I was up before I had decided to be. The house was still as holding your breath. On the landing I pause and listen, not for danger, but for love, which makes its own noise when it’s awake before the rest of the world. Dad moves in the kitchen, the scrape of a chair, the clink of a mug. He would look up when I came down and he would know too much and not enough, and between those two, we’d thread a day.
I tuck the jersey under my coat. When I reach the bottom step, he is there, wrists braced on the table edge, eyes darker for sleep not slept. He clocks my shoes, my keys, my face.
“Rink?” He asks.
“Yes.” I said.
His throat works in a hard swallow before he nods. “Front.” He said.
“Front.” I promise.
He didn’t stop me. He didn’t follow. As I step out into the cold that is sharper than last night’s, something in my chest loosens and tightens at once. The knot that keeps a girl home, the rope that keeps her from floating away.
On the walk to the car, I want to be a thousand things—better, older, braver, simpler. I settled onalive.The sky was the pale color of truth. My breath breaks in front of me and vanishes. I unlock the door and slide in and let the heater struggle. I put the car in gear and drive toward the place where the next line would be drawn.
At a red light, I touch my mouth with my fingers and think,I’m not afraid of the fire. I’m afraid of who I’ll be when it’s done burning.
The light turns and I go.
The rink is half-asleep when I pull in. Its windows glowing soft yellow against the early gray. No crowd, no noise, just the hollow echo of pipes and the hum of lights. I cut the engine and sit a long second with my fingers still on the keys. My father’s warning lingers in my chest, as steady as my pulse. But over it, stronger, louder, was the memory of Triston’s mouth on mine.The fire hasn’t cooled. It has deepened, spreading like heat through the bones of a house.
I step out, breath rising white in the still air. The lot is mostly empty except for a few staff cars. My shoes scuff frost as I cross to the front. Inside, the chill of the rink hits sharper than the cold outside.
He is there, already. Waiting in the corner near the boards where the glass met steel. Still in his coat, hands braced on the railing, eyes on me the second I walk in.
The silence between us isn’t empty. It is crowded with everything we haven't said, everything we touch without words.
“You came.” He said, low, like it was both a surprise and inevitability.
“You asked.” I answered.
I don’t move closer at first. My feet want to. My chest wants to. But my mind still clings to the word I promised myself,daylight.
He pushes off the rail and walks toward me. Each step felt like gravity sharpening. When he stops a breath away, my body already leans without permission.
“Last night.” He said, voice rough. “Wasn’t enough.”
My mouth goes dry. “It can’t be like that—”
“It won’t be.” His hand brushes my wrist, just the edge of his knuckle, and I nearly shiver out of my skin. “But I’m not letting go of you.”
I want to tell him I should be strong. I want to say I’d walk away. But instead the words slip out. “I don’t want you to.”
His eyes burn. And then his mouth was on mine again. Not hidden, not rushed. Slow. Deep. A kiss like a confession, like a claim. The rink is silent but our breathing, and it feels like the whole world has narrowed to the taste of him, the steady grip of his hand at my hip, the way my heart trips and catches like it is relearning its rhythm.
When he finally breaks away, his forehead presses to mine, my breath comes ragged. “Sammie.” He whispers, like my name is something he’s been fasting from. “You’re mine.”
And the worst, or the best, was that I didn’t flinch. I didn’t argue. I whispered back. “I know.”
The sun was edging higher when I finally pulled away, flushed and trembling, the imprint of his mouth still written on me. Outside, morning sharpened everything, the cold, the colors, the danger. My father’s suspicion would only grow. The world would not stay blind.
But all I could think, as I drive home, is that I have crossed into something I can’t undo.
I wasn’t just caught in Triston’s obsession anymore.
I was part of it.
And whatever comes next; Christmas, confession, war between the two men who define my world, it is already too late to turn back.
