“There’s nothing to walk away from because it wasn’t real.”
“Mija…sometimes pretending for too long starts to feel like what you wanted most.”
My throat feels like someone has a hand around it. She is too close to the truth I can barely look at.
“I really have to get back to work.”
Her voice softens again. “Call if you need me.”
I won’t.“I will.”
All the emotion I’ve kept bottled inside for months climbs, slow and merciless, until holding myself together feels like trying to grip water. One more breath and everything inside me splits. A broken sound tears out of me. I slap a hand over my mouth, but it is useless. My body folds forward, curling around the pain like I am bracing for a hit I can’t dodge. Tears splatter on the desk in sharp, humiliating drops.
“Not here,” I choke out, my shoulders shaking. “Please… not here.”
But there’s no stopping it. Not after everything I have refused to feel. The sobs come in waves. The memory of losing everything once and the terror of doing it again. I hate how quickly I fall apart. I hate that Kyle is the reason, even though he’s the only person who never meant to hurt me.
“Get it together,” I whisper, my voice cracking under its own weight. “Alycia, please. Get it together.”
But I can’t with the ache tearing through every place I tried to protect.
I reach for my computer like a lifeline I don’t deserve. The screen lights up, and his name flashes back at me, punching straight through whatever fragile hope I’ve been trying to kill. His last words echo through my mind, and something in me splinters all over again.
I could run down to the locker room and tell him the truth that’s been clawing at my ribcage since the gala. I could need him, but wanting him feels like stepping back into a fire I barely escaped the last time. Not because he reminds me of the man who stole my work and shattered my future, but because risking my heart again carries the same stakes.
If I choose wrong, it won’t just hurt. It will ruin me. A breath stutters out of me, sharp and furious and defeated all at once. Tears fall again, unstoppable, splashing onto the one life I built by never letting anyone close enough to knock it down.
“You wanted control,” I whisper, voice wrecked beyond recognition. “He is what it costs.”
Chapter Thirty
Kyle
The worst part is how normal everything looks. Ramona stands near the boards with a few of the players’ families, helping a little kid adjust a pair of oversized gloves while she laughs quietly with the parents beside her. Kids spill onto the ice like a swarm of excited bees, parents hover near the barrier with phones raised, and jerseys flash in every direction under the bright overhead lights. The entire rink hums with the joy these charity skates are supposed to bring, but I’m standing at center ice, feeling like my bones are hollow.
Cole taps my helmet as he skates past. “You alive over there?”
I don’t answer because I’m not sure there is anything left in me to answer with. The longer I stand under these lights, the more the world feels two-dimensional. I’m stuck somewhere underneath it, numb and half present, like a cardboard cutout propped up where a real person should be.
Cooper’s whistle cuts through the noise, a sharp sound that usually snaps me back into my body. Today, it just rattles around inside my chest, echoing in a space that feels too wide and too empty. I push forward on autopilot, drifting into line. The ice shifts under my skates, but even that grounding sensation feels dulled, like there is a thick layer between me and everything else.
Beau glides up beside me, lowering his voice. “You sleep at all?”
His question lands right in the center of the ache I’ve been pretending is just exhaustion and anything other than what it actually is. “Yep.”
It’s a lie, and a bad one. Beau’s eyes soften in that quiet, older brother way that makes me want to skate straight through the boards. “You don’t have to talk, but don’t disappear on us.”
I nod, but inside, that’s exactly what I want to do. To fade out of frame and dissolve into the cold air, leaving all of this behind. But PR had other plans. All hands on deck for the annual community skate to celebrate the holiday season. Time to remind Portland that we’re part of the community and all that nonsense. I wanted to stay home. Even Cooper tried to convince them it was a bad idea, but they insisted. The public wants to see the happy couple, and what the public wants, the public gets. The rest of our feelings don’t matter.
A part of me is hoping she won’t come. Janine saidshe wasn’t sure. The board said she should. The media schedule said she must. A bruised, stupid part of me still hopes she’ll stay away long enough for me to get through the next two hours without seeing her face and feeling everything I’ve been trying to bury clawing to the surface.
I’m still clinging to that last shred of hope when the media team breaks through the crowd, and I see her. Across the rink, Michele pauses mid-conversation with a young boy, her eyes flicking from Alycia to me with quiet concern before she gently nudges the kid toward the ice.
My chest locks so hard it feels like I took a puck square to the sternum. She looks like she always does at events: crisp lines, perfect posture, neutral tones that make her look polished and untouchable. A professional shield I used to admire because of how strong it made her seem. Now it just feels like a wall I’m on the wrong side of. The hope I was holding drops out of me instantly.
“Damn,” Beau follows my gaze, jaw tightening. “I thought maybe…”
“Me, too.”
