The Girl who changed the Game
Zara Torres has three rules at Harlow University: no athletic dorm drama, no boring elective classes, and absolutely, under no circumstances, no hockey players.
She's broken all three before October.
Now she's stuck writing a semester-long profile on Declan Mercer — starting center, criminally good at skating backward, and the most inconveniently interesting person she's met since arriving at Harlow. He's easygoing where she's structured, instinctive where she's methodical, and somehow always exactly where she isn't expecting him to be.
Which, as it turns out, is a problem.
Zara knows how to land on her feet. She's been doing it since the fall that broke her wrist and her confidence in one clean moment two years ago. She doesn't need a hockey player dissecting her skating footage at midnight or texting her things that are too honest for seven AM.
She definitely doesn't need him to be right.
But just as something real starts forming between them — something unscripted, something she didn't prepare for — a single email pulls the assignment and threatens to take everything with it.
Some edges are sharper than they look.
And some falls are worth the landing.
Lire
Chapter: Chapter NineDeclan stopped just inside the entrance."Hey oh." He had his skates over one shoulder and a coffee in each hand and the expression of someone who has walked into a room and immediately understood they've walked into something. "Practice ended early," he said. "I thought you'd be""I'm just finishing up," I said.He looked at me. Then on the ice. Then back at me."You okay?" he said."Fine," I said.He walked to the boards and set both coffees down on the ledge. He didn't say anything else. He sat on the bench and started lacing his skates, slowly, with the patience of someone who had nowhere particular to be and was not going to perform urgency to fill silence.I skated to the boards and picked up one of the coffees. Terrible vending machine. I didn't ask how he knew I'd want it. He didn't explain."The Lutz?" he said, without looking up from his laces.I wrapped both hands around the cup. "Entry work," I said. "Not the jump.""But you pulled out.""Three times."He finished lacing. H
Dernière mise à jour: 2026-06-28
Chapter: Chapter EightI have a pre competition routine that has not changed since I was fifteen.The night before anything important, a competition, a significant practice run, a session where I'm attempting something I haven't fully landed yet, I do the same things in the same order. I lay out my training clothes. I review the program in my head from start to finish without skipping the hard parts. I make chamomile tea that I don't actually like but that my first coach swore by, and I drink it sitting on the floor of wherever I'm living because I started doing it on the floor of my childhood bedroom and the floor part stuck.It's not superstition. It's architecture. The routine builds a container for the nerves so they have somewhere to live that isn't my body.I was sitting on the floor of my dorm room at ten PM on Wednesday with my chamomile tea and my program notes when Bria came in from the library, dropped her bag, looked at me, and said: "Floor night.""Thursday's a big practice," I said."The Lutz?
Dernière mise à jour: 2026-06-28
Chapter: Chapter SevenShe was tall, with the posture of someone who had been told they had good posture so often it had become load bearing, and dark red hair pulled over one shoulder. She had a press lanyard around her neck with a Harlow Athletics credential, a recorder in her hand, and the specific ease of someone who belonged everywhere they went and had never had reason to doubt it."Hi," she said, extending her hand. "Petra Voss. Senior thesis, sports journalism. I'm covering the hockey program this season."I shook her hand. "Zara Torres.""I know," she said. "Declan mentioned you."I kept my face neutral. It was a skill. "Did he?""Said you were the journalist who got reassigned off his profile." She tilted her head. "Unfortunate timing on that. The media policy thing came from above. Briggs ' new assistant coach has strong feelings about press access apparently." She glanced at the ice, where said assistant coach, Ashford, was now standing near the boards reviewing something on a clipboard. "Anyway
Dernière mise à jour: 2026-06-26
Chapter: Chapter sixThe thing about sharing ice with a hockey team is that it requires a level of diplomatic patience I was not issued at birth.I have tried to explain this to Bria, my roommate, who is a swimmer and therefore operates in her own lane literally and has never once had to negotiate rink time with seventeen men who treat every surface they occupy as something they conquered rather than borrowed. Bria's response was to make tea and say "that sounds really hard" in the voice she uses when she's listening but also reading something on her phone.My point stands regardless.Tuesday morning was our overlap day. The figure skating team had the ice from five to six thirty. Hockey had it from six thirty to eight. The agreement, such as it was, lived in a shared athletics calendar that both programs theoretically respected and practically treated as a loose suggestion when it suited them.Today it suited them to arrive at six twenty.I was in the middle of my step sequence the section of my program
Dernière mise à jour: 2026-06-26
Chapter: Chapter FiveHis teammate, taller, blond, the number seven on his jersey leaned against the boards next to me with the specific confidence of someone who has never been told a bad idea was bad. "You're the journalist," he said."That's me," I said."Kowalski." He stuck out his hand.I looked at his hand. Then at him. "The rut," I said.He looked confused. "What rut?""The east wall. Tuesday resurfacing.""Oh." Recognition landed on his face, followed immediately by the look of someone who has decided the best move is to not fully engage with this line of questioning. "Yeah, that's what kind of happens.""It really doesn't, actually," I said."Blades catch sometimes""Not like that," I said pleasantly. "Not in the same place three weeks running."Kowalski opened his mouth, then made the wise decision to close it. He had the expression of someone reassessing who, exactly, they had decided to introduce themselves to. "I'm just going to" he gestured vaguely at the ice."Good talk," I said.He left. I
Dernière mise à jour: 2026-06-12
Chapter: Chapter FourWednesday practice did not start well.This was my fault, which I'm noting upfront so nobody thinks I'm about to blame someone else for something that was objectively my fault. I set two alarms the night before five AM and five-fifteen, the backup system I'd been using since freshman year of high school and somehow, in the specific insanity of Tuesday night, I forgot that I'd silenced my phone during a film review session and never unsilenced it.I woke up at six oh seven.Practice started at six.I'm going to skip over the next eleven minutes because they were not my finest and I'd like to preserve some dignity here. What I will say is that I made it to the rink by six eighteen with my recorder, my notebook, my jacket on correctly, and my hair in a ponytail that was doing its best under the circumstances. I pushed through the rink doors with the energy of someone arriving casually, not someone who had jogged the last four blocks in twenty-two degree weather.The cold hit me like a wa
Dernière mise à jour: 2026-06-12
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