Chapter 7
For a full week, the common room is a Raiden-free zone.
And, predictably, all the problems stop.
The newly welded compressor works perfectly. No more tools go missing. No one trips over mysteriously placed extension cords. We install the liner for the ice rink without a single tear, and the frame holds steady.
A week of solid, uninterrupted progress.
The conclusion is obvious. Raiden was the saboteur. He showed up to torment me, damaged our equipment to make me look incompetent, and then, after our… encounter in the locker room, he got bored of the game and disappeared.
My theory solidifies into a hard, cold fact in my mind. He got what he wanted—a reaction, my humiliation—and now he’s done.
This knowledge should bring relief. Instead, it leaves a sour feeling in my gut.
Because of this theory, and because the thought of seeing him makes my skin crawl with a mixture of terror and traitorous heat, I don’t go to the Ashford Beasts’ big Friday night game.
To be honest, I used to go to all of them. After hearing the story—how a guy tried to take him out and Blackwell came back the next game and made him pay—I became fascinated. There’s an art to the violence on the ice, a brutal grace I can’t look away from. Specifically, I usually can’t look away from him.
But I can’t go now. I can’t sit in those stands and watch him after what happened between us. Not when I can still feel the ghost of his mouth on my skin, the shocking pressure of him against me.
Making things worse, I lied to my friends. During a planning session on Wednesday, the topic of Blackwell came up.
“Thank god he stopped showing up,” Karolina had said, taping tinsel to a doorway. “He was making everyone tense. Did you say something to him, Artie?”
I had felt four pairs of eyes on me, and a stupid, defensive pride rose in my chest. “Yeah,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I felt. “I confronted him. I told him to back off and that his help wasn’t needed. I guess he actually listened for once.” My friends exchanged impressed looks, but I saw Stella and Cameron share a brief, strange glance that made my stomach tighten. “I have no intention of ever contacting him again,” I added, for emphasis. The lie tasted like poison in my mouth.
Now, on Saturday evening, the lie feels a million miles away.
The common room is transformed. Strings of fairy lights cast a warm, golden glow over everything. T
he scent of pine from the garlands we hung mixes with the smell of fresh paint and old wood. We’re putting up the last of the decorations. It almost looks magical.
“The main problem is going to be the heaters,” a voice says beside me. I look over to see Matt, a lanky engineering student who volunteered a few days ago, frowning at my layout sketch. “If we put the space heaters too close to the rink entrance, they’ll fight the compressor and create soft spots in the ice.”
“Right,” I say, tapping the sketch with my pencil. “So maybe we aim them away, toward the seating areas? Create warm zones?”
“Or,” Matt says, leaning a little closer, “you just run a slightly higher glycol concentration through the coolant lines. Compensates for the ambient temperature fluctuations.” He winks. “Little trade secret.”
I stare at him. That’s a fairly specific piece of information. “Thanks, I’ll… look into that.”
“Yeah, no kidding, thank God that hockey anime villain cleared out,” Chase, another volunteer, chimes in from where he’s untangling a string of lights. “As soon as Blackwell and his goons stopped showing up, all our problems vanished. Funny how that works.”
I flinch.
Even though I’ve been thinking the exact same thing for a week, hearing someone else say it makes me deeply uncomfortable. It feels too simple, too easy.
“Yeah,” I mutter, turning back to my sketch. “Funny.”
~ ~ ~
By nine o’clock, everyone else has cleared out. I do a final walkthrough, my boots echoing in the quiet hall. The lights are twinkling, the half-finished rink outside gleams under the floodlights, and for the first time, I feel a genuine spark ofhope. This might actually work. This might actually be a good Christmas.
I lock the heavy wooden door and hurry across the small, frosty courtyard to the main Ashford building next door, where the night guard, a kind older man named Frank, has his office.
The key is supposed to be returned to him every night.
“All done for the evening, Artie?” he asks, taking the key and hanging it on a hook.
