Thefluorescentlightsinthe study hall hum like they’re chewing on nerves, not electricity.
I drop my backpack onto one of the long wooden tables—the kind that’s seen a decade of carved initials and abandoned coffee rings—and pretend the textbook I pull out is something I can read. My eyes blur after two sentences. My pulse hasn’t slowed since brunch.
I keep replaying everything. Declan showing up. Sitting beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. My dad’s voice. The slammed-shut truth about the funding.
Unless I discourage your involvement…
I haven’t breathed right since.
The door creaks open.
My stomach drops.
Of course it’s him.
Declan strides in like he owns the oxygen in this room. Hoodie up, bag slung over one shoulder, hair still slightly damp from a shower. He doesn’t look around. Not once. He doesn’t search for me or hesitate or pretend he’s here for any other reason.
He walks the entire length of the room and sits down directly across from me.
My pulse stumbles. “You can’t sit here.”
He leans forward, forearms braced on the table. “Too late.”
I want to shove all my books onto the floor just to have something to do with my hands.
Instead, I glare. “Declan. I said—”
The scrape of chairs interrupts me.
Clara and Adrian slide into the seats beside us like they’ve been watching the whole thing from the hallway and decided this was a situation requiring immediate intervention.
“Hey,” Clara says, eyebrows raised in a way that is both innocent and absolutely not. “Fancy seeing you two here.”
Adrian—six-foot-too-broad, golden boy grin dimmed by something sharper—gives Declan a look. A captain-to-captain, soldier-to-soldier kind of look.
Declan answers it without moving a muscle.
“What happened?” Adrian asks quietly. Not to me. To him.
Declan doesn’t sugarcoat it. He explains the brunch. The ultimatum. Alistair’s threat to pull the program’s grant if I’m not cut loose.
Clara’s jaw drops. “He can’t do that.”
“He can,” Adrian says, voice flat. “He funds the travel budget. The facility upgrades. The new training center. If he pulls the plug, we’re back to riding buses and fighting for ice time like a state school.”
My stomach twists. These guys are D1 royalty. They come from money, but the program runs on extra money. Alistair isn’t threatening their tuition; he’s threatening their advantage. He’s threatening the prestige they all bleed for.
“Exactly what my father tried with us,” Adrian says, cutting smoothly in. His voice is quiet but it hits like a blade sliding home. “Money as a leash. Reputation as a choke chain.”
My head snaps toward him.
Clara nods, eyes suddenly bright with something fierce. “He tried to break us apart. Adrian’s dad. Said I was a distraction. Said Adrian needed focus.” She scoffs softly. “What he meant was obedience.”
Adrian turns to Declan. “And what did you do?”
“Didn’t bend,” Declan says. The words are low, vibrating through the table.
“Good,” Adrian says. “We don’t need the jet. We don’t need the new weight room. We can win on bad ice if we have to.”
