Chapter 5 .,.

POV: Mia Hayes

I did not even blink.

"It belongs to a girl I am seeing," I said.

Rhys looked at me for a long moment. The locker room was almost empty now. Just the two of us, the low hum of the overhead lights, and the pink hair tie sitting in his open palm between us.

"A girl," he said.

"Yeah."

"You are seeing a girl."

"Is that a problem?"

He looked down at the hair tie again. Then back at me. His expression was completely unreadable, which was somehow worse than if he had looked angry or suspicious. He just looked like a strategist doing very careful math.

"No," he said slowly. "It is not a problem."

He held it out to me.

I reached for it, but his hand moved before I could stop him. His fingers closed gently around my wrist.

He looked down; I did the same.

My wrist in his hand. His thumb resting against the inside of it where my pulse was currently doing something embarrassing and frantic. His hand was big and mine looked small inside it. Too small. I had strong hands from years of stick work, but they were not Ethan's hands, and we both knew it. The silence in the room was so thick I could hear my own heartbeat thudding in my ears.

His eyes came up slowly and met mine.

Neither of us spoke.

I pulled my wrist back carefully, and he let me go. I closed my fingers tightly around the hair tie, shoved it deep into my pocket, turned to my locker, stared at the back wall of it, and breathed.

"See you at warm-ups," I said.

He said nothing.

I walked out first, did not look back, and told myself the electric feeling crawling up my spine was just nerves about the season opener.

I was a very good liar. I was getting worse at lying to myself.

The arena was packed. Every seat was filled, and the noise was a living thing that bounced off the concrete rafters and pressed against your chest. I could see the scouts in the third row from the ice. Six of them. Clipboards, quiet eyes, and nothing on their faces that gave away their thoughts. The kind of men who had watched hundreds of players and would decide your future in ninety minutes without blinking.

I strapped my helmet down tight over my brow, stepped onto the ice, and let the wall of sound wash over me. Across the rink, the Eagles were warming up.

Jack caught my eye and raised his stick once. A greeting. Normal. The way he always acknowledged Ethan before a game. But his eyes stayed on me one beat too long, and I looked away first.

Rhys pulled up beside me during warm-up circles, his shoulder nearly brushing mine.

"Play clean," he murmured.

"I always play clean."

"You play like you have something to prove," he said, his voice low. "Tonight, do not prove anything. Just play."

I looked at him sideways. His jaw was set, his eyes fixed forward, and he sounded like he was saying something that was much harder to say out loud than it appeared.

I didn't know what to do with Rhys Callahan when he was almost being kind.

"You too," I said quietly.

He pushed off hard against the ice and was gone.

The first two periods were brutal. Jack was everywhere—fast, physical, and carrying the Eagles on his back the way captains do when they want a win desperately. He scored once in the first period, and the Eagles bench erupted. Rhys answered four minutes into the second with a shot so clean the arena went dead silent for a fraction of a second before the Falcons side exploded.

They kept finding each other on the ice. Not just competing, hunting each other. Every collision between them was harder than it needed to be, and the referees were watching both of them like hawks.

I stayed in the middle of the chaos, did my job, and tried desperately not to think about the national scouts, the pink hair tie, or the pressure of Rhys's thumb against my pulse.

Third period. Three minutes left on the clock. Score tied.

The puck came loose in the neutral zone, and I picked it up on pure, unadulterated instinct. I was already moving before I even thought about it. My legs found their gear, the ice opened up wide in front of me, and I flew.

One defender. I faked right, cut inside, and left him grabbing at cold air. The goalie dropped into his crouch to cut the angle. I saw the top left corner—a tight, impossible window.

I took it.

The puck screamed across the ice, buried itself in the back of the net, and the arena detonated.

I didn't plan what happened next. I wasn't thinking. Three months of crushing pressure, relentless fear, and forced pretending exploded out of my chest all at once. I threw my arms up, screamed, and spun around on my skates, but the momentum was too violent.

My helmet clipped the boards.

The strap gave way. It flew off.

My dark hair tumbled down around my face. Not long by normal standards, but long enough. Long enough to not be Ethan. Long enough to be exactly, undeniably who I was.

The roaring arena noise died instantly.

Not slowly—instantly. Like someone had cut the power to every voice in the building at the exact same millisecond. I stood frozen on the ice, anchored to the spot.

Coach Donovan was on his feet behind the bench, his face completely white, staring at me like I had just materialized out of thin air.

Rhys was ten feet away, completely motionless. His eyes were wide and fixed on my face with an expression I had never seen on him before. Not anger. Something heavier. Something that looked like every test, every glitch, and every moment of quiet observation finally clicking into place all at once.

I looked toward the blue line.

Jack was staring straight at me. His chest heaving, his stick hanging limply at his side. And on his face was an expression that quietly broke a piece of my heart.

He looked betrayed. Not merely surprised, but betrayed to his core. Like some part of him had suspected all along, had chosen to look away, and now had nowhere left to hide.

The referee's whistle cut through the dead silence like a knife. His voice carried across the entire arena, flat, heavy, and final.

"Hayes. You are off the ice."

I stood there under every blazing light in the building.

Thousands of eyes bore down on me. For a second, I felt like the ice beneath my skates might swallow me whole, but there was nowhere left to run, and nowhere left to hide.

Just me.

Finally, completely, terrifyingly me.