Jax clapped my shoulder hard enough to jolt me forward. “Then we win. Makes everything else background noise.”
It was simple in his mind. Win. Scoreboard over scandal. Part of me appreciated that.
The locker room door creaked open again.
Logan strolled in, phone half-hidden in his palm. Third string, but carrying himself as if the depth chart were temporary.
His dad used to move through King Enterprises offices with quiet authority. Now he didn’t.
Money hadn’t disappeared—but it had grown tense in his house. College wasn’t guaranteed anymore. Neither was anything else.
The smirk remained. It just didn’t sit as easily.
“Well,” he drawled, gaze flicking between us. “Heard the gala was eventful.”
My spine went rigid.
Theo muttered under his breath, barely audible. “Funny how news travels fast.”
Logan’s smirk held. “Word gets around.”
“Didn’t hear you were invited,” Chase replied evenly.
“I had better things to do.”
Jax scoffed. “Sure you did.”
Logan’s gaze fixed on me, assessing and waiting for a reaction.
He wouldn’t get one. “Practice,” I ordered. The word cut clean through the tension. Helmets went on. Gloves pulled tight. Skate guards snapped off and clattered into lockers. We filed toward the tunnel, rubber flooring thudding beneath heavy strides.
The cold hit the second we stepped onto the ice. I pushed off, letting the glide carry me the length of the rink before digging in deeper. The first few laps loosened what had built in my chest. By the third, my breathing evened out. By the fifth, my legs began to feel the work.
Logan circled wide, that faint smirk still hovering as he tracked me. A storm cloud in his expression.
I didn’t break eye contact when we passed. If Elise thought she’d rattle me before college coaches and scouts filled the stands next week, she was wrong. I was already committed to Michigan. The signing was a formality. They wanted me—badly.
She wasn’t taking that from me.
I leaned into the next drill, cutting hard left and snapping a shot high into the top corner past our backup goalie before he finished setting his angle. The puck hit the netting with a violent snap.
Jax whooped from center ice. “There he is.”
Theo’s voice carried across the rink. “Again.”
Good. I wanted the repetition. Advance. Adjust. Strike. Whatever battle brewed off the ice would not bleed into my game. And if Logan carried messages between him and Elise, if that smirk meant something already in motion—let it.
I drove harder into the next play, shoulder checking Logan clean into the boards when he hesitated half a second too long.
He glanced back at me, irritation flashing.
I skated past without acknowledgment. Pressure didn’t slow me down. It made me dangerous.
CHAPTER FOUR
MILA
Sunday arrived with coastal fog that rolled in low, blurring the edges of the boardwalk and muting the world into something gentler than reality. The café windows where I was headed to meet Avery glowed amber against the gray, condensation gathering at the corners of the glass.
