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CHAPTER ONE

JAXSON

That buzzer slices through eighteen thousand screaming fans, abrupt and final, ending the siege. I don’t launch myself into the dogpile at center ice, not right away. I just lean back, helmet tapping the crossbar, chest pounding so hard it rattles in my sweat-soaked gear. The air in here tastes cold and sharp, like ozone, like victory, but it barely cuts the heat burning under my skin.

Forty-two saves. Another shutout. The cameras? They get the same old statue: focused granite, unmoving, the infamous “Ice Wall” keeping the Seattle Knights perched at the very top. That’s what they see. Inside, I’m trying to suck in air, lungs crushed flat by the weight of the game, praying my legs will hold when I finally stand up straight.

“Ice Wall! You beautiful, frozen bastard!” Mick McLinden, our captain, barrels into me, his glove slamming so hard against my shoulder pads my teeth rattle. He’s grinning already, wild and red-faced, the kind of smile that says he’s picturing the liquid gold of a post-game beer and the easy warmth of a win.

I tip up my goalie mask, and cold air sweeps over my drenched face like a bright knife to the nerves. I give Mick a sharp nod. My knees complain, dull ache pulsing with every heartbeat, but finally, I shove up out of the crease, skates biting deep into the scar-cut ice for the last time tonight.

You’d think shutting them out, again, might mean something. Maybe even make the bruises, the sweat, worth it. Instead, all it does is hollow me out. I’m counting the seconds until I can strip this gear, slip away from the noise, and vanish into my penthouse’s cold quiet. A couple of months into it, and it feels like this season’s been a steel trap with my bones caught inside. Every game blurs forward, white-hot spotlights, fans howling, that edge of need crawling along my heart, every win leaving me hungrier.

The handshake line waits, and I move toward it without really feeling a thing. I’m a machine running hot and dead inside. Gloved hands thump my shoulders, somebody slaps my helmet, and “hell yeah, Ice Wall!” echoes behind me, but it’s all just noise blurring into the background. Mick’s still eating it up, fist-pumping, grinning like a maniac, basking in the cheers. I watch him for a heartbeat, then drop my eyes to the ice and the fresh white track my skate just split down its face. I’m hollowed out, already over it, itching to get the fuck off the rink.

The tunnel is chaos, a wall of fans slamming up against the glass, hands reaching, voices going wild. Emerald and white everywhere I look. I keep my focus set on the dark open mouth of the locker room. People say I keep my distance to stoke the legend, make myself seem like more than human, but the truth is so much simpler. If I look up, look too long at a face, the act might shatter. The mask slips; I can’t let that happen.

Inside the locker room, it’s a shouting match, gear hitting benches, sweat-soaked everything, and the sharp snap of wintergreen riding on top of the stale funk of adrenaline and old effort. Teammates everywhere you look, a whole army of them, yelling, pounding each other on the back. But pulling off my jersey, I just get that yawning pit in my gut. A hunger and a heaviness that has nothing to do with being lonely. It’s the kind of ache that hits when you realize you’re the only guy out there with nobody waiting in the stands. No messages coming. Only the silence waiting.

Pull up your big boy panties and get your shit done so you can get your ass home, I tell myself.

I sit on the wooden bench, the steam from the showers beginning to cloud the air. My hands are still vibrating from the sting of a third-period slap shot that nearly took my thumb off. I stare at the calluses on my palms, tracing the map of a career built on staying very still while the world moves past.

“Hey, man,” Mick says, dropping onto the bench beside me, smelling of sweat and expensive cologne. “We’re hitting The Blue Line after this. You’re coming. No excuses tonight, Jax. It was a shutout. You earned a drink that isn't green healthy junk juice.”

“I have shit to do in the morning,” I spit out, and the lie comes out so easily. They always do. I’m not sticking around for the noise, the drunk pricks with their fists full of shots, or the rink bunnies, stick-thin girls prowling for a chance at a pro. I want none of it. I want the big, echoing silence of my penthouse, the kind that wraps around me and lets me breathe.

