"Your father is a powerful man, Gio," he says, and the mention of him makes my whole body tense. "He's built an empire on the idea that image is everything. That you can erase a mistake if you have enough money and enough influence." He knows. Of course, he knows. "He taught you that your worth is tied to what you can do for the name. What you can cover up. What you can sacrifice."
Coach leans on his stick, his eyes locking onto mine. "He's wrong."
I just stare at him, my throat tight. No one has ever said that to me. Not like this.
"I don't give a damn about your father's empire," he continues, his voice dropping, becoming more intense. "And I don't give a damn about the Briarcliff Whisper. I care about the kid whostood in my office three years ago and told me he wanted to win a national championship. I care about the player I see when he's not looking over his shoulder."
He gestures around the empty rink. "This is your legacy, Gio. This. The work. The game. The brothers you bleed with on this ice." He pauses, letting the words sink in. "You can't let him turn this into a cage for you."
I swallow hard, the lump in my throat feeling like a block of ice. "What do I do?"
"You stop hiding," he says simply. "You look the noise in the eye and you tell it to fuck off. You play your game. Not his. Not theirs. Yours."
He pushes off, skating backward toward the exit. "Fix it, Gio. But don't fix it for him. Fix it for you."
He disappears into the tunnel, leaving me alone on the ice. The silence is still there, but it's different now. It's a blank page. And for the first time in a long time, I think I might be ready to write my own story.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 26
Zoë
The studio smells of hot irons, steamed wool, and the faint, metallic tang of dye. It's the only scent that cuts through the noise in my head. Here, the world outside doesn't exist. There is only the fabric and the line.
I'm working on my final piece for the showcase. A floor-length gown in emerald silk charmeuse, the kind of fabric that punishes every mistake and rewards every perfect seam. It's draped over the half-form, pinned and tacked into a liquid sculpture. I have a line of pins held between my lips, their cool metal points a familiar pressure against my tongue.
Crouched down, my eye level with the hem, I make a microscopic adjustment to the drape over the hip. My world has shrunk to this five-foot-seven-inch silhouette. The way the light catches the pile of the silk. A precise angle of a French seam.The satisfying snip of my shears. This is my language. This is my power. In this room, I am the architect of this perfect, silent thing.
My phone buzzes on the worktable behind me. I don't look. I don't have to. It's Gio. Or it's someone asking about Gio. It doesn't matter.
Swallowing hard, the pins shift in my mouth as I smooth a wrinkle that isn't there with my thumb. The silk is cool and alive under my touch. This is peace. The sharp, focused peace of a problem being solved. A line being perfected. A world being built on my own terms. The contrast is a physical thing. Out there, everything is chaos and reaction. In here, I am the cause. I am the first and last word.
I pin the final fold, the silk yielding exactly as I knew it would. Perfect.
I stand up, my knees cracking in the quiet, and reach for the small pot of indigo dye sitting on the edge of the worktable. I need to test the saturation on the hem scrap before I commit to the final dip.
A shadow falls across the table. Too fast. Too close. I don't have time to turn.
A sharp hip-check slams into my side, hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs. My elbow clips the pot. It doesn't tip; it flies off the edge, hitting the concrete floor with a sickening ceramic crack. The indigo sludge explodes outward. It splashes up the legs of my jeans, coats the cuffs of my white shirt, and—most devastatingly—arcs across the hem of the emerald gown.
The silence in the room shatters. I stare at the stain. It's blooming rapidly, a dark, ugly starburst ruining the perfect gradient I spent six hours stitching. The ruin is total. That silk is gone.
"Oops." The voice is high, thin, and dripping with false sympathy.
I turn slowly. Jessica is standing there, clutching a bolt of cheap polyester to her chest like a shield. She's looking at the mess, not me, but her mouth is curled into a smirk that she isn't bothering to hide.
Shock washes over me, cold and sharp, followed instantly by a spike of hot, blinding rage. My hands fist at my sides. I want to wrap them around her throat. I want to scream. Instead, I force my lungs to expand. I assess the damage.
"Watch where you're going," I say, my voice flat. Deadly.
Jessica looks up, blinking her eyes wide. The act is transparent. "Me? You're the one who left your hazardous materials on the edge of the table. Clumsy." She takes a step closer, invading my space. She's thrilled. She's been gunning for the showcase spot since freshman year, and she just realized she can't beat me on skill. So she's going for the throat.
"It's a shame, though," she says, nudging a shard of broken ceramic with the toe of her boot. "That fabric looked expensive. But hey, it doesn't matter, right?"
I freeze. The air in the room drops ten degrees. "What?"
She leans in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carries across the silent studio. Everyone is watching now. The other students have frozen, scissors hovering over fabric. "You can just get your boyfriend to buy you a new one," she says, the words sharp and jagged. "That's how you got the spot in the showcase, isn't it? It's certainly how you get all your free press."
