“Watch your tongue,” I told her.
She lifted both hands, innocence painted in French tips and diamonds no high schooler should be wearing. “I’m just sympathizing. Everyone thought the Kings were untouchable. Turns out, you’re…not.”
Not subtle.
I closed the distance, crowding her back against the wall. My voice stayed low, steady. “You better be careful. You’re making the wrong moves. Enough of them, and all your secrets will be laid bare.”
Her smile twitched but didn’t slip.
“If you touch Avery again,” I added, flat as ice, “I’ll end you. This isn’t about me and you,” I added. “It’s about the people you’re using as pawns—Avery, Mila, anyone you think you can break.”
The smile didn’t move, but something in her eyes did—a flare, quick and mean. She leaned in a fraction, enough for me to smell the cloying sweetness of her perfume over the cold.
“Everyone thinks threats solve things,” she breathed. “But the thing about ice, Luke? It just needs a flaw to crack.”
She turned on her heel and floated toward the exit, leaving me with the arena windows and my reflection fractured across them—too many versions of me staring back.
Outside, the night had dropped hard, the kind of dark that made headlights look vicious. I walked until the glare of the rink lights fell behind me and the parking lot opened up to sky. My hands wouldn’t stop flexing.
Mila’s face flashed behind my eyes—the way she looked under the tree when truth hurt, the way her shoulders loosened when she decided to trust me anyway. Her mother smashing a thumb drive with a hammer. Darren’s name in a report that felt more akin to a ledger of sins. Dad’s voice in old memories, low and precise, making violence sound as though it was an order.
If loving her meant exposing what my family buried, what did that make me—a traitor? Or a son who refused to inherit without question?
And if protecting my family meant burying what she’d risked to tell me, what did that make me to her?
I didn’t have answers. Only a promise I’d made under the open sky with salt in the air and her fingers tight in mine.
Partners. No lies. No power plays. We don’t disappear on each other when it gets ugly.
It was ugly now.
I pulled my phone and hovered over my father’s name. The call would go through. He would pick up. He always did when it mattered to the family. He’d tell me the measured version. He’d wrap truth in words that sounded clean.
I set the phone on the hood instead and pressed both palms to the metal until the sting made sense of my body again.
I could hear Coach’s voice in my head from years ago, back when the game was simpler:When the ice gets bad, skate lighter. Keep your weight over your edges. Trust your feet.
Trust your feet. Trust the partner who’d met me under a tree and carried a truth to me even when it might destroy us.
I picked up my phone and opened a new message—not to Dad. Not to Drew.
To Mila:I’m with you. We’ll handle this. Both of us.
I needed to reiterate to her that we were a team. That I had her back no matter what. Her reply came a minute later.
Mila:Okay.
I breathed for what felt like the first time since she’d started talking. The breath didn’t fix anything. It didn’t need to. It reminded me I could still do it.
Darkness stretched in front of me. Elise would keep moving her pieces. Dunn would call someone. Dad would expect answers.
I slid into my car and hitStart. The engine growled, steady and alive.
If loving Mila meant pulling truth into the open, then that was where we were going. If protecting my family meant learning where the rot began, then I would find it. Either way, I was done coasting blind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MILA
