What He Hears

POV: Eli HayesThe pen hits the desk, and I look up.She is already looking at me.There is a quality to this moment that differs from all the other moments we have accumulated in seminar rooms and coffee shops and libraries and rinks and cobblestone courtyards since September. It is different because neither of us looks away. It is different because something in the air has finally stopped pretending to be casual.I have been in this room with Silver Preston for two hours, managing the distance the same way I manage everything difficult: with focus and precision and the careful application of attention to the task directly in front of me rather than the larger situation surrounding it. It is a system I trust. It has worked for years. Tonight, I can feel it fraying at the edges.The literary analysis is genuinely interesting. That is not performance. Victorian poetry is something I came to during the eight months of my shoulder recovery, when I had nothing but time and needed somethin

The Long Way

POV: Silver PrestonThe scoreboard does not lie.Harvard 3. Yale 2.The final buzzer barely finishes echoing through Ingalls before the silence takes over. The kind that drops on a crowd when the result is wrong and no one has figured out what to do with their hands yet. People sit frozen for a beat too long, as if stillness might somehow rewind the last sixty minutes.Three thousand people going quiet at once is its own specific sound. It presses against the ribs more than any roar could.I sit pressed between Americus and Riley in the student section, Yale scarf wound tight, the cold off the ice doing what rink cold always does and finding every gap in every layer you thought you had covered. My fingers have gone numb inside my gloves, but I barely notice it over the ache of watching a team absorb a loss they clearly believe they should not have taken."They had it," Riley says, low, like she is afraid of disturbing something. "With two minutes left they absolutely had control of th

Choosing Not To Listen

POV: Silver PrestonMy phone buzzes before I have even shaken the snow from my coat.I am sitting on the edge of my bed with the cold of Ingalls still in my bones and Eli's cracked composure still replaying somewhere behind my eyes. The rink echoes in a way it does not after wins. The hollow scrape of skates retreating. The weight in his shoulders when he thought the stands had already emptied. I can still feel the particular ache of watching someone try to hold himself together and almost fail at it, the way it makes something in my own chest pull tight in sympathy.I look at the screen.Weston Carroway.*Let me take your mind off whatever's got you looking so serious tonight.*My chest tightens.I did not tell anyone I was going to the game.I did not post anything.He should not know where I have been or what my face looks like right now.But of course he does.I sit with that for a moment. The specific chill of it. Not the January cold still clinging to my coat, but something cold

The Seed

POV: Silver PrestonThe walk to Chapel Street gives me just enough time to almost turn back twice.I do not turn back.The bar Weston chose is exactly what I would have predicted if I had let myself think about it, which I did not. Exposed brick. Edison bulbs hanging at precisely calibrated heights. The kind of warm low light that makes everyone look like they belong in something more interesting than their actual lives. It is the sort of place designed to make ordinary conversations feel consequential, and I hate that it is already working on me before I have even ordered a drink.Weston is already at a corner table when I push through the door, tucked into an alcove with a sightline to the entire room. Of course he chose that seat. He is dressed the way he always is, like the occasion was arranged around his availability rather than the other way around. He rises slightly when he sees me, a gesture practiced but landing anyway, and I feel the small, traitorous flicker of flattery be

All Chapters of Ice & Ivy - A Hockey Romance: Chapter 101 - Chapter 104

What He Hears

The Long Way

Choosing Not To Listen

The Seed