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Chapter 59: The Things We Inherit

Penulis: Tear stained lore
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2026-07-17 05:25:14

“Engaged?”

The word escaped before I could stop it. Dean nodded, and the room seemed to shift around me. The half-eaten birthday cake, the gifts we’d been laughing over five minutes earlier, even the oversized hoodie I’d stolen from him and fully intended to keep, suddenly faded into the background. I sat on the edge of my bed, more because I needed a second to process than because my legs had given up.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can.”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want
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  • Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival   Chapter 65: The Things We Tell Ourselves

    The door had barely clicked shut before the apartment felt too quiet. I stood there longer than I should have, staring at the empty doorway as though Dean might suddenly come back and tell me we’d both overreacted. It was a pointless thought. Dean wasn’t impulsive. He didn’t walk away from conversations only to change his mind five minutes later. If he’d left, it was because he’d already made peace with the decision. Eventually I crossed the room and sat on the edge of my bed. My textbooks were still scattered across my desk, a hoodie still hung off the back of my chair like it had claimed permanent residence there, and my favorite mug sat beside the tin of hot chocolate I’d been promising to wash for days. The room hadn’t changed at all. I had. We hadn’t fought. Nobody had shouted. Dean hadn’t questioned my honesty, and I hadn’t lied to keep him from leaving. He’d asked me for certainty, and I’d discovered, at the worst possible moment, that I didn’t have it. Maybe this really wa

  • Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival   Chapter 64: What Are We?

    The drive back to campus unfolded in a strange, stretched quiet that made everything outside the car feel sharper by contrast. People moved through their evenings without hesitation—laughing outside restaurants, weaving through traffic, carrying bags of takeout like nothing in the world had shifted—while inside the car, something had. Dean drove with the same steady focus he always had, one hand resting lightly on the wheel, the other adjusting the radio once before leaving it off entirely. The silence wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t neutral either. It had weight. I broke first. “I went to the hospital.” He didn’t look at me, but his grip on the wheel tightened just enough that I noticed. “Mrs. Hart is diabetic,” I continued, watching the blur of headlights instead of him. “When Mason texted me, that’s where my brain went. I thought something had happened to her.” Dean nodded once, almost imperceptibly, and I pushed forward before I lost momentum. “They told me she was stable whe

  • Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival   Chapter 63: Lines We Cannot Cross

    The ride back to campus should have cleared my head, but instead it stretched everything out, giving my thoughts too much room to come back to themselves. Outside the bus windows, the city moved with its usual indifference—students weaving through traffic with coffee cups and deadlines, someone chasing a bus they’d already missed, couples arguing over directions like it mattered more than anything else they’d do that day. Life kept going. Mine felt suspended somewhere between a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and a playground that still echoed with things left unsaid. Mason’s voice lingered in my head, not the whole conversation, just the part that mattered. One sentence. That was all he’d ever wanted. Twenty-two years of trying to earn something that should have been given freely, and it still came down to hearing I’m proud of you. It sounded simple when you stripped it down like that, almost childish, but there was nothing simple about it. I understood that kind of hung

  • Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival   Chapter 62: The Places We Leave Behind

    By Tuesday afternoon, life had settled into something that almost felt normal again—at least on the surface. Campus had already moved on to fresher gossip, but the internet refused to let the Mercer gala fade. Arthur Mercer’s remarks had become the week’s most recycled headline, dissected across sports blogs and business columns alike, each article offering a new prediction—hostile takeovers, fractured partnerships, the unraveling of collegiate hockey alliances.Dean, unsurprisingly, found the entire situation entertaining.“I’ve always wanted to be part of a family feud,” he said over breakfast, scrolling through yet another article while balancing his phone against a half-eaten piece of toast. “Makes Christmas sound a lot more interesting.”I leaned back in my chair, coffee in hand. “You’re assuming your family celebrates Christmas instead of holding an annual shareholders’ meeting.”“We do both.”“I don’t believe you.”“My grandmother once gave my uncle a quarterly financial report

  • Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival   Chapter 61: Fault Lines

    By the time I wandered into Dean’s kitchen the next morning, Arthur Mercer had become the city’s favorite headline. Every channel had found a way to replay the same clip, looping his voice with the kind of urgency reserved for breaking news.“We stopped measuring ourselves against the Hart Group a long time ago.”Commentators filled the silence between repeats, each one more certain than the last about what it meant. Some framed it as a warning shot, others as the opening move in a corporate war, and at least one analyst spoke with the confidence of someone who had clearly never been in the same room as either man.Dean stood at the counter, pouring coffee with the calm of someone who had grown up inside this kind of noise and learned early not to react to it.“They’re acting like your dad just declared war,” I said, nodding toward the television as I took the mug he handed me.“They’re journalists,” he replied, leaning back against the counter. “Worst-case scenarios are their job.”“

  • Across The Ice: Falling for my ex’s biggest rival   Chapter 60: Legacy

    Saturday arrived sooner than I expected. Dean was almost done when I joined him in the kitchen, flipping pancakes with an ease that suggested this wasn’t a rare performance. I leaned against the doorway in his hoodie and borrowed sweatpants, watching him move around like this was just another morning instead of the aftermath of everything that had shifted between us the night before. “You cook?” I asked, eyeing the plate he slid onto the island. “You sound disappointed.” “I just assumed billionaire sons survived entirely on private chefs.” “I’ve never recovered from the trauma of learning to fry an egg.” “I’ll keep you in my prayers.” He laughed and pushed the plate closer—pancakes, eggs, fruit—actual effort. I picked up my fork, already reconsidering several life choices. “I take it back. Marry me.” “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said easily. “You still won’t admit we’re dating.” “Good.” Breakfast settled into something comfortable, conversation drifting until the r

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