgot he was there.
Then a puck slid across my path—his, obviously—slow and deliberate.
My free foot caught a groove left by some earlier blade. The world tilted hard. My arms windmilled. I was going down, and it was going to be ugly.
One second I was crashing. The next, solid hands locked around my waist and under my ribcage, stopping me in mid-air like I weighed nothing.
My back hit a chest that felt like frozen brick wrapped in cotton. Blades scraped in perfect unison as he absorbed the momentum and set me down on my feet, slow, controlled, way too smooth. Hockey players didn’t catch people like that. They slammed, they collided. They didn’t cradle.
Pairs skaters did.
We froze.
My hands had fisted in the front of his hoodie like they belonged there. His breath was hot against the shell of my ear. I could feel every ridge of his gloves through the thin fabric of my dress, the exact press of his fingers at my waist like they already knew the shape of me. My heart slammed so violently I was sure he felt it. He smelled like cold air, mint, and something darker underneath—cedar and secrets.
“You good?” Cole’s voice came out rough, almost shaken.
I should have shoved him. I should have screamed about staying on his half. Instead I stayed exactly where I was, spine to his chest, staring at our skates lined up together on the ice like they had done this before.
“How did you do that?” I whispered.
His fingers twitched on my waist. He didn’t let go.
“Do what?”
“That. The catch. The way you turned it.” I swallowed. My voice sounded strange, too thin. “Hockey players don’t catch like that.”
Silence stretched so tight it hurt. I felt his forehead drop for half a second against the back of my head, like he’d lost a private fight with himself. Then his mouth was near my temple, breath warm enough to make me shiver.
“Aria—”
The sound of my name in that voice did something dangerous to my knees.
I turned in his arms before I could stop myself. Bad idea. Now we were face to face, inches apart. His eyes were that pale winter gray, wide and wrecked under the rink lights. The scar through his eyebrow looked sharper up close. My hands were still on his chest. I could feel how fast his heart was beating.
“You’ve done that before,” I said. It wasn’t a question anymore.
Something like fear flashed across his face. His grip on my waist tightened once, then loosened like he was forcing himself to let go. But he didn’t step back. Neither did I. The air between us felt charged, fragile, ready to snap.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered.
“Don’t I?” I hated how breathless I sounded. “The way you timed it. The way you took my weight. That’s not hockey, Cole. That’s—”
“Don’t.”
The word came out raw.
I should have dropped it. Every smart cell in my body screamed at me to drop it. I needed ice time, not another enemy. I needed a pairs partner for the Eastern Showcase or my scholarship chances were dead. I did not need to dig into the buried secrets of the boy who had stolen half my hours.
But the ghost of that catch still burned on my skin.
“Who did you skate with?” I pushed, quieter. “Before.”
His jaw flexed so hard I thought it might crack. For a second I saw it—the crack in the armor, the boy underneath the enforcer, the one who moved like music still lived in his bones. Then the side door to the rink banged open with the force of a gunshot.
“Brennan! Lang!”
Coach Harrow’s voice cracked through the empty arena like a whip. We sprang apart so fast I nearly lost my edge. Cold rushed into every place Cole’s hands had been. My body felt branded.
Coach stalked across the rubber matting toward the boards, face already red. He was early. He was never early.
“What the hell is this?” he barked.
Cole’s face had gone pale under the lights. He took one step back, then another, putting careful distance between us like the ice had turned into a fault line.
“Don’t,” he said under his breath, so low only I could hear. “Please don’t ask me.”
I opened my mouth anyway.
But Coach Harrow’s voice slammed across the ice again, sharper this time.
“Brennan. My office. Now. And bring your skates—the white ones I know you’re hiding.”
Cole’s head snapped toward me. His eyes were pure panic.
Someone had told. And the only other person who could have known the truth… was standing right in front of him.