Cole’s POV

The crunch of boot rubber on frozen gravel sounded like bone snapping under a boot heel.

I didn’t pull my body away from Aria’s. If anything, my forearm slammed harder against the frozen brick wall beside her head, locking her behind the shelter of my shoulders like a human shield. The rough brick scraped straight through my glove leather, biting into my bruised knuckles, but I didn't feel it. All I felt was the electric, jagged pulse of pure adrenaline flooding my throat, tasting like copper and cold air.

A shadow detached itself from the side of the industrial dumpster twenty feet away.

Tanner Hale strolled into the sickly yellowish light of the solitary parking lot lamp. He had his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black-and-gold Northridge varsity jacket, his chin tilted up with the kind of cocky, sickening confidence that made every muscle in my upper back scream to tear his head off. His bright blue eyes glanced down at his phone screen, then back up at us, glinting with pure poison.

“You two look cozy,” Tanner sneered, his breath puffing into thick, arrogant white plumes. “Though I gotta admit, Brennan… I didn’t think figure skaters were your style. Especially not the desperate ones who can’t even hold their edges.”

“Shut your mouth, Hale,” I growled. My voice dropped into the low, dangerous register I used right before taking a fifteen-minute match penalty on the glass.

Aria didn’t stay hidden. She squirmed sideways, her hand coming up to press firmly against the center of my chest. Her small, calloused fingers dug into the heavy canvas of my coat, holding me back with a terrifying amount of strength for a girl who looked like a gust of wind could blow her across the ice.

“Don’t, Cole,” she whispered, her voice tight, sharp, and laced with pure steel. “He wants you to swing. He’s counting on it.”

She was right. If I laid a single finger on Tanner off the rink, Coach Harrow wouldn’t just bench me; he’d hand my file to the local sheriff. The scouts from Boston College and Northeastern would pack their notebooks, walk out the door, and never call back. My mother’s night shifts at the bakery would go on until her knees collapsed, and my little brother’s tuition fund would be flushed down the drain.

Tanner tapped the glass screen of his phone against his lower lip, enjoying every single second of the silence.

“Smart girl, Lang. Always had a big brain to go with that tight little bun,” Tanner scoffed, taking two slow steps closer. “But see, Cole here has a tiny little conflict of interest. He thinks he can play terrifying hockey enforcer for Harrow by night, and play sweet little pairs partner to the local ice princess at dawn.”

“What do you want, Tanner?” I spat, stepping out just far enough to keep Aria half-shielded while looking him dead in his lying eyes.

“I want what’s mine,” Tanner snapped, the smirk dropping from his face in an instant, replaced by the raw, ugly jealousy that had been rotting in his chest since sophomore year. “Scouts are coming to the regional showcase next month. They’re coming to see you. But if they get this video? If they see you pirouetting around the patch like a disgraced figure skater while playing secret sweethearts with the girl who’s stealing ice time from the boys’ program?” He let out a low, mocking whistle. “Your D-I athletic offers melt faster than fresh ice under a broken Zamboni.”

“You send that video,” Aria barked, stepping entirely out from behind my shoulder, her golden-hazel eyes burning like molten metal under the sodium lights, “and I will personally go to Mr. Patel and show him the security footage from the equipment shed. You think I don’t know who cut the fuel line on the ice smoother two weeks ago so practice would get canceled?”

Tanner’s pupils contracted for a fraction of a second before he recovered his cocky sneer. He took another step forward, stopping just outside my striking distance.

“Try it, Lang. Patel barely knows your name,” Tanner sneered. He shifted his cold gaze back to me. “Here are the rules, Brennan. You stay away from her off the ice. You drop your practice hours down to three days a week so the second line gets more drill time. And when the scouts sit in the section five stands next Friday, you let me take the center rush. You feed me the pucks. You make me look like the star, or this video goes straight to the scouts’ inboxes—and to your mother’s personal email.”

He turned on his heel, taking three slow, deliberate steps toward the corner of the brick building before turning back with a jagged grin.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Tanner added, pointing a gloved finger at us. “If I see you two within ten feet of each other outside of scheduled ice, the video drops instantly. Have a sweet night, lovers.”

He vanished around the corner. The sound of his heavy snow boots faded into the frozen silence of the night, leaving only the dull, heavy hum of the rink’s exterior condenser unit and the ragged sound of our breathing.

I stared at the empty space where he had been standing, my jaw grinding together so hard my molars ached.

“Cole,” Aria said quietly.

I didn’t answer. I reached down, grabbed the shoulder strap of my heavy hockey bag, and swung it over my shoulder with enough violent force to tear the canvas seam. I turned and started walking toward my truck without looking at her.

“Cole, stop!” She ran after me, her sneakers crunching hard on the icy gravel. She caught up to the driver’s side door just as I yanked it open. “We can’t give in to him!”

“You heard him, Aria,” I said, my voice empty, hollowed out by the cold stone in my stomach. “He’ll ruin everything. My mom… she can’t take another hit. If I lose that scholarship, we lose the house.”

“And if I don’t get a pairs partner for the Showcase, I spend the rest of my life working sixty-hour weeks at the dry cleaners while my mother dies by inches at the hospital!” she yelled, her voice breaking on the edge of a sob she immediately swallowed down. She grabbed the cold metal frame of my truck door, leaning directly into my space, refusing to let me retreat. “He said off the ice, Cole. He thinks he’s trapped us. But he doesn’t know how we operate.”

I looked down at her. The harsh moonlight caught the fine, loose strands of dark hair framing her face, the dark purple shadows of bone-deep exhaustion under her eyes, and the stubborn, unbreakable line of her jaw.

“He’s watching the building,” I reminded her softly.

“Then we give him a cover story,” Aria said, her eyes flashing with a sharp, dangerous light. “We make everyone in this high school think we hate each other even more than we already do. We fake fights in the lobby. We yell at each other in the hallways. We let Tanner think his stupid blackmail is working. But at five a.m., when the rink is locked and Tanner is fast asleep in his bed… we skate.”

I stared at her. “You’re completely insane.”

“I’m desperate,” she corrected, stepping so close her warm breath misted against the cold collar of my hoodie. “Are you?”

I looked down at the black bag sitting on my passenger seat—the white skates hidden inside it like an unburied ghost. Then I looked back at the girl who refused to let the world crush her.

“Five a.m.,” I growled, reaching out and grabbing her wrist—not to hurt her, but to feel the steady, racing thrum of her pulse under my thumb. “If we do this, you listen to every instruction I give you when we’re doing lifts. No arguments. No stubborn figure-sk skater pride. One wrong shift in an overhead press and I drop you, or you break your neck.”

Aria didn’t flinch. She pulled her wrist from my grip, but her eyes stayed locked on mine like iron pins.

“Deal, enforcer.”

She turned and walked away toward her battered sedan parked under the far tree line. I watched her until her red taillights disappeared onto the dark main road.

I climbed into the truck cab, slammed the door, and rested my forehead against the cold leather of the steering wheel.

My phone vibrated violently in my jacket pocket.

I pulled it out, expecting another threat from Tanner.

Instead, it was an automated system alert from the Northridge Rink Scheduling Portal:

ALERT: 5:00 AM Dawn Patch Maintenance Canceled due to main condenser pipe failure. Rink doors locked indefinitely starting tomorrow morning.

My chest went numb. My phone slipped out of my fingers, dropping into the dirty footwell as the full weight of the trap snapped shut around us.