Something cold flickers across his face—disappointment, maybe. “Then you’re even more foolish than I thought.”
I take a step back, pulse hammering. “You don’t get to talk about him. You don’t get to talk about me like I’m your PR strategy.”
He sighs, smooth again. “You’re emotional. You always have been. It’s a weakness.”
“It’s human,” I bite out.
He doesn’t respond. Just reaches for his napkin and folds it neatly beside his untouched plate. “I’ll give you until the weekend. Break it off. Make things right with Thorn. The press will eat it up—childhood friends, rekindled bond, blah blah. My communications team already has the narrative ready.”
I stare at him, disbelief curdling into disgust. “You already planned this.”
“Of course I did,” he says lightly. “I plan for everything.”
The room feels smaller, air thinner. I can barely hear my own voice when I say, “If you do anything to Magnus?—”
He cuts me off again. “Don’t threaten me, Alaric. You’re not in a position to win.”
My hands curl into fists. “You think love is a scandal. That says everything.”
He rises, slow and deliberate. “Love is a liability when you’re a Hale.”
I can’t breathe. The man standing in front of me isn’t my father. He’s a machine built out of ambition and ice.
“Lunch is over,” he says.
I leave without another word.
15
Alaric
The days blur together. Practice, press, silence. Repeat.
I wake, I skate, I pretend.
It’s easier to act like Magnus Hale never existed than to deal with the hollow space where he used to fit.
The rink feels colder now. Depressing instead of that usual thrill. My blades cut through the ice, but there’s no rhythm to it anymore, just motion. The others are laughing, chirping each other, tossing pucks across the blue line. I’m a ghost among them, all muscle memory and empty breath.
Coach Hendricks blows the whistle. “Come on, Hale, get your head in the game!”
I nod automatically. “Yes, Coach.”
But I can’t get my head anywhere. It’s still trapped in that apartment, replaying Magnus’s voice, the flash of hurt when I told him I didn’t choose him.
That I’d never choose him.
God, the look in his eyes.
I slam the puck into the boards too hard. It ricochets past Devon, who mutters something under his breath but doesn’t push. They all know something’s off. No one knows what.
When practice ends, I peel off my gloves and helmet slowly, feeling like I’m underwater. The locker room buzzes around me, steam rising from showers, the wet slap of towels, the metallic clatter of sticks and skates.
Kyle’s voice cuts through it all. “You okay, man?”
He says it casually, like he hasn’t been the center of a hundred fake articles with my name next to his. Like my father didn’t orchestrate the whole thing.
I force a small smile. “Fine.”
