Fangs Beneath the Ice

Chapter 14: The debt between us

WREN’S POV

I woke up already falling.

My hand shot out before my eyes even opened, fingers clamping down on the edge of my nightstand hard enough to leave dents in the wood, my whole body braced like the mattress was about to drop out from under me. My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

It was just a dream.

I forced my grip to loosen, one finger at a time, and stared up at the ceiling until my breathing evened out. The same dream, the wind ripping my hair sideways, the ground rushing up, his hand slipping out of mine on purpose.

You're safe, Elise said quietly, none of her usual smugness in it. He caught you. You're safe.

“I know,” I muttered to the empty room, which didn't stop my hand from aching where I'd gripped the nightstand.

I didn't fall back asleep.

By the time I dragged myself into first period, I had convinced myself it was just leftover adrenaline working its way out of my system, nothing that wouldn't fade in a day or two.

I almost believed it until I walked into the rink after school and found Coach Daniels waiting by the bench with a clipboard and the specific look on his face that meant somebody's life was about to get more complicated.

Mine, as it turned out.

“Sutter Reyes, my office now!” He didn't wait to see if we would follow, already walking, and Asher and I exchanged a look that for once had nothing to do with either of us being annoyed at the other.

“Did we do something?” I asked, falling into step beside him.

“You're about to,” Coach said, which was not reassuring in the slightest.

His office was barely big enough for the desk, let alone three people, and I ended up wedged against a filing cabinet while Asher took up most of the remaining floor space, arms crossed, watching Coach with the wary patience of someone who already suspected where this was going.

Coach dropped the clipboard on the desk like it had personally offended him. “Scouts are coming Monday, not next month or next week but Monday! One week from today.”

My stomach dropped somewhere around my shoes. “Next Monday.”

“Next Monday.” He looked at me the way he had that first day in the gym, like I was a math problem he'd already half solved.

“You've got instincts nobody around here's ever seen, Sutter, but instincts aren't enough on their own. You play like you've never been coached because you never have been, and a scout's going to see that in about four seconds.”

“So put me on the bench.”

“Not a chance.” He turned to Asher before I could argue further. “Reyes has the technical foundation you're missing. Positioning, edge work, reading the ice instead of just outrunning it.”

I already didn't like where this was going. “What exactly are we talking about?”

“Daily sessions. Just the two of you, an hour before regular practice, starting tomorrow.” He said it like he was assigning a group project, completely oblivious or maybe not oblivious at all, maybe fully aware and enjoying it to the fact that he'd just sentenced me to a week alone with the one person on earth I least wanted to be alone with.

“One week. By Monday, I need Sutter looking like she's been playing this sport her whole life instead of two months.”

“I have a life outside hockey,” I said, which wasn't remotely true, but I said it anyway.

“You have a scout coming to evaluate this program's future,” Coach said. “Which, last I checked, includes your future, if you want it to.”

Asher hadn't said a word this whole time, which was somehow worse than if he had argued. I glanced at him and found him already looking at me, unreadable in that way that made my skin prickle.

“Fine by me,” he said finally, and something in his voice made it sound like a challenge instead of an agreement.

“Of course it's fine by you.” I crossed my arms. “You don't have to be within touching distance of someone who pushed you off a building four days ago.”

Coach's head came up sharply. “I'm sorry, what?”

“Figure of speech,” Asher said smoothly, at the exact same second I said, “Nothing,” and Coach looked between the two of us with the expression of a man who had decided, wisely, not to ask a single follow-up question.

“Tomorrow by Four o'clock so don't be late, either of you.” He waved a hand toward the door, already done with us, already reaching for whatever was next on his clipboard of other people's problems.

I made it exactly three steps into the hallway before Asher caught up, easy and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world to make my life difficult.

“You could've just said yes.”

“I did say yes. Technically.” I didn't slow down. “I'm allowed to be annoyed about it on the way out.”

“You know this counts, right?” He fell into step beside me, hands in his pockets, entirely too pleased with himself for someone who'd just been assigned an hour of unpaid coaching duty. “Toward the debt.”

I stopped walking. “Excuse me?”

“You keep saying I owe you.” He stopped too, tilting his head, and there was something almost warm underneath the smugness, something that made the whole conversation feel more dangerous than it should have.

“An hour a day, every day, teaching you everything I know, sounds like a fairly generous installment plan to me.”

“You pushed me off a roof, Asher. An hour of skating drills doesn't even scratch the surface.”

“Then I guess I've got a whole week to work on my offer.” He was almost smiling, and it was doing something unfair to my ability to keep glaring at him. “See you at four, Sutter.”

He walked off before I could come up with anything to say back, which left me standing alone in the hallway feeling distinctly like I had lost a conversation I hadn't agreed to have.

He's trying, Elise offered.

He pushed me off a building.

He's still trying.

I didn't have a response to that one either and four o'clock came faster than I wanted it to.

The rink was empty except for the two of us, every sound too loud in the hollow space and our skates on the ice, the hum of the overhead lights, the particular silence of two people who very deliberately weren't looking at each other while pretending they were fine.

“Basics first.” Asher skated a slow loop around me, assessing, and I resisted the urge to skate directly at him just to make him flinch for once. “Your stance is too narrow. You're compensating with speed instead of balance, which works until someone actually knows how to read you.”

“It's worked fine so far.”

“It's worked because nobody's tried to read you yet.” He came to a stop a few feet away, close enough that I could see exactly how tired he still looked, the faint shadows under his eyes that hadn't fully faded since the clinic. “Widen your base and have your knees bent more like this.”

He demonstrated, and I mimicked it badly, and he made a small sound of disapproval in the back of his throat that I chose to ignore.

“Closer,” he said. “Not quite.”

He skated toward me, unhurried, the way you would approach something that might bolt, and reached out to adjust the angle of my knee with his hand.

I didn't decide to move but my body decided for me, flinching back hard enough that I nearly lost my footing with my hand shooting out to catch the boards before I could fall.

My heart was suddenly going twice as fast as it needed to for a correction drill in an empty rink, and for one horrible second, I was back on that ledge with his fingers slipping out of mine, the ground rushing up to meet me.

Asher froze mid-motion, hand still half-raised, and didn't move and neither did I.

The silence stretched out between us, long enough that I could hear my own pulse in my ears, long enough that I watched something shift behind his eyes, something that looked dangerously close to understanding.

He didn't ask what that was and I didn't tell him.

“Let's try it again,” he said instead, voice careful in a way it hadn't been a minute ago, and lowered his hand without finishing the correction.

“Fine.” My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was its own small victory.

We ran the drill again and again and he kept his hands to himself the rest of the hour, correcting me with words instead of touch, and I told myself that was better, that was easier, that was exactly what I wanted.

It didn't feel like a victory.

It felt like something had cracked open between us and neither of us had the nerve to look inside it, so instead we skated laps in careful, polite silence, both of us pretending the last five minutes hadn't happened at all.

You're going to have to tell him eventually, Elise said quietly as I laced up to leave.

No, I thought back. I really, really don't..