Mick rolls his eyes, pulling his damp socks off. “The only shit you have to do is attach your ass to your couch cushions. One of these days, Thorne, you’re going to turn into an actual glacier, and we’ll have to chip you out of your apartment. Live a little.”

“I am living,” I reply, standing up to head for the showers. “The way I want to.” That’s a fucking lie, and we both know it.

The water is scalding, damn near boiling the skin off my bones, but it doesn’t come close to reaching the cold that’s been locked in my marrow through these last three seasons. Every day, I wake up knowing there’s something missing. And I can’t fucking figure out what it is.

I scrub with more force than necessary, chasing away the grit and stink of the game, watching ugly white suds circle the drain and disappear, taking the tension in my shoulders with them. When I finally switch off the spray and step out, the place is already clearing. The boys are halfway down the hall, laughter trailing after them.

My locker looks like something out of one of those sports magazines. The expensive watch. The suit waiting for me. Standing there, I can see right through it all. Professional shine. Personal void. I shove myself into the charcoal suit, the fabric stiff and crisp, a different kind of armor wrapped tight around me after the soft, padded kind. It doesn’t help, not really.

My phone vibrates on the bench, loud and persistent in the hush that settles once the last echo of the guys’ laughter dies. Cleaves right through the silence, like a reminder that the night isn’t done with me yet.

I pick it up, expecting a congratulatory message from the owner or a stat sheet from the goalie coach. Instead, it’s a text from my agent, Mark, who manages my life with the clinical precision of a surgeon.

Mark

Check your email. Charity gala next Friday. Seattle General. Mandatory attendance, Jax. No early exits. The Knights are the lead sponsors this year.

I stare at the screen until the light dims. A gala. Three hours of smiling for cameras, shaking hands that feel like sandpaper, and making small talk with people who know absolutely nothing about the real me. Fucking hell.

The drive home is a blur of city lights and rain-slicked asphalt. Seattle is beautiful in the dark, a collection of glass towers that reflect nothing but their own ambition. I pull into the underground garage of my building, the engine of my car echoing against the concrete. The security guard gives me a nod, his eyes lingering on my face as if looking for the man from the television, but I don't give him anything to find.

My penthouse waits for me exactly as I left it. Perfect. Silent. Cold. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Sound, a black expanse of water mirroring the emptiness inside these rooms. I toss my keys on the marble counter. The clatter echoes like a gunshot through the vacuum of the apartment. I don’t turn on the lights. The city provides enough of a glow to navigate by.

I walk toward the kitchen, my bare feet sinking into the plush rugs, muffling my steps. When I open the fridge, light glows out and spills over shelves that look like they’ve been arranged for a photoshoot: lines of supplements, stacks of meal-prep containers, and then, tucked to one side, a single bottle of high-end scotch that I haven’t touched in six months. I pull free a bottle of water, the plastic making a satisfying crackle in my grip.

Fuel. That’s all food is now. I eat for fuel, I sleep so my body can recover, and every move I make is about playing hard and winning. Discipline wraps around me like armor; nothing else gets through. But even with this strict routine, inside this quiet apartment, the silence presses in. It fills all the space around me, real and heavy.

I perch on the edge of my bed, silk sheets slick and cool beneath my hands, like the ice in the crease, like the chill that used to run down my spine before the first drop of the puck. My brain is still in the rink, caught in the replay, every save on a loop, every inch and angle scrutinized as if the next shot is coming any second. If my paddle had dipped even a hair, that puck would’ve rocketed behind me, erasing the perfect game. If I’d leaned left instead of holding center on that breakaway, I’d be chasing the memory of a shutout already lost. I get stuck obsessing over every little flaw, every split second where it could’ve shattered, because if I let myself stop, if I let the silence come in, I have to sit with the fact that I don’t have a family to come home to.

My phone buzzes again